Within Your Care

In my youth, I lived in a really small community In spite of that, my school system featured an extremely skilled athletic program. One of our varsity teams would often reach the top spot in Class C statewide. Basketball, soccer, and track rounded out my school offerings. I was poor, at best, in all three. I couldn’t dunk a basketball to save my life. I wasn’t built for cross country. Our community had a hockey rink, but I couldn’t skate if I had to. I figured my chances at lettering in high school were slim. I did take a position as team manager for the varsity soccer team for a season. THAT I could do. I squeaked by with my school letter ... barely.

I remember when I discovered my athletic ability in a sport that only required one! It changed my life when I found I could do well at speed lap swimming. I lived at the pool from then on. I ate that up like there was no tomorrow. Had I had that opportunity in high school, how would that have changed the course of my uncoordinated, awkward life? Who knows? I also found I enjoyed running a bit, when I could squeeze it in.

Later in life, in my 30s, I was asked by a group of co-workers to take a spot on a relay marathon team. (They were not familiar with high school me.) “Sure!” I replied before I could stop myself. I had not run in some time at this point in my life, but ... Five miles, I thought to myself… how hard could that be? 

The four months of prep time flew by a flash in the night. I had not trained at all. It was Thursday night. The relay was coming up that Saturday. I told Kim as we climbed into bed, "I completely forgot. I promised to run a leg of Beach to Bay this weekend."

"THIS weekend??? As in ... tomorrow is Friday, then you get up the next morning and run a leg of a relay marathon??? Have you even trained? At all?"

"No," I admitted. It is not really THAT far. How hard can this be?"

"FIVE MILES? Uphill? In Texas heat?? she questioned. "When is the last time you actually ran? Or walked fast??? What were you thinking?”

“I ... wasn't, really. I figured I would have time to train, but I kind of procrastinated."

"Five miles. No training." She stared at me in disbelief.

"They needed me,” I replied. I was saying that to reassure myself more than anything. The gratitude for being included and invited shoved out all common sense on this one. It was making up in a small way for all the years of watching from the sidelines.

I ended up completing the five mile section in a decent time. The pain came after. In addition to not training, I also had not considered grabbing a pair of good running shoes. I ended the race with fractured arches in both feet, which caused severe pain for the next year. Looking back on my lack of preparation, I would have kicked myself. But I could not do that because ... broken feet.

A few days ago, I completed a song about the aloneness I experienced in school as a kid when I ended up being an odd-man-out member of a French class trip to Quebec. ("On the Outside Looking in at Life.") Being isolated and alone was something I knew something about. 

But I know that God allowed those years of aloneness to prepare and build something in me He wanted to do with me, and He used those years to prepare me. Kim and I both are musical, yet grew up in sports-minded surroundings. He had a lot of things to plant in us in those developmental years and He needed the space and atmosphere to prepare us for it.

In Mark 6:31-32 Jesus told His disciples to “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” There He teaches the value of the need of spiritual rejuvenation and the important of spending time with Him in quiet, desolate places.

I now appreciate the time with Jesus. But there were those years I didn’t see it as that. There was the time I resented the lack. Now I value it. It took a lot of time to come to that point in my thinking. Even during the times I felt I was missing out or being left behind, He was taking care of me the whole time, exactly the way I needed.