I got a phone call from Abby just a little while ago. She and Mark are in Houston, Texas for a half-marathon. Excitedly, I asked her, “How did it go?” I could hear the wide grin in her voice when she said, “Oh, it was quite the day…”
This was Abby’s first half and Mark’s fifth. She has been training for this for the past five months. She is in the best shape of her life and has thoroughly enjoyed both the discipline of running as well as the results. This was to be her first big weekend to prove what she had in her….
I won’t go into all the details because I can’t tell the story the way that she did with all of its hilarious components. But here is the gist of it….
Each runner has a marker on their shoe to track their miles and time. People are able to go online and follow them and their progress through this tracking system.
As they started out, Abby and Mark ran neck and neck, with each of them taking the lead at different times. At about mile five, Abby was in that lead. Suddenly, another runner ran into her and knocked her down. Unbeknownst to her, her tracking device fell off at this point. She went “off the radar” to anyone who was watching her progress.
My little trouper continued her run. The music in her headphones was turned up loud, her eyes were set on the path, but she was avoiding looking at the mile markers because the humidity made the run difficult and she didn’t want to focus on how much of the run was still ahead.
Now, there is a place in a half marathon at mile twelve where there is a split. The half-marathoners run in one direction, and the full-marathoners go the other. Abby realized that based on her music selection and the time length she had set on her ipod, she should have been completed with her run. And that’s when she looked up to see the “mile 17” marker. She had gone the wrong direction at the split in the path and had just run 17 miles!
Long story short, she found a biker who was monitoring the race who took her back to mile twelve so that she could finish the last mile of the half marathon. In total, she ran 18 miles instead of 13.1!
The story of her trying to find Mark after that is crazy. She had no phone, no tracker on her shoe, no money, no familiarity with this strange city. So she used her people skills and creativity to find her way back to the hotel to a daddy who was nearly frantic as to where she could possibly be.
It wasn’t the path or the outcome that she had expected. But it showed her that she could do more than she even realized she had in her. Her story now contains twists and turns that no one else’s has. It exposed her strength, her ingenuity, her innate abilities to problem solve and laugh at herself. The makings of a great experience with a great story and a great ending…
As she told her tale and we laughed together, she said that she couldn’t help but think how much she was like her mother. This apple didn’t fall far from this tree…
There is no doubt, I would have done the exact same thing in that race. But beyond being able to relate to her randomness and ability to get lost on a clear path, I know that there are many more similarities that all of us can relate to in the analogy of LIFE.
Life offers us a new “race”. We see the path ahead. We ready ourselves for it, training and preparing. There is excitement in heading in a new direction. Jesus blows the starting whistle, and we are off. The pace is good, the rhythm familiar, the path clear.
But then something happens and we lose our footing. We fall. We’re not even aware of what happened in the process of that fall, of what we lost. Our tracking device has slipped off and we don’t even know it.
So we get back up, brush ourselves off and start out again. And we seem to be doing well. We are still running. We are enjoying the music playing in our ears, we are watching the immediate path.
But somehow we get lost in the “music”, the distractions on the path that keep us from seeing the big picture, the final goal. And at the split in the road, we swerve off course and head in the wrong direction without even knowing it. Until we are tired and exhausted and look up to see where we’ve ended up. Miles off course. Time lost. The finish line further away than before.
To go back and fix it seems insurmountable. We are already tired and lost and can’t imagine the thought of finding our way back. We are at the end of ourselves. And so we wave our hands in the air as a sort of “white flag” of surrender and summon the help of the One who created the race, the path. We ask Him to help us get back on track and to point us in the right direction.
And He does. And we begin again. We won’t make it to our goal in record time. But we will get there. And though the process twisted and turned in ways we didn’t expect, somehow it makes our story a little more interesting. Because it created in us things we didn’t know we had or were capable of. It developed things that weren’t there before. The cuts and scrapes of the fall were healed. And ultimately, it led us to the place where our focus was not only on the final goal, but on the only One who could ever help us get there.
Jesus, help me to know that the path is not the ultimate goal. You are the ultimate goal. When I lose my way, when my path twists, when I miss the turns or make up my own, please lead me back. Run with me, side by side, so that when I fall, my first and only response is to reach up to you to lift me back up. Help me to see that no matter what my road holds or where it has detoured, it can always lead me back to You if I stop and ask for help.
Psalm 139:1-12 – You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
Psalm 23:14 – The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Proverbs 3:5-6 – Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
