It's Where I Found Jesus...

It’s hard to capture in words what it is like to run an ultra but today I picked up a book that I have been reading every day over the last month, Love Beyond Reason by John Ortberg. On Saturday, February 3, I ran the Rocky Raccoon 50 Miler in Huntsville State Park in Huntsville, TX. The 50 miler was actually the fun run since the main event was the 100. Oddly enough, this excerpt describes it all.

Some time ago (Saturday, February 3), I had a day of solitude in a forest preserve. I felt the kind of “weariness of the flesh” the writer of Ecclesiastes talked about. And I realized how strongly I had been living for certain achievements, and how I felt the heaviness when they were not realized. I was caught up in my own trivial pursuits.

But I was in the kind of natural setting where it is hard to remain discontent for long. The chestnut trees and oaks and maples and pines and sycamores were asleep for the winter yet warmed by a brilliant sunshine and colored by a deep blue sky. And something happened, I began to get free. I was somehow given the gift of sensing that God loved me. I began to feel again what a gift it was to be alive, on this earth, in this place, during this moment. I was immersed in this sense so strongly; I began to run, just in the strength of that feeling.

Somehow when I was alone with His creation on that day in the forest, God sang a song to me. It didn’t matter who I was or what I’d done at least to God; being alive and loved by God was enough to bring gratitude and contentment – at least for a few moments (11 hours and 37 minutes.)
Yet that wonderful feeling didn’t completely fade away after I had left that forest.

Several days later, I was sitting in a meeting, and suddenly I was aware that I didn’t have to say anything. This time, sitting there in the meeting, I carried that time alone in the forest preserve with me. God loved me.

This awareness that God gave me is hard to describe: there was a kind of lightness of being in my soul in that moment. I could talk - if I had something worth saying. But I didn’t need to.

I tasted, at least I think a little bit, what the psalmist meant “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” I had been led beside still waters and green pastures.

I just sat there part of me listening to conversation, part of me saying, “Sing it again, Daddy. Tell me you love me, God.”

People ask why – why do you put your body and mind through such torture; why do you do it? Most runners at these events will not be able to say why. It is different for everyone but I suspect that there is one common theme. It gives us insight into life and helps us understand the person inside, the Raggedy Doll (the good, bad, beautiful and ugly) in all of us. During the run, I couldn’t help but to have a portion of the Brooks and Dunn song, Red Dirt Road, repeat in my head every so often, “It’s where I found Jesus.”

“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” Mark 1:35.

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” Luke 5:16.

“One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. Luke 6:12.

This appears to be what Ultrarunning facilitates; getting to a solitary place, a lonely place, the mountainside where you can spend the day and night, pray and be with Jesus.

Rocky Raccoon was an amazing event. The race director, volunteers and fellow runners were some of the best in all of my running experiences.