Running to win!

Although I have never seen the whole movie, there is a scene in Chariots of Fire where there is a race. The character falls down at the beginning and instead of giving up, he gets up and busts his butt running as fast as he can and ends up winning the race. It is crazy because it seems like he was down way to long to be able to make up the difference, but he ran with such determination that it didn't matter. That is what I feel like now.

The past month feels like I have been flat on my face breathing in dust from ground in Mexico. Then tonight after 3 hours of discouragement and me feeling that I was totally wrong in going to homegroup an amazing God-lover found that I had not left and came to chat with me.

Over the course of the next hour she talked me through what I was experiencing and finally said that I need to press in and run hard even though it hurts. That clicked for me. I am used to saying, "only one more mile" or "just one more set" but for whatever reason I had lost sight of that in this season in which God's presence has been lifted from me.

Then I remembered a dream I had back in December about running a marathon. While resting halfway through the race a friend told me that I was on pace to break the world record. My thought was to then run the second half of the race faster than the first half. So when this awesome reminded me that I was doing great and just to keep pressing in, I lit up and said, "yeah, I'm gonna run even harder than before!"

Coincidentally, Pastor Bill told us in the past week that although it isn't really halfway, he considers post-mission week to be the second half of the school year. So I am getting up off the ground and my eyes have the look of a lion about to devour its prey.

Thank you God for sending someone to pick me up and to remind me that this is an answer to my own prayers of, "God take me deeper no matter what it looks like." Thank you Katie for sharing with me your experiences and for reminding me why I'm here.