The Places I Run

when I'm fleeing for my life

There are places in this world I run as though I’m fleeing for my life.

I have thrown down my bags and heaved myself into a kitchen chair at a friend’s house, my insides panting and gasping for breath like someone chased by hungry wolves. She poured me a cup of tea, and I dove into it like someone rescued from drowning.

I am surrounded by deep, dark forests with eyes that flash in the night. The shadows cut in close around me, razor sharp. Just under the surface of my beautiful life, I find myself scraping against the jagged edges of this brokenness that beats the heart of the world.

I long for a place where people don’t suffer. Where there is no death. Where evil does not lurk in the shadows, preying upon the innocent. My insides sometimes beat against the bars of my body and I shake in fear. This world is a bad place. And I am not okay with that.

And so I run for my life. Into the quiet room with a door that locks, into a blank piece of paper.

Quiet, when I need it, can come and wrap itself around my shoulders like a tender embrace. Words, when I wait for them, can say, in a million different ways, it is going to be okay.

I run hard and fast into beauty. I run for my life into the arms of husband, into the eyes of my children, into the blue daylight of a new morning, into the song of the early wren. I run into singing fields of bright music, into rainbow-colored landscapes drawn by the hands of children.

I run into the love of God that has lighted a path for as far back as I can see through this dark world. I run into the memory of my life where I found his promises always true. His provision, always on time. I run into the grace that has been there every step. And I look ahead and see it stretching out before me as the answer to every question that haunts me.

Christ is redeeming this broken world, picking up the jagged pieces in his own nail-scarred hands. Here is hope. Here is life. Here is beauty. Here is the mercy of God. This is where I run.