4
I am an odd one of sorts. I am the most fearful, most surprised by life, most innocent person I know. Let me correct myself. I don’t live in fear, yet it can consume me. I know of a lot of life’s circumstances, yet it’s in their reality that I am shocked. I am no innocent by any means, but my heart hurts for anything broken. I guess, you could say, I am a child in many ways. If I get hurt, I cry instantly, like a little one that falls. The tears immediately fill my eyes, and I can’t help it. If I find myself in a compromising situation, my immediate reaction is not to give in, or run away, it’s to freeze up and wait for the moment to pass me by, or a rescuer to save me out of this mess I have myself in.
I am also a theology student, getting my masters in the study of the Bible and I know that with that territory comes a stigma of wisdom, maturity, discernment, and others. It’s not that I’m not those things, I can be, it’s just that my heart is that of child’s, and no matter how old I grow, no matter how many times I have been shocked by life, and no matter how many things I’ve said, seen, or done that would normally ruin innocence, it’s still there, alive and well. What I learn cognitively day to day is not written in the same language of the thread that stitches my heart together.
I see this in my reaction to my own pain, but I see it deeply in the reaction I have to pain in others. I almost can not stand when I see friends deeply hurt. I literally suck at offering affirmation and I have one or two reactions: crying, staring in disbeileif that people besides me can be hurt on this level, or throwing something resembling a temper tantrum because I dont know how else to deal with it. When those that I love are hurt, a piece of me shatters, and I can not figure out how to put it back together. Whereas, if I get hurt, I can usually get up, shake it off, and keep going.
But now, as I “get older” my heart seems to be getting younger and as my friends get hurt, I feel it all the more. I am a runner by nature, and I can’t help that God made me fast. And this, is my therapy of choice. I can’t mend anyone’s broken heart, I can’t right the wrongs that have been done to them, I can’t reverse the past, and I can’t comfort on the level that they need. The only thing I can do is run my hardest and my fastest, trying to outrun the pain of the person of the moment, and exhaust myself beyond belief. I think of all the times I have been hurt and allow myself to re-live that pain, in hopse that maybe, in some sort of realm that I don’t understand, my comrade will feel my empathy. I will pound my feet hard on the pavement, and I will think of them and all the wrongs that have been done, and I will wish them upon me, and shake my fist in a misunderstanding of whys and begin to run faster than I have before.
My heart will literally feel like it might burst by the end of this 5 mile sprint, but I know that it will be worth it. Somehow, all the sweat, the tears, the side aches, the soreness, and the gasping for air means something, it must, because it’s the only way I know how to cope, and without it, I would begin to fall apart. And then, when I am all showered and cleaned up, the heart of mine that belongs to Bonnie at age 4 will come back to life, and she will begin to cry. Cry for the fact that the running didn’t help, and that there is nothing that she can do. She will surrender her efforts in prayer, because for pains like this, there must be someone who can heal. Unlike any hug or playground frenzy from a 4 year old.
