Pink Skies and Hushed Tones

**Preface/caveat: if you are a human who thinks I can only write about running or theology, this will reinforce your suspicion. Please bear with me.

The birds are loud outside my window this morning. They know spring is here and warmth is coming. There’s always that moment, right before the turn of something, when it seems so impossible. Will the six-month winter really end in spring? Will the darkest night really end in sunrise? It’s not a faithless moment, but it could be. Without my consistent experience of nature’s cycles, it would be. Because it’s the 6am darkness that’s the most black, the March cold snap that’s the most cold, the last mile of the marathon that’s the longest, and it doesn’t always feel very possible for the end to come.

And then it always does.

I started my last and hardest 7 mile Ragnar loop at 6:00am and I couldn’t see past the two-foot reach of my headlamp. Silence was absolute, the stars were vast, and coldness snuggled up against the edges of my skin. There was only raw earth below my feet, and I could feel the presence of the forest like a classroom of Kindergarteners waiting for me to say something. Silence. I began to move.

I got farther and farther into the woods thinking I better just get comfortable with the blackness. Without sleep the night was long and cold. Just get comfortable. Maybe the miles would never end this time and the darkness would hold fast. Maybe the hour would stretch on like a slow moving dream.  Footfall after footfall after footfall, rhythmically. Was this even the right trail?

And then, slowly, almost without my notice, light began to crawl its way over the edge of the mountain. Gradually I could turn of my lights in places, gradually I could see with my own eyes and the sun rose hot pink over my right shoulder. Without fanfare and without spectacle, daytime had overtaken darkness, and only if you were looking for it would you notice the pink sky behind you.

I’ve never had such a profound experience of relief and peace at the rising of the sun. Probably because I was deliriously tired, but it was beautiful and I felt like I was holding a hidden pearl no one else could touch. I got the sunrise. I got to run through darkness to light. Others ran in night and day, but I got to watch them pierce each other.

Probably running metaphors are used up in this world, burnt out and eye-roll worthy. But when I’m out there moving fast, pushing hard, I’m my most receptive self to hear God’s heart speak. I can soak it in through my pores. There’s no barrier of thought or word. It just becomes me.

Last weekend I got to run from darkness to light, to witness the change. It seemed impossible on mile one, but somewhere along the way light came, and it couldn’t stop overtaking the world. Right now warm weather seems barely possible. But it’s April and the birds believe it, and I know someday I’ll be running the life-race as darkness turns to light and spring tumbles into summer. I know God will make all this darkness bright in the end and his glory will light us all up hot pink. I know it because he promised, but also because I’ve seen it happen in a thousand small ways on the earth. Again and again. Footfall after footfall after footfall, rhythmically.

“For now we see in a glass, darkly, but then we shall see face to face.” -1 Cor 13:12