As I Walk

I don’t walk much. Or run. Or crossfit or whatever it is people do. It’s not that I don’t like to move. I just don’t take the time. My lists are too long. My goals are often too lofty, My dreams are too big. My boundaries are not big enough. My capabilities are limited.  My excuses are convincing. And I let everything else get me first.  All this makes for too much doing and not enough being.

But I have this one walk. And it’s this place I go and when I go there it is like I enter into that other realm. It’s that place where what matters really carries weight and what doesn’t seems to float away into thin air. Peace I find there and God speaks to me. I think it’s because those lists can’t be accomplished when I go there. Those dreams become prayers. Those goals are surrendered to the only One who can do the impossible. I walk and I pray and I find beauty. I often feel overwhelmed by nature’s seasons and how they speak to me of mine. I sometimes stop and stare at shadows and light piercing the water just so. I am struck by the long grasses and the way the wind blows them and they dance for me. I watch the fishermen as they clean up after a long day and the lovers as they stroll hand in hand like they have been doing it for decades. I smirk at the wiener dogs and what an odd sense of humor our Creator must have and I wince when I have to walk by pitbulls because I am sure I will lose my apricot doodle to a nasty dog fight in the midst of all this beauty.

As I walk…

I stare at the bright colors of the crab pots. Their colors draw me in and I realize I look like a crazy woman staring into the eye of a stenchy dead creature trap as if there is something more there to be seen.

I watch my son so enthusiastically find the biggest rock he can and throw it in the water in the hopes of making wave upon wave upon wave. And I remember him doing this same thing when he was two. And he’s still doing it. And my gut begs for more moments like these.

I am pulled by my dog on her leash. She is such a pesty bugger and masters me more than I master her. As I walk, I wonder why I bring her and then I let her pull on me teach me something about being mastered.

I watch my daughter scoot and I am moved by love from a place I know I never created. It goes so deep that the well never runs dry. As her hair blows in the wind ahead of me and my dog tries to keep up, I feel grateful, just so very grateful.

As I walk, we stop and stare, we smell, we point and gawk, we take note, we learn, we engage. I find their very being so striking, as if there is no other place I would rather be than right there in that very moment. It strikes me, this love of a parent. Could that same kind of Parent love desire to be no other place than right there with me?

When I press pause, when I stop what I have going, when I take the time to be, it is there that I most feel, I am. It is on this walk that I hear God press in on me and remind me of who He has made me to be. It is there that He fills me with strength where my feeble knees are about to buckle. It is then that I feel love where I have had to bite my lip because of bitterness. It is how I get courage to push onward through all that is hard and hurtful and messy because Jesus calls me forward.

As I walk, I reminded who walks with me. I am also reminded that He runs with me. He chases me. He sleeps with me. He cries with me. He prays with me. He laughs with me. He dreams with me. All He ever seems to want is to be with me. Maybe that’s why He has been called God with us. God with me. God with you.

Go for a walk. Stop. Listen. Be. It will be there that all the noise, all the stress, all the expectations, all the pressure, all the voices, they will be drowned out by He who made her green eyes, He who tells the tides what to do, Him who put the Earth’s motion into place. God has been running with you to keep up and I think…I just have this sense… that He might want to slow down and go for a walk with you.