Nothing to Prove

Something is different this year. A shift in my soul resonates to the deepest parts of my identity. As the soles of my feet pound into the treadmill my mind tries to figure what exactly it is. Tracking my pace and time I mentally take note to add it to my training plan later—and then it hits me.

I have nothing to prove.

I don’t have to prove anything. Not. One. Thing.

I don’t have to push through my workout to beat anyone else’s pace, nor am I worried about how my face looks sweaty and bare. It mirrors every part of my life. Work, writing, motherhood, marriage, even the numbers on the scale.

I am…and it is perfectly enough.

Smiling, I continue to run despite the weariness and strain as I prepare to push my body beyond limits in a marathon which makes me smile again. This training, preparing, is just like life–on this side of eternity and beyond.

A marathon you say? 🙂 If you know me, I never do the same thing twice. I get tattoos on a whim and will spring for a road trip at a moment’s notice. You also know I’m always trying new things, big things. Always proving until I started marathon training.  

I’m always trying, doing—and this year I’m…being. And it’s the most amazing experience.

I wake up each morning confident in my own skin and anticipate the treasures of my focus on His presence. I’ve been wrapped in his presence for years but somehow learning to “be” has awakened a newness to Him. Like diving into the flooded Platte river after spring rains, it feels alive, effervescent; this side and depth of God–I’ve never encountered. 

That Little Girl Wasn’t Enough

I’ve wrestled with not being “enough” since I kindergarten when my teacher favored some of my better dressed classmates. Me, in frumpy, itchy calico dresses my grandma made from old curtains, blond hair in pig tails and yellowed teeth always asking for a hug—begging for acceptance and approval. I just didn’t know what it was called yet.

The last two years made me feel like a that clumsy little girl again. It has been a tumultuous journey through limitless ambition in trials and failures in search of perfection, acceptance—stumbling and falling on the wrong roads, paths where I got lost, where I found dreams that weren’t mine.

Restless for something significant—I found HIS love in the strangest of places. I found what when I needed most when life stopped working for me.

In the middle of the night, tired and eyes bloodshot from tears shed through anguish and weariness from the deepest places in my soul; 2:30 A.M. back against office wall, sitting on the floor journal open, dreams written, HIS presence questioned. Life imperfect, me wrestling with His will.

Withered in surrender it felt as though His hands dug me up from the sandy soil of my world, pulling apart my balled up roots and planted me in organic soil, rich in his love. There splayed on the edges of a journal entry were promises, scratches of what I’ve been called to do, all surrounding tear stained “Where are you in this God,” letters.

Unearthing a mess of my balled up roots, he answered loud and clear to have courage to just be me inside of Him. He Spoke, I listened: 

WAIT. Be still and know that I am God.

But God, you said I would do great things…

I formed you shrouded in darkness, I called you before I set time in motion.

But God, what about the words on my heart,

“I called you according to my purpose, wait—be still and know it will happen on my time,”

But God, what will they think…

You have my acceptance and love. Don’t you know I sing over you. Prepare and lean hard into me.

Being

As my shoes pound out the rhythmic beat of “being” in my heart, my soul feels free.

Gone are the chains of doing, acting, and looking the part. Gone is the need to fit in. I’m planted firmly in the middle of his rich love where competition of self and against others isn’t needed thrive. All that’s needed is being, becoming, and my focus on him.

Hopefully by mile 18 when I feel like I can’t go on, I can come back to this moment, this feeling, and remember why I’m running and why I am trying this new thing of being.