I'm a Runner! I Run! With the shoes and the road and everything!

While running through the neighborhood this week, (I know, right? I ran through the neighborhood! Alone! I'm awesome!) I kept huffing something to myself.

Over and over and over again, with the rhythm of my heavy breathing, I huffed:

"Not by might (gasp!) nor by power (gasp!) but by my Spirit, says The LORD." It's from Zechariah 4:6. God is talking to someone named Zerubbabel but I didn't know that when I was running. Okay, let's call it jogging.

I think it pops in there because it was written somewhere on a wall at my Christian school. Maybe in the gym. And because it seems appropriate, especially when I'm running. Jogging.

Speaking of jogging and my Christian school, I remember having to run the mile in 8th grade PE. I was an athlete, albeit not a fast one. But I was still pretty confident in my abilities. The Varsity basketball coach was an 8th grade teacher and I guess we saw him right after PE. Assumedly scouting out his upcoming talent, he asked us our times. When I reported mine he said, "Are you sure?" I answered affirmatively, only to receive the dejecting comeback, "I could walk it that fast."

I knew I was slow. I knew I had come in last, or maybe next-to-last. But obviously those words hurt, because I remember them twenty years later. And I never became a runner. I've run a bit here and there, and since then I've been able to build up some endurance and bang out a few miles at a time on the treadmill, but I have never been comfortable running with people, or alone in public for that matter.

So as I braved the busy road to begin my "training" for whatever goal I'm going to choose, I had instant remorse. I pictured my 8th grade teacher walking beside me, his words taunting me, as I labored to put one leaden foot in front of the other on pavement instead of conveyor belt. I suddenly felt all alone, as if the rest of my class was so far ahead that they'd already made the turn at the end of the road, and I really, really wanted to turn back. Admit that I'd made a mistake and overestimated myself. Come home and pop in an exercise DVD.

But I didn't. Not by might, nor by power, but by God's Spirit I finished my run - about 1.75 miles - without stopping to walk or die along the way somewhere.

The subconscious recall of that verse was a really good reminder for me that no matter what challenge I undertake, like my friend Zerubbabel learned, it will not be accomplished by my own might or power, but by allowing God's spirit to take over and do it His way. One leaden foot at a time.