Erik and I are running this 100 miles with a team. A team of people who have held us accountable, who have similar goals in mind, who challenge us, and who encourage us.
Honestly I had never set out to run anything long distance. Before this, the very longest I had ever run was 10 miles and that was only one, single, time. I like running but make no mistake, I don't LOVE running. In fact I have never gone on a run and it not hurt a little. I almost always at least for the first two miles, want to turn back and set my little bum back in my comfy chair and switch on the remote.
Each and EVERY time I mentally go there.
Needless to say it is a very good thing I have a small community to pull and push me a little. When I am out on a long run, it's just me and the pavement stretched out on the long road before me. I feel very alone in that moment and this is the group that so far has held me accountable to finish the course that has been set out before me.
Solidarity at times has been my sanity. There are many training days when I'm at about 8 miles in, and I realize I'm just over 1/2 way to the end and I have nothing left, I am totally spent. My left hip hurts, my stomach is cramping up on me, I'm hot, I'm thirsty, I've dodged the 3rd car that "didn't see me", and there is a line of sweat that continues to trickle into my burning eye and I want to quit. Total "baby-girl" fit, huh?
That is the moment that I see this person in my mind.
. At almost every training run I go on, I picture this man and the struggle with in the miles he has trudged, (with out proper shoes), to simply get the food to his camp- to HIS family. Those boxes from Feed My Starving Children weigh 50 pounds each, and he carries 5 of them, through unpaved roads, and through a swamp. Somehow that puts my temporary pain and discomfort into perspective.
I have also realized that the solidarity factor in this run reaches far beyond our running group. I am running a relay of sorts, each of us doing a small part of a very big picture. Some start the race by giving financially, there are others who give up a meal and raise money in very practical ways through Hope for Dinner, then the pass off happens again when another person gives of their time to pack the food at Feed My Starving Children. There are a few who raise money/awareness for Run for the Border by biking or running hundreds of miles through out their training and the final run. Then of course there are countless others who are praying for these precious people along the way, and finally we run along side these missionaries and villagers who finish out this race by trudging these boxes of meals into the villages where hungry mouths are fed.
Solidarity has played a very huge part in this race for me personally. Realizing that we are all working together for a common goal, and relating to one another with in that. I know that God has made our human hearts for relationship not only with Him, but with each other. If relating closer than I have before with someone else's struggle/pain is a goal God had intended for me, then that mission is being accomplished.
This verse I learned years ago in VBS has taken on new meaning these past few months in Galatians 6:2 it says, "Carry each others burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ." I have heard God whisper, "there is caring in the carry Diane." Sometimes I have to push the pictures of this man and others I have seen away in my mind. Sobbing and running make for a really messy work out. (I've tried it, super awkward.) I remember the week Paul Hurckman from Venture spoke during a Sunday morning at our church and tears had started to roll down my cheeks, a lump started to fill my throat, my heart decided it was a good time to start racing, and I thought, "Stop talking, you are wrecking me here." I looked around quickly and hoped this was normal, but no one else looked on the verge of running out of the room. So I sat there and let God chip away at the parts of me that needed a little more "Diane" removed, and allowed myself to feel part of God's heart for these people 1/2 way across the globe.
Solidarity summarized in short says, "I'm in this with you."
It says, "I obviously don't live where you live and I don't pretend to really fully grasp all that you deal with, but I want to know more, I want to help where I can, you are not alone."
Not all of us will obviously help with this specific endeavor, but there is a place for each of us to fill in the worlds we live in. I think too often we can live fragmented unto ourselves, when God really wants us to come together and get behind one another whether that is in your neighborhood or across the world.
I was visiting the MLK memorial last summer in Washington DC and this quote struck me again in a new way, perhaps awakening and preparing me for this short season I am now in. Martin Luther King's quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." I have been thinking that through for months and am seeing that quote take root in my life. Just about the time when I am putting dinner on my table for my family of five, I think about this woman serving dinner to her family and I am reminded that her lack must affect my abundance. It is, and hopefully we will never be quite the same.
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