Bridezilla Bakes

Yesterday I had another total running meltdown. The weather was gorgeous — close to 80 degrees — and the city had a post-rainstorm freshness that just begged me to come outside and play. I wanted to. I wanted to be outside, to enjoy the rarity of great weather in Chicago. But when I got halfway down my block, I just couldn’t keep going. Everyone was running. And I couldn’t run… my knee just won’t let me.  So I turned around, went home, threw myself on our bed, and cried like a baby.

In my previous post on image, I talked about how running, and my sick pride regarding running, had woven their way into the core of my identity.  And it’s true — there is something about the way I relate to my running, about the way I experience it and translate it back into what I think about myself, that’s just wrong. It takes the place of God as a thing I worship, build my identity around, and set my hopes on. There have been other things in my life that I do this with — relationships, achievement, image in general. Each has, at different times in my life, come crashing down around me as a series of brutal reminders that none of them is sufficient to sustain my worth. None can take the place of Christ. No one but Him sees me for who I am and affirms me anyway.

In many of those other circumstances (and there have been many), I’ve found myself resentful towards God, or hiding from him, or both. Unhealthy relationships, for example, would send me running from the Lord as I tried to hide the fact that I was totally consciously living outside of his will. Failures of achievement tend to make me just resentful of God — why isn’t he making my life as perfect as I want (or need) it to appear?

One thing that’s been encouraging in this whole “Oh crap my whole identity is wrapped up in running and I can’t run anymore” fiasco is that I just won’t let myself run from God or blame Him for this mess I’ve created. I feel close to God. I want to hang out with him. If anyone can get me through this, He can. He might have to break down my vision of myself and rebuild it from scratch, but I would rather go through that than to feel the estrangement that comes from not confronting deep-rooted sin or blaming Him for the results of my own brokenness.

So, slowly, I am coming to terms with the idea that God is still in control. That he can allow bad things to happen to us, and still love us. That even if I can’t run (I know it’s not that big of a deal, but this is where I’m at, and it hurts), God is still God. And I’d still rather be in relationship with him, because hiding from him and resenting him is just SO much worse.

This is turning into a huge lesson for me — a lesson about image, but also about who God is. Is God a trustworthy God because he gives good gifts, or is he a trustworthy God because… he just is? He just is. He would be if I couldn’t run. He would be if I couldn’t move at all. Does that sound pat, trite, too easy to you? I admit that my miniscule amount of suffering doesn’t make me an expert on this topic.

So let’s end by turning to an expert: Job. Job who was “upright and blameless,” a rich man with a huge family and a lot of property, who lost it all. Here’s what happens when he hears the news:

²⁰ At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship ²¹ and said:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away;
may the name of the LORD be praised.”

²² In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.”

May the name of the Lord be praised.