Downpour

I never thought it would come to this, but I think I’m actually beginning to enjoy exercise. [gasp!] I can’t say that I like running yet, though. I actually hate wheezing and getting tired after a half mile and trying to land my feet as gently on the ground as possible to minimize my thigh-jiggling. It doesn’t really work, sadly. But I do try hard.

And in a moment of delusion, I signed up for a Conditioning/Swimming class for the fall semester. You know, I thought that since it doesn’t cost any extra money, I can force myself to keep fit/learn how to swim the right way as well as boost the GPA a little, yes? Yet in the moment, I think I forgot the slight fact that I have never been able to swim more than 2 laps without stopping. Not even after a week at FCA camp 6 years ago where supposedly “all skill levels are welcome,” and yet I ended up in the lane with the sprained-ankle girl. Sad day. It’s like my lungs just have a little spaz attack whenever I try swimming underwater for more than 10 seconds, and all muscles just give out. I’m convinced that water hates me and just wants to go up my nostrils.

So yes, if anybody would like to teach me how to swim (I’ve already dragged Sandy to the pool with me and don’t think she’ll be wanting to come back again anytime soon), that would be just hunkydory. Or if anyone feels like going to a nice gym for free, I have lots of guest passes that are waiting to be used up!

Anyways. Here we come to the whole point of writing this post.

So today at around 4pm, being healthy exercising girl that I am – I decided to go jogging around my neighborhood, mostly to try out this new little trail Carmen’s told me about. So I’m running, running, (surprisingly it hurts less than usual, have we progress here??) and everything’s awesome and there are honeysuckles on the trail and I resist and just inhale the fragrance as I gogogo. And I get to the end of the trail and see rainclouds as dark as crap (no, they weren’t brown, but that’d be a sight, wouldn’t it?) so I start running back. And I’m jamming to the new Leeland songs that I just got today, finding it interesting that even though the wind is literally pushing me forward and lightning/thunder are crashing everywhere, that there’s no rain.

I’ve never been one to like rain – I always happen to be wearing the wrong shoes, my socks get all wet and smelly, my hair doesn’t air dry well, and I always have this fear that I’m going to be struck by lightning like that old guy in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The only exception was at Camp Heaven last summer when we just got caught in this downpour and there was no use trying to stay dry. And we just stomped in puddles and acted like the children that we are and danced in the rain until Jeff’s lenses popped out of his glasses and we prayed and God found it for us. I haven’t quite had a rain experience like that since then.

But today, I knew that once the first raindrop hit my arm, it was over. I was probably still a mile away from my house, and my iPod could have potentially been ruined but I kept listening anyways because there was something very powerful about the song that was playing and the rain that was starting to shower over me. And I can’t tell you exactly what that feeling was like – to have leaves flying all around me, rain pelting my face, thunder and lightning crashing within 2 seconds of each other, with these words pushing me on.

I was carried to the table
Seated where I don’t belong
Carried to the table
Swept away by His love
And I don’t see my brokenness anymore
When I’m seated at the table of the Lord
I’m carried to the table
The table of the Lord

Fighting thoughts of fear
And wondering why He called my name
Am I good enough to share this cup
This world has left me lame
Even in my weakness
The Savior called my name
In His Holy presence
I’m healed and unashamed

I couldn’t help but run with my arms opened towards the sky receiving the rain, wanting my selfishness, my vanity, my lack of self-control, my hunger for approval, my pride, my lack of trust in God – to be washed away like everything else. Why should anything else matter? Why do I look at the mirror so much that I have to write Bible verses all over it in dry-erase marker to stop myself? Why do I tiptoe around my actions, trying so hard not to make anyone mad at me? Why do I care more about what other people think about me than what the God of the universe thinks about me? Why do I still spend literally hours on Facebook when people are broken all over the world and I don’t know a thing about them or their stories?

I’m tired of this worldly guilt, of always feeling bad about these stupid things that I can’t seem to stop or start doing, and yet showing no external change in my life. Pray that I learn what repentance means and looks like, and embrace a life free from this sin that so easily entangles and can somehow makes me believe that anything could be better than Christ.

The song that was playing as I ran for dear life up the driveway to my house:

Oh praise the One who paid my debt
And raised this life up from the dead