Take Off

So I have has this recurring experience lately. I keep getting this weird feeling in my chest when I stop and think about life. Not just my life… but life in general. It feels like someone is reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart and my lungs so tight that I am not sure whether they are going to get squashed into a little red cube of oozy ex-organs or just burst out of my chest. It makes me want to go out on a 10 mile run but, yet, I also feel crushed.

Its not often you see a crushed man running down the sidewalk.

And, yet, that’s exactly what I feel compelled to do. As I get home from work at 11pm and I am walking up the stairs to my apartment, I want to turn the other way and run for a couple hours. As I sit here and write this post, I want to lace on my running shoes and go run to Kroger and back. As I live my life, I want to just take off somewhere.

It is not about the leaving. It is not about the destination. It is that I want to use my whole self. I want to push myself physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

That is the bursting part.

But at the same time, I want to lie down. I want to curl up in the fetal position and cry. I want to not get out of bed one day. Or two. I want to be somewhere else. Or be someone else. I want to run away.

But in the middle of all of this weird upside-down and inside-out-ness that I have been feeling recently, I was asked a most unexpected question. I shared with a friend how desperately low, hopeless and helpless I had been feel lately and I admit I was hoping for some bit of advice that I would cling to as I endured this season of my life. But in the midst of my despair and depression, I realized that my biggest issue isn’t emotional uncertainly when my friend asked me, “What do you believe to be true about God these days?”

The question is still haunting me. My brain is coming up with answers, but my heart is struggling.

I was asked what do I believe to be true… not what do I think to be true. My issue isn’t emotional uncertainly… It is spiritual uncertainty.

And here is the real kicker. I don’t think my heart is uncertain about God… I think my heart is asking questions about me.

I think that is why I want to run. I want to know that if God calls me to something, I will go at the drop of a hat. Like Peter dropping his nets, burning his boats and going with Jesus, I want to know that I will do that.

I don’t want to be devoted to church. I don’t want to be dedicated to love. I don’t want to be a disciple without Christ. Those are things that I would call myself to. I want Christ Himself.

“Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ. It is only the call which creates the situation.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer

And where He is, there I shall be also.