Pressing through!

I started training for a half-marathon two and a half months ago.  While training I have often experienced running out of breath.  It causes a panic in me where I start to gasp for air.  I breath louder with moaning sounds emanating from my body.  My son's who are younger than me will say things like, Dad, you really breath loud!  The panic can grow to where I convince myself that I must stop running or I will die.  I want to return to the well known activity called walking.  I understand walking.  I know what it will feel like, I know how my body will respond to it.  Because I know this, I want it.  I want to return to that known place where I will no longer have reason to panic.



The strange thing about this panic with my breathing and gasping and moaning for air is that if I relax, breath normally, continue to run, I find that I actually don't die.  WOW!  I thought I was going to die if I didn't stop and it was really just a mental game in my head.  That can't be true.  There must be an article I can find in google about how this will cause me to die a young death if I don't stop.  That its bad for my health to press through.  But I have found if I relax and simply continue to breath that I can continue to run.  Now certainly others can run faster than me and there is a limit with what my physiology can support with pace and effort.  But most of my panic was something that was just in my head.

My point is the anxiety of running out of air with its gasping and moaning has more to do with the unfamiliarity of running than with the actual running out of air.  As I press through the anxiety and into the unknown, I find I actually don't run out of air, I just feel different when I run than when I walk.

I find the same thing is true with Grace.  I can believe that Jesus is crazy about me and loves everything about me and that his love has nothing to do with my actions and everything to do with his actions and love.  I hear that and get it and attempt to believe it.  I venture off into life with this new information and new feelings and new relationship with God and it feels good.  But then the inevitable  happens.  I fail.  Something happens, I feel anxiety and my sin becomes what walking is to me when I am gasping for air.  I lash out with anger, I justify myself, I .........  Then in this new place of anxiety, I want something more than Grace, something that I know.  Grace was supposed to work, but here I am again.  I guess I need some law too, an accountability partner, a few rules that I will put up on my mirror to remind me what I should do.  I want what I know and I know the law.

But what if Grace is the answer?  What if all I need to do is relax, and keep going.  I messed up.  So what?  I thought this grace thing was based on God and not me.  So I get back up, and keep going.  That's what Grace does for us, it keeps us going.  But we run the risk of running away from Grace when it doesn't feel right.  What if it doesn't feel right, because we have never felt it before?  What if we find we won't die if we keep going?

I hope I keep going and I hope you do to.