When I began running in 2004, it was for the practical purpose of free exercise but certainly not because I considered myself a runner. We had just moved our then family of four to south central Mississippi. Having played sports, I assumed running was simply a matter of putting on my shoes and taking off. This had to be the easiest way to get outdoors with our girls to exercise.
In January 2004, I laced up my Asics and eagerly set out to run a couple of miles. Less than a half-mile into my first-ever run, my legs began to feel like jello, each step felt awkward and heavy. I wanted to stop. I needed to stop. Some sense of determination…or maybe stubborn self-will enabled me to finish.
I chose to run again that following day, and the next, and the next, into the weeks ahead. It was a daily choice. I dressed in my running gear as soon as I awoke. I enjoyed a cup of coffee as the girls and I had prayer and Bible study, and we headed out, the girls pacing me on their bikes. The run-walk-run method changed my rhythm and made me a runner.
Running became part of my daily routine. Much to my surprise, I came to find it to be something I looked forward to. I ran, and still do, because I feel better, stronger, clearer thinking after I run. And there’s the release of endorphins, referred to as “happy hormones” that results from physical exercise.
On September 14th of this year, I took another first run. I woke that morning, the red orange of the sun beginning to peak through the blinds. My chest was heavy and my stomach hollow. C.S. Lewis said it well, “like an invisible blanket between me and the world.” My Daddy had passed away four days prior. Grief with hope, my strange companion.
I slipped out of bed and into my running gear. I was numb. It seemed a relief to get out into the warm morning air. I pulled up the Psalms on my Bible app and put in my earbuds. I only walked that morning. I walked and prayed and cried. The sobs were evidence that I couldn’t make sense of it all. All that I had in me was the quiet assurance that God was near in my sadness, my loss, my remembering and giving thanks, and missing one who had loved me “to the moon and back” for 56 years and 301 days.
By the time I returned home and turned off the voice reading Scripture into my ears, there were a few precious, timely texts on my phone. One a photo of the staff ladies who had gathered that morning to pray for my family. Another a link to “Be Thou My Vision” and the prayer of sister who comforted me with the comfort she had received from God at her mother’s passing.
The third text reminded me when Christ was going away from this earth, He told His disciples that He would not leave them comfortless but would send “another Comforter” who would abide with them forever. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27). This “abiding” Comforter comes, and He remains. He is ready to give us “joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:3).
For over six months, in what I thought to be preparation for the Woven Fall Retreat and Woven Bible Study, I had been studying the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. But God. He knew the day He would call my daddy home. He knew I would need hope and help to walk this part of the journey. God knew I needed to be prepared, as one who has loved and lost, to grieve as one whose real hope is in a real Savior.
The God of all comfort who is sovereign, merciful and good, continues to teach me that I have a choice in stewarding this grief…either run away from God or run to God.
Many sisters and brothers have walked through seasons of grief before me or are currently walking there beside me. No one seeks grief. Even so, the ministry of sorrow, the moving into another’s grief by caring, can comfort. We need to know we aren’t alone. We need to remember that God never leaves us alone.
It’s only in running to God that the pain of loss finds its’ Comforter and the strength to grieve faithfully. “Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us, even as we hope in you” (Psalm 33:22).