No More Running

I have always found sports of all types extraordinarily challenging. Whether it was dribbling or throwing a ball, swinging a bat, or attempting to do a somersault, I had almost always ended up being the least athletic person in the room. As you can probably imagine, this made PE class very humiliating.

I struggled to learn to read, spell, and do basic math as a child which led to me developing a very low self-esteem. If you were to travel back in time and ask eight-year-old Natalie what she was good at, she would say, “Nothing.” I gave up on myself in school and basically every other area of my life that involved any degree of talent or brains at seven years old. Every time I would try to do something new that I had never done before, I would tell myself that I would never be able to do it. God has helped me overcome my learning struggles, I get mostly A’s and a few B’s, and he has shown me that I do have talents, but I still have a lot of insecurities. One place where these insecurities come out most is when I am forced to play sports with other people.

My Freshman year of high school, was probably my worst experience I have had in a PE class in all my years of athletic humiliation. My old school that I had gone to for five years was probably the most unathletic school in all of Oregon. Even though I still stood out in PE like an elephant in a living room, the children were always very kind and gracious about it. Then, half way through my Eighth grade year, I moved to a new town and a new school, that was still not very big, but a lot larger and more athletic than my previous school. The students became very annoyed with my inability to catch, throw, or play any sport successfully and many of them became impatient and would snap at me. This made PE almost unbearable.

My high school is on a trimester system, so one credit is equal to two trimesters. Because of some other conflicting classes I was required to take as a Freshmen, I only had one trimester of PE that year and I was required to have two to graduate. I was afraid of going back to PE my Sophomore year because of all that had happened the year before and I considered taking an online PE class instead. However, God called me over the summer to face my fears and go back to PE class at my school. I chose to trust him and do as he told me. The other students often were mean to me, but God used it to teach me how to forgive and get my self-worth from what he thinks of me instead of what other people think.

God calls us to stop running from our past so that he can heal us and teach us how to trust him. A story in the Bible about a woman named Hagar is a great example of this. She was an Egyptian servant to a woman named Sarai living far from her home land. Sarai wasn’t able to have children, so she forced Hagar to sleep with her husband Abram, hoping to bear children through her. Hagar soon became pregnant and treated Sarai with contempt, so Sarai became angry and was very cruel to her. Hagar finally ran away from Sarai and her husband (Genesis 16: 1-6). In the book of Genesis it says, “The angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a spring of water in the wilderness, along the road to Shur. The angel said to her, ‘Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where have you come from, and where are you going?’

“‘I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai,’ she replied.

“The angel of the Lord said to her, ‘Return to your mistress, and submit to her authority.’ Then he added, ‘I will give you more descendants than you can count.’

“And the angel also said, ‘You are now pregnant and will give birth to a son. You are to name him Ishmael (which means ‘God hears’), for the Lord has heard your cry of distress. This son of yours will be a wild man, as untamed as a wild donkey! He will raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives.’

“Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, ‘You are the God who sees me.’ She also said, ‘Have I truly seen the One who sees me?’ So that well was named Beer-lahai-roi (which means ‘well of the Living One who sees me’). It can still be found between Kadesh and Bered.

“So Hagar gave Abram a son, and Abram named him Ishmael,” (Genesis 16: 7-15).

Just like God saw Hagar’s suffering, he sees everything that we are going through and he cares. He cares so much that he died for us so that we don’t have to walk through it alone. He often asks us to face the things we have been running from so he can heal the emotional pain of our past. Like a counselor, he will help us walk through each broken place in our lives and mend it back together. Psalm 147: 3 says, “He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds,” but we have to trust him and stop running.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about The C.A.N Sisters’ Ministry, leave a comment below, check out our website, or email us at cansistersministry@gmail.com.