Anna and I were cracking jokes the other day about how The World Race isn’t all “rainbows and butterflies”, despite popular belief. I said, “Yeah, it’s more like rainbows, butterflies, and blisters!”
It’s true.
Upon signing up, even leaving, and into the first couple months it’s all a glorious honeymoon. We all know the phase. I heard the warnings. The warnings that the apparent glamour of it all would fade. I was doubtful for a while. But like I mentioned at the beginning of this month, it all hit me at once.
I feel bad for not having blogged as much this month or keeping everyone as up to date with ministry and WR life as I’d like too. But to be honest, this month has just been so difficult for me. It’s been one with many, many blisters. Blisters formed, rubbed, popped, and formed again underneath an open wound (I mean this quite literally and figuratively as well).
Keep with me in the following analogy-
Rainbows and butterflies are beautiful for a time. You’re so focused on them when they’re right in front of you that you don’t even notice what’s going on around you. You’re in heaven. Everything is great, fun, beautiful, and you don’t have a care in the world. Everything is so new and exciting! As you’re running the race you’re frolicking at every new sight, taste, and experience. You feel like you could just run this way forever. People admire your discipline and courage. Oh, and they also think you’re a little crazy. But they support you in your goal and help you in the training process. Life is grand. Nothing could be better.
After you’ve been running for a while though, running the same way, with the same load (No, let’s be honest. The load has gotten heavier.), speeding up pace then slowing down, all the while the distance getting longer and longer, you start to get blisters. The way you’ve been running, though good form, starts wearing you down. Little, tiny things that have been rubbing you sore over and over for a while that you didn’t realize was even a problem, now is.
You’ve got a problem: blisters. They’re painful, slow you down, and now it’s all you can think about during the race! Even though beauty is all around, the butterflies and rainbows still in sight, not even they can cheer you up at this point. All you can focus on is the pain and suffering the race has caused you after running so long.
The blister must pop and we all know it. It can be nasty. But it finally breaks (you break [down]). Ouch, yeah that hurt. But you needed to do it in order to heal properly. Taking a break, evaluating the race, and slowing down enough to set your pride aside and tend to the wound is essential if you want to continue on properly.
Sometimes, though, a blister will pop and you’ll just put a quick band aid on it thinking you’re good to go again and take off, only soon to find yourself in an even worse situation, with a bigger wound, perhaps another blister under the one you had before, and now you’re in a lot more pain because you didn’t deal with the first one properly.
You take more time to rest. You bandage yourself up. If you’re lucky enough, you even have close friends to help you do it. You evaluate the situation and identify the source for what’s causing the blister.
Bingo.
You’re shoes are too tight, you’re wearing the wrong socks, incorrect shoes, you went too hard for too long the wrong way.
Identify the source. Patch up the wound. Tend to it daily and faithfully until healing comes. It will come. With proper TLC, healing will always come.
The race is not yet over. You have a bit further to go. It may be the uphill, but you have a strategy. You now know your weakness, what rubs you the wrong way, but you have Help. Strength. A Guide. Your number one Fan is out there fighting hard for you yelling “Keep going!” knowing that you will make it in spite of your setbacks and trials. You’re doing this for that one Person.
You’ve finished the race. You did it! And your blistered areas now have a callus. It may not be pretty, but you’ll always look at them as a reminder of the pain you endured for a time, the fight you put up to keep going, the healing you received in the midst, and now you have a story to tell.
A story that is testimony of the butterflies, rainbows, and blisters of the race.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Hebrews 12:1
