This Is My Race
Depressed children often chatter like George Washington’s wooden dentures at Valley Forge, and bounce off the walls. Depressed adults are often quiet — silent, even.
I was the classic depressed adult. I sat at the computer last week, and wrote nothing, because I had nothing to say. I was depressed…
Let me back up the thought train for you…
A few years ago, I had an episode of chest pain that has resulted in a greater degree of medical scrutiny, and so many visits to the lab that the tech and I became friends! Friends with my “numbers” I am not!
When I heard that my numbers were not where the doctor would like them to be, despite three months of severe dietary restrictions, I felt like a failure! I should be able to manage my own health by my own determination! I got angry (though I could not admit it)! Why me? Nobody else has to do this! I don’t want to take more/different meds. I am already taking a whole handful of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements to stay healthy! Why am I being singled out?
(Now, I have close family members who must deal with much more vital health concerns than this. I am just being honest with where my thoughts were at that point. Please, don’t send me patronizing notes or accusatory comments…at least not yet…)
I was rebelling…and I couldn’t admit it. I was rebelling against the path laid out as mine. I spent several days in internal misery and grumpy self-focus. I don’t know that I could pinpoint just when the turnaround began, but the path included confession of rebellion, and turning away from it, confessing my discouragement over my lack of success, and acknowledging that this is my race to run.
This is the body God gave me to run that race.
This is my relationship with God and this body. No one else has the privilege or the burden to do this. No one else has my unique place in the Body of Christ, my particular way of reflecting God’s glory or ministering my aspect of God’s grace. But I cannot do any of that if I am living in rebellion against any of it…or more specifically, rebellion against God!
The very counsel I gave to a troubled friend who was moving from one difficult circumstance to another (but different) difficult circumstance was what I needed to heed myself: to pray, “Not my will, but Yours.”
As I submitted my will to His, the depression began to lift, a song returned to my heart along with this declaration:
These are my circumstances, my parameters, the race marked out for me, not someone else; my gifts, my limitations, my body, my journey. I am who God made me, and not yet who He saw when He made me. Who I am pleases Him, but it also pleases Him for me to grow and be more fully who I am in Him, and become more like Him in all that. It is the “getting there” that is the challenge, and the process that is the problem.
He has already done all this victoriously. That is why I am
Following Jesus every day in the everyday,
Christi
P.S. Yesterday the cardiology P.A. said it’s probably genetics…it really IS the body God gave me for this race!
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