Stressing Sabbath - Devotion for 2/4/09

Stressing Sabbath – Devotion for 2/4/09

Back at the end of this past summer I began to run again. Well, I’m not sure I would exactly call it running, however I would put on a pair of running shoes and move them swiftly (a relative term) as I propelled myself down the road. For me, running became an escape – an escape from basically anything and everything. I would crank up the ipod and I’d be gone – listening to either some rockin’ music or one of my favorite podcasts. For that half-hour to hour I would be in my own world - most of the time I wouldn’t even be aware of the pace I was running at until I got back. Having run a successful half-marathon in November (coming in at 1:59), I began to set my goals on a couple of half-marathons in the early months of 09, with the goal of a marathon in May and November. Pushing my pace faster and faster each day, I became obsessed with the running, and I was driven with each run – even runs that were supposed to be light and easy runs – to run faster than I did the day before. I began noticing a sharp pain in my left shin in late December, but I was determined to run through the pain. It wasn’t until I realized that it was hurting so badly that I needed to take some time off that I began to realize how hard I had been pushing myself. Even after 2 weeks of no running I was still hurting with each step that I walked. So it really shouldn’t have been a surprise last week when I was talking with a member of my congregation that is an orthopedic doctor about my shin pain and what I thought was just shin splints, and when he checked me out he told me that without a bone scan he couldn’t be certain, but he felt pretty confident that I have a stress fracture. So now, to avoid further damage, I am having to take a break from running for several more weeks.

What I overlooked in the midst of everything was my own need for a Sabbath. As much good as my running seemed to me, without some form of rest or recovery, I was doing much more harm than good. We see this kind of thing all the time in our own lives or in the lives of friends: people that can get so involved in various activities (church, clubs, sports, etc.) that they absolutely get run down and burned out. And for some of us to learn, we have to learn the hard way. I believe that there is a reason we are encouraged to take a Sabbath, though that may mean many different things for each of us. But what it means to me is to take some time away from those every day activities where we can step back, just as an artist steps back to look at the canvas to assess what has been done.