You Can Only Take So Much
I run. But trust me when I say not for the pleasure of it.
Recently I was running on my treadmill and noticed something. I added this to my list of “things you learn while running”. On the dashboard of my treadmill is a red dot chart system. You’ve probably seen them. The faster you run the more dots it adds to the chart. As you progress, it scrolls the dots left and you can see what your run will look like. The program I use looks like a hill going up and down.
So I’m running at about six miles per hour and thinking, “This sucks.” I can feel the pain in my legs and I’m struck by the urge to just stop. And then the program increases for a minute to seven miles an hour. The pain increases as I gasp and give it the best I’ve got. But then an interesting thing happens. When the program returns back to six miles an hour, my feeling is not one of pain at six miles an hour that I had just experienced, but relief. My experience of six miles an hour had changed.
It made me wonder how much we process pain, yet don’t give ourselves credit for how much we can really take. What if the source of the pain is not in the event but in the judgment we make about the event? What if the pain of six miles an hour is in my own limitations, and not in the running?
I find that the more I follow Jesus, the more he leads me not away from pain, but directly towards it. And I’m now realizing my initial fears are not the same fears when leaving the pain. It appears that what Jesus always seems to deal with is not changing the event but my perceptions/judgments of the event. He’s always re-centering me on what really defines me. Because when I hold onto the pain of an event, it defines me in a little but limiting way. Letting go of my judgment of the events seems to be the point of returning.
What I’m consistently discovering is that for so long I didn’t give myself credit for how much I could really take. My own limitations were born not out of reality but lies. And letting go of those lies freed me up to becoming.
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fredshope
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Amy Moffitt
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makeesha
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angelaharms
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Jonathan Brink
