press on {when you're ready to grow}
So maybe today–maybe in this—it’s time to press on, even though it’s hard, and it hurts, and you want to give up.
“But I’m dying,” she says to me, gasping, sweat gathering like a halo along her hairline. She’s waiting for me to say she can quit, but I am not so easily convinced.
“You’re not dying.”
“But it’s hard for me to breathe…I…just…can’t…catch…my breath, see?” I can’t help but smile, even with her dying, beside me, because she reminds me of myself at her age, parsing running into feet, stop signs, mailboxes. I remember my dad pointing ahead of us, urging. “Come on, just run to there.”
“You’re talking, so you can breathe,” I say, smiling wryly at her. Her cheeks are red and wet, and she keeps threatening to cry, sighing into a whimper, her breath catching in her throat. “Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. It just takes some time to get the hang of the breathing.” Learning to breathe must always come first, just drawing in the sweet Life force, letting it fill, trusting the nourishment of cell and tissue.
The further we go, the slower she runs, until I’m wondering how a person can have such a conservative stride. I look through the trees at the lake, gathering up the sight of sparkling light on the water. I’m a collector of eternal things.
Meanwhile, Riley has to slow her steps to stay beside us. Her cheeks are just as red, but she runs silently, smiling carefully when I catch her eye. I have to watch her to make sure she’s okay, because she never complains, never believes in can’t. She has a broader view than most of us about what’s possible. Even when she appears to be struggling, she remains steadfast and determined, always denying any limitation to her progress. “It’s okay to run ahead of us a little if you want to, Ri.” I can tell that trying to match her sister’s pace only complicates her run.
So she moves ahead, and I watch her sunlit ponytail swing.
Zoe groans. “Mom, can we take a water break? My head hurts.”
“Zoe, it’s two miles. Let’s run to the next marker and then we’ll take a water break,” I gesture ahead of us toward the red mile marker staked in the ground beside the path, mottled by light squeezing through the leaves overhead.
She grabs her side, curling the fingers of her other hand into a fist. “I can’t do this,” she says.
“Yes. You can.”
“I can’t. I thought this would be fun, but it just…hurts. Why do you like to do this?” Her mouth curls into a sneer. She feels misled, and also a little irritated that Riley and I don’t seem to be suffering as much as she. But we are a bit more seasoned as runners.
This was to be Zoe’s first 5K and her first training cycle. She’s never done any running, except in play. I didn’t expect it to be easy for her. And no, I didn’t prepare her for the way burning pain precedes muscle growth, nor did I tell her that she would have trouble breathing at first, that her most difficult task would be learning patience with discomfort. I didn’t tell her because I knew that her immature perspective prevents her from valuing anything that isn’t fun or painless or working out as she expects. I knew that the finish line inspired her desire to do this, not the race itself. I hoped maybe she had grown just enough to be ready to persist.
But alas, she has not. Not yet.
The further we go, the more jagged her steps become. She surprises me by being extremely expressive of her complaint. She grunts and wails and alternately gasps. She gets anxious, and I have to speak softly to her and remind her how to breathe so that she doesn’t hyperventilate. She stops running and walks ten steps. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
I’m well familiar with that particular voice. Most runners have a mantra to use to fight back when not threatens. I tell my legs to be quiet and silently remember scripture, His divine power has given us everything we need…everything we need…everything.we.need…The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still. The Lord will fight for you. I collect gifts by the dozens to distract me from unwanted thoughts of lack. I have used these strategies to train for and run two marathons, three half marathons, and at least a dozen other races. But in fact, I breathe similarly through the crazy, sometimes painful living of most days, running the race set before me. All of life is training, after all. And thought must be reshaped and sculpted lean just like muscle, sometimes painfully torn and rewritten. Thought must be well-nourished, well-fueled, intentionally directed and persistently trained.
I exhale, appraising my daughter carefully. “You can. You have to stop thinking that way and determine that you will. You have to see the finish before you get there. Breathe. Look at the trees. Relax.”
She stops in the middle of the path, glaring at me. “I.don’t.want.to.do.this.if.it.hurts,” she says to my back, because I run on, hoping she will gather herself and continue. I circle back and drop into a walk beside her. That is the immature view: If it’s hard, I won’t. But she’s still such a shoot. There’s time.
“Okay,” I say, taking a sip from my water, looking ahead of us at Riley’s back, a magenta dot bobbing into the curve in the path. “But we’re going to have to walk a little faster or we will lose sight of your sister.”
When she sees that I have accepted her refusal, she relaxes her hands and walks a little faster. For a few minutes, we walk companionably without speaking. I gather up the color of algae growing on the trees, the delicate petals of a few flowers beside the path.
“But I don’t want you to be upset. You’re not upset with me?” She asks, turning to look at me.
“No. It’s okay. I don’t want to force you to do this. I want you to do it because you want to. Maybe one day you will, maybe not. It’s okay either way.”
“Well, I might want to try it for the next race you do. I just didn’t know it was going to hurt. I don’t like doing it if it hurts.”
“I know. I felt the same way when I was your age. Papa had to really push me to get me to run at all, and he only did it because I wanted to participate in a race at school. I get it. It’s okay. But you know, growing is often a painful process. New things…new strength, new ability, new knowledge, new life…come at a price. They take work. And not giving up.”
It’s interesting to me, the way we learn long suffering, how it slides into every part of our lives slowly, saturating each one until we learn the story of sacrifice. Birthing is itself a pressing through. We imagine the fleshy soft new life in our arms, the gurgling, the tiny fists wrapped around our fingers even as pain spasms tissue-deep and spins out of our mouths in uncharted, otherwordly sounds. We learn to remain in the smaller things first and gradually God lengthens our endurance until it encompasses far more than transitory mile markers. At first we learn faithfulness to those we love, to those who build us, and then, before our Father will be satisfied, we learn to remain with those whose broken pieces split our fingers. We learn to love our enemies even when they hurt us. We learn to offer others what they don’t deserve, what we have never deserved: long suffering, steadfast, sacrificial love; compassion; grace. And eventually, we learn this truth that never lessens the gripping agony but only serves to make us more determined not to give up: that the most painful lessons, the hardest training, produces the most satisfying difference.
The lesson is everywhere, really—-the slow molting that sheds old skin for new, the disassembly of caterpillars that makes butterflies, the burning of forests to bring new shoots, the death of seeds to birth new blooms, the sacrificial death of a Savior to redeem a world. Seasons of pain and terrifying change give way to what is new and fruitful. Perserverance must finish its work (James 1: 2-4).
Zoe looks ahead at the path, the bridge, the leaves of the trees moving in the wind. I can see her wrestling with the girl she now is and the woman she wants to become. The expression on her face is sharp, unyielding, the seed of strength. She turns to me, grimacing, a smoldering spark.
“But it doesn’t have to be now, does it? It doesn’t have to be this?”
“No. It doesn’t have to be now. It doesn’t have to be this. Another time will come.”
God accomplishes these things well in His own time. He’s not contented with stasis. Love won’t let Him leave us tiny and unfruitful. If we deny one opportunity for growth, another will come until at last we take an entirely new shape, until we learn how to press on.
