I like going to the park. The sunlight there filters through giant aged trees, and the grass grows and gives a nostalgic smell after it’s been cut, and there’s room to move and swing your arms and breathe in, and in, and further in the scent of nature. I like going on Sunday nights so I can talk with the old missionary who comes every Sunday night to pass out tracts and talk to the people walking in the park.

But most of all, when I go, I like watching people run and walk. Some people walk slowly, swinging their arms while relaxing. Others walk with purpose and a marching stride. Others run. One man raises his fists above his head as he jogs, punching the air as if he were fighting off imaginary barriers. One woman runs lifting her feet high off the ground and her knees jabbing the air, like a Dutch Harness horse cut loose from the shafts. One large man lumbers along like a bulldozer, each step forward a slight victory, while others seem to float along. My favorite person to watch is a slightly built man who looks like he could be an immigrant from neighboring Myanmar. He does not run; he skims above the sidewalk, with his feet merely tapping the earth in a rhythmic tattoo, circling the park uncountable times.

But the man I admire the most is not one who runs effortlessly. This man is tall, rather heavily built, and only walks. His walk is the strangest gait I have ever seen, with his knees twisting back and forth as he goes, almost grotesquely. Each step is almost painful, an effort of concentration. He does not look around to catch the stares of the onlookers, but he looks ahead and focuses on the path before him. I watched him as I walked, and I wondered.

I wondered what his motivation was to walk those laps around the park, when he could have more excuses than anyone else not to walk. I wondered if he ever thought that since he couldn’t run, he shouldn’t even try to walk. I wondered if the stares of the people ever bothered him, or if he ever thought bitterly to himself that no one understood what his life was like. But most of all, I wondered if I could walk like him.

Because I feel like him. My walk, my spiritual life, is not a smooth effortless skimming along, powerful in faith, a woman of prayer and wisdom. My walk is not even a steady moving along, strong and slow, like a bulldozer, or one of courage while fighting the unseen elements. My walk is a slow, crippled one, riddled with doubts and questions, tossed back and forth by waves of a hundred voices shouting in the world and the underlying question: is God’s love really big enough to encompass the whole world?

My walk is not one of resounding victory and hallelujahs. The easy trite answer spurs me to cynicism, and the smallest word can send a knife of doubt through my heart. The questions that come at me I don’t know how to answer, especially those of friends who are hurting or angry.

What if I could walk the way the man does in the park, no matter what happens and no matter what others say and no matter how crippled I am? What if a walk like that could be a testimony of God’s grace? What if there really is beauty in the struggle, even if I am not seeing it right now? What if in the brokenness, in our inability to walk gracefully, God hears a hallelujah even when our mouths cannot utter it?

The lyrics from this song written by Twila Paris keep on coming to me again and again.

“Lately I’ve been winning
Battles left and right
But even winners can get
Wounded in the fight
People say that I’m amazing
Strong beyond my years
But they don’t see inside of me
I’m hiding all the tears

They don’t know that
I go running home when I fall down
They don’t know Who picks me
Up when no one is around
I drop my sword and cry for just a while
‘Cause deep inside this armor
The warrior is a child”
(Paris, 1984)

There really is a Father standing there, reaching out for us when we finally let those tears fall.

Works Cited:

Paris,Twila, “The Warrior is a Child.” 1984. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/twila+paris/the+warrior+is+a+child_20347634.html. Accessed: 5 October 2017