Sign of Running

Praise be to God who has seen fit to make my experiences themselves a sign to those who will see them. It honestly took me a few days and a conversation with a friend to recognize this sign for what it is, but in the end it is glaringly obvious.

I have been fasting for nearly 40 days now, doing the "master cleanse" rather than no sustenance at all, and with three cheat days interspersed, for I have found I have not the fortitude to hold a candle to Jesus' walk but that I wanted to walk with him as best I could with what strength I do have. Soon after starting this fast I felt a surge to exercise some and specifically to walk and run. I began walking around the lake each day after work, probably a mile all told (the lake loop itself is .8 miles according to Google). Soon after starting this walk I felt a press to do something similar to what was done at Jericho, picturing the walls falling for all that is wrong with this world, and opening the path to all that is meant to be perfect here instead. I decided to walk in silence for 7 days, and on the 8th day walk the lake 8 times. This was very difficult for me in the shape I was in, but I made it.

Soon after ending this cycle I decided to run the lake each day. I went in the opposite direction around the lake, and did a similar cycle, but this time ran the lake for 5 days, and ran around it 6 times on the 6th. This could probably be called more of a jog than a run, but I did it and to my surprise I was not sore afterward, though I was exhausted that day, and quite hungry afterward.

A couple of days later I began the last cycle that I had in mind. In this one I ran the lake once and walked the lake once on each day (each lap at given pace in the opposite direction of how I had traversed them in the cycles before). I did this for 6 days, and on the 7th day I did this pair of laps 7 times. When I had finished I shouted, and then walked home. While still quite tired on that day, to my surprise the next day I was not sore at all. I assumed that there was going to be a delay in becoming sore, but since then I have not been sore in the slightest. 

The reason I call this a sign is because I traveled ~11 miles that day, which is fairly close to a half marathon. The entirety of my recent walking and running has all been done during fasting conditions, where I have consumed no protein (except what might occur in maple syrup, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper) and very few calories each day. This means that the only protein I could have used to build my legs (outside of those cheat days which were spread about 10 days apart) was from stored fat. While one might still be able to find a narrow path by which this could be explicable naturally, it would certainly take some contortionist level belief shaping to do so, in terms of nutrition. While one might say it was through sheer determination I finished that race, even though people often train for a lot longer and with much more access to nutrition for such distances, and likely do not start as nearly as out of shape as I did, it would again require a leap of faith to say that such a feat of mind over matter is possible. While these things might be explained as extreme outlying examples of natural biology, what is entirely inexplicable to me is that I would not be sore after the journey, not even a little bit. I even felt close to pulling my left hamstring toward the end of the cycle that day, I had to walk with a limp on the way home. While that tightness has persisted slightly, it never got worse and it/I never got sore. 

For me this is a surefire sign that God is with me in these efforts to seek God out and resolve this timeline that feels as though it is inching ever closer to a cliff. I just have a little bit of regret that it took me several days to recognize how absurd this experience was by any conventional logic, and to then write it out in order to give credit where credit is due.

***

Along this run I also saw a pigeon. I did not realize at first it was dying, but on the next pass it seemed clear. I found an abandoned cardboard food holder, dumped the food by a tree, picked the pigeon up from the path and set it by the tree and the food, hoping that the food might shake it from its haze. It remained there through my run, but I hope at least the shade and soft grass made the bird more comfortable in those hours.

***

Another astounding thing about this run is that the day before my ankle hurt as if it were broken. This is my "Achilles' Heel" which has been broken on more than one occasion and does not seem to have fully healed, so from time to time stress on the ankle tends to cause a pain that suggests a stress fracture or some other minor injury that typically lasts several days if not a week or two. I prayed that this pain would disappear in time for the run, resolved to do the run regardless, limping the whole way if necessary and accepting the resulting consequences; I finally felt this welling of faith that it would be resolved in time. On the morning of the run I can't recall if it still hurt at all but, by the time the run was beginning, I felt no pain in the ankle. Not only that, but the ankle did not hurt afterward either, it had been healed. I am only recalling this now, nearly a week later, because I woke up with that familiar pain in my ankle, and it reminded me of the time when I truly needed it to be okay, and it was. So I write of the experience fresh in mind once more, and I limp gladly today, in remembrance of the blessing and healing I received on that day.