About a year ago, my friend Candice ran her first marathon. She wrote about the experience afterwards and described something that felt so familiar to me: the arduous, seemingly never-ending road of hard work, tiredness and physical pain that can only be gotten through by enduring it. But her story ended with a finish line.
The last few years have been sprinkled with tragedy and disappointment, either for myself or those I love. I began this blog 5 years ago, with an unspoken hope at the time that by now I might not need it. Loved ones have passed away, jobs lost, hearts broken. What I desperately wanted was a finish line. I believe that's what brought tears to my eyes in reading Candice's race recap, and I'm pretty sure that sums up what made me do such a thing as enter a 13.1-mile race. I had to taste that joy of the finish.
Today I spoke to my friend Hideo for what very well may be the last time. A year ago, he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, and has been fighting an uphill battle ever since. He is now bedridden, with barely the energy to have a conversation on the phone. After crying my eyes out, I did the only thing I knew would bring me any kind of solace. I called my best friend and asked her to pray for me to remind me who was in control when I wasn't, who had a better plan designed for us all than the broken life that we must all labor through, who would remember me for my friend and for the things that break my heart.
These last few years, I've had to ask myself why I follow Jesus each step of the way -- whether consciously or not. There is something about suffering that forces you to decide what really matters to you in the end. I'm beyond the point where I ask why bad things happen. But I've had to ask what I would do without the hope of God, which I have felt so desperate for in the face of grief. It's not a blind hope, or a band-aid hope to deny what's really happening. It's a hope that has to be bigger than all of the mess I see around me.
My reason for running that half was the same reason I need God. Like a long-distance run ridden with hills, life is pretty hard. But God has promised that it's all going somewhere amazing -- that there is actually a finish line that awaits. So whatever happens today or tomorrow or 5 years from now, the best is yet to come. And I keep going for that day.
Hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees?
- Romans 8:24
No comments:
Post a Comment