“ Is it too much to consider that He uses our bodies to reach us , telling us when to pause , to slow , or to sleep ?”
“ Suffering is not the opposite of blessing .” — Edmund Clowney , The Message of 1 Peter
Every one of us has a fence line . A “ nope , you can ’ t cross this line ” set of circumstances in our lives . Some of us get especially adept at climbing , hurdling , and drilling holes in what won ’ t budge to see if we can ’ t break free . Like our puppy who scratched and chewed our brand-new carpet to escape the room where she was confined , most of us ( passively , subtly ) see our fence lines as captivity . last mile , when I began losing my mind . I learned later that it ’ s common among those who suffer heatstrokes : they ignore the signs their body is giving them to stop . When the stroke occurs , the body has already offered up many signals , many cries for help , to pause , to slow , to drink water . Finally , when provided no relief , the body shuts down .
We are embodied . Limited . Full of dreams and passions for abundance , and yet requiring seven to eight hours of sleep and sixty-four ounces of water daily to function well .
Fence lines appear shifty , sometimes moving in different seasons , but always present . I was fenced out by my infertility and , a mere decade later , fenced in by too many needs in my home .
But this sharp contrast showed me that I needn ’ t always relate to my limits in the same way .
Fourteen years ago , I suffered heatstroke in sight of the finish line of a community race I ’ d been training to win .
It was eighty degrees with high humidity , and I ’ d trained for months on seventy-degree mornings — unusually cool for summer . I had written on my hand my time goals for each mile — my splits , as they ’ re called in the running world . My brain locked on to those times , and I achieved most of them until the
We have eternity in our hearts , and yet we can fracture an ankle , suffer a headache for days , scrape the skin right off a shin in one fall .
“ Is it too much to consider that He uses our bodies to reach us , telling us when to pause , to slow , or to sleep ?”
This story returned to me as I faced a year that held significant surprises and significant hurts . For a while , as I fielded those , I kept the pace . Daily dinner for nine , groceries delivered on time , texts replied to on the same day , others ’ expectations met . I was fixed on my splits , though unknowingly .
And then my body said uncle .
So I stopped watching my splits and gave in
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