The opening scenes of two of my favourite TV shows feature someone running for dear life: One of them is running through snow-covered woods in the middle of the night, while the other is scaling treacherous mountainous terrain on an uncharted island on an overcast day. Both of them are running because their lives depend on it.
As the snow turns her bare feet into ice and the woods loom over her like the bringer of doom it always appears to be in the dark, Max is running away from captivity, experimentation, torture and militant brainwashing. Oliver’s tortured body barely even registers the pain inflicted by the sharp and jagged edges of the mountains he’s grown so accustomed to during the last five years, but now at least he is running towards something: his home, his family and his destiny.
The above situations aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. In its most basic form it stands to reason that when you are running away from something it also means that you are running towards something else. More than once in my life I’ve run. I’m still running.
Let me ask you this:
Do you ever feel like you are standing outside of your life? Even with everyone and everything around you, do you feel isolated, maybe even hunted? It might even seem that you are parallel to this world you exist in, but you are not in it? Almost like two train tracks that run alongside each other but they never intersect.
You’ve considered running, physically running away and starting a life somewhere different; somewhere that allows you to start with a clean slate, a new vision, a different mind-set. But where do you run? What would you have to do to run away completely, disappear completely? Or do you just distance yourself emotionally and mentally from everyone and everything around you? How would that affect the people in your life that care about you? What do you tell them when you stand at the door with a bag in your hand and no real plans for the immediate future?
In all honesty, I’ve had this feeling many times before. I’ve dreamed of packing a bag with the bare necessities, skipping town (skipping my life) and making my way somewhere so different it would force me to be completely different. I even had a mental checklist: Close bank accounts, delete email accounts, Facebook accounts, all social media traces.
I’ve found myself longing for the open road, a new beginning and an opportunity at anonymity in a strange and new land, but I didn’t know why I had this turmoil inside of me, why my heart ached for such freedom and my soul longed for a new identity. Sometimes you experience urgency inside your spirit that pushes you so hard that you feel you need to take drastic steps to distance yourself from whatever is holding you back. Maybe your gift, your passion, your calling, your destiny is setting you apart. Maybe that is the thing that is hiking up your heart rate, causing the shallow breathing; almost like you are being chased.
Does running help? Maybe. If not running, what then? Could running be channelled into something else? Possibly. Every single one of us is unique. So my urgency to run will definitely be different from yours. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong; it doesn’t mean it’s right. All it means is that we need to figure out why we feel compelled to run and where we are being pushed towards.
So figure out your why and where. The best way to do this? I would suggest that it’s about having an open and honest heart to heart with God. After all, He’s the one that created you for exactly this time and place.
So turn to Him. You might end up running into the outstretched arms of your destiny…
