I hate running with a passion. I love sports, I love sweating, I love competition, but I hate running.

I actually used to hate walking as well, but I’ve matured and now I love walking. My mom tells me that when I was young and we’d go for a family walk, I’d cry all the way. Sometimes I’d even stop to cry, as in I’d just stop walking, sit down on the sidewalk, and cry myself silly. That’s how much I hated walking. But I guess teenagers can be like that. It was a mystery to my parents why I hated walking so much because in general I was a pretty active kid – I was always outside playing with my friends, skipping rope, biking, and building dams with the puddles and sand in the roadway. And in the winter, like a typical northern Ontario kid, I was outside building snow forts, skating on the lake and playing road hockey. I loved being active, but I hated walking.

My parents eventually figured out a solution to the problem of my lazy walking though, smart as they were. 

Distraction! 

They gave me a ball. Yup, that’s all it took. If while I walked I had a ball to bounce, I was completely fine. Happy even. And then I started learning to walk without a ball in my hand, and then eventually I started enjoying walking for the sake of walking. I think I consider that to be the moment I emerged from adolescence into adulthood. That, or when I started liking horseradish sauce.

I started playing basketball when I was 12, and the same thing happened when I was forced to start running as a result of training for this sport. Give me a basketball to bounce, and I didn’t even notice I was running and could play basketball forever. But during long runs or those drills where all you do is run back and forth, back and forth… I was miserable. Despite this, my love for sports grew and, thankfully, most of the time I had a basket ball or a hockey stick in my hand and running was just a necessary evil on the way to sheer and utter athletic joy!

In my late twenties, when there was little-to-no opportunities for me to play sports but because I was still in need of a healthy heart, I decided to start running. Like, only run. Actually, the real reason is that a co-worker roped me into a 10K race and because our whole office was participating, my pride over-ruled my hatred and I agreed to do it. Oh, the misery! Oh, the pain! Oh, the sheer boredom! But I knew the positive effects of exercise and after the race was over I decided to keep running, now and then, on and off, wanting and willing it to become a way of life. But it never happened. I would run consistently for a couple of months and then I would stop for a year. And then I would start again and… the cycle (and battle) continued. Running was 99% grin-and-bear-it and 1% enjoyment. But I kept trying, hoping that running would eventually become like walking – something I hated becoming something I loved.

When I went to India I stopped running altogether. I think I would have started again eventually (well, probably not), but living in a new country with certain gender role and cultural expectations, I was unsure of how and where to begin. I also had so much culture shock and homesickness to deal with that the last thing I wanted to do was something that was so hard. Life was already hard enough. Whatever the case, after six months in India I got so sick that I had to leave and return home. 

I was severely depressed.There are many things people can do to help themselves out of depression and exercise is certainly one of them. The problem was I didn’t have any motivation to exercise. I didn’t have motivation to do much of anything. It’s the nature of depression – the very things you need to do to get better, you have no drive or desire to do. On one level, you can’t. You’re stuck in a hole and you can’t get out, no matter how much you want to. I don’t know about you, but for me it took utter and complete desperation to finally start climbing out.

Over a year into my battle with depression I finally hit rock bottom. I came to a place where my questions and feelings and thoughts went far beyond my experience in India or how I got there in the first place. I began to question God and life. It had been coming for awhile, small hints of my eventual crash showing up here and there, but especially in my mind. I began entertaining thoughts of hopelessness and Godlessness long before I started believing them. The constant pummelling of doubt and fear eventually wore me out. 

Truth was becoming slippery in my hands. I couldn’t hold onto it anymore and then, one day, not only was I not holding onto it, I didn’t even recognize it. It was lost. I was lost.

I remember that day clearly. I had gotten home from church and was tired, again, and so I lay down to sleep but instead my mind began wandering. It wandered through the day, past the present, past India, past the steps that led me there, and all the way back to the beginning. And I fell. It wasn’t gradual or graceful, it was an immediate drop off the cliff I had been standing next to for a long time. Was I pushed? Did I jump? I don’t know. But whatever the case, I was falling into hopelessness. Is God good? Can I trust Him? Is my whole life a sham? Is everything I thought I was and He was just a cruel, deceptive joke? Is God even real? Do I want to keep living? I fell not because I asked these questions; I fell because, on that day, I chose to answer them with the wrong kind of evidence.

(In the end, it doesn’t really matter if you fall. It just matters where you land.)

But no. Wait. There was some small hope left after all. I know this because after lying in this terrifying state of being for awhile, I did what only someone with hope would do. I reached out. I texted two friends and asked them to pray. It was the smallest of gestures and the tiniest act of rebellion against the night that I could muster. Small and tiny to me that is. To my Father in Heaven, it was a loud, resounding battle cry!

Hope can easily look like desperation, but it is still hope.

It was all I had left – faith the size of a mustard seed. One of these friends ended up calling me and I sobbed on the phone with her until I was a blubbering, beautiful mess. She made me say out loud what I was thinking; what I was believing. I refused at first because I was incredibly embarrassed and ashamed but then eventually I decided that I had nothing to lose anymore, not even my pride. And so I spoke into the light what I believed in the darkness. And as those ugly words sputtered from my broken heart, they were disarmed. 

And then I did something completely uncharacteristic, something I hadn’t done in a long, long time.

I pealed myself off the carpet, changed my clothes, and went for a run. 

And did I run! I ran like a mad woman! I ran and I cried and I ran some more. I yelled at God as I ran up hills and I cried at Him as I ran down. Let me tell you – it’s hard to breathe when your crying and running at the same time! I told God what I thought about… everything and everyone, including Him, including me. Somehow I was able to turn my hatred for running into a cry from the depths of my heart. I needed to run.

It was symbolic, mostly. The very thing that was so hard for me to do for so many years, that took so much motivation, determination and endurance was now a symbol of hope, freedom, defiance, and life. In the past, running beat me. I often gave up and just wouldn’t do it at all. But now, if I could make it through a run without giving up – something that was so hard for me to do – maybe I could make it through depression, too? Maybe I would come out alive? I hated both, but it was clear to me that day that I hated depression so much more.

I was running against depression.

I was running against the night and the darkness and the enemy and everything that held me down, stripped me bare and sold me into slavery. I was running with anger; I was running with fight. I was done with just lying there and taking a beating, I was done with believing lies, and I was done with living in the valley of the shadow of death.

For the first time since that crazy depression began, my soul got off the floor, stood up, put on its shoes, tied up its laces, and went for a run. 

It was no longer just my family and friends fighting for me – I was fighting for me!

On that day, I planted my little mustard seed of faith in the barren ground before me and asked God to move a mountain. I would not turn away but instead I would follow Him to the end. Even if this was all a big cosmic trick, even if I was being completely deceived by God, I would still follow. And so with nothing before me but some promises I read in an ancient living book, I once again chose Jesus. 

(That’s where I landed.)

The next morning I got up and went running again. The morning after that I did the same thing. And I started fighting in all different kinds of ways. 

I’ve been fighting ever since.

I have to tell you, I still hate running! But it’s is one of the ways I tell depression it doesn’t get to win. It’s also really healthy for me, of course, and it helps build strength in my whole being. Some days it is anger that fuels my run. Anger against an enemy who has tried so hard to destroy the plans God has for me but who has not and will not succeed. Anger against the ways in which our world remains in darkness, the many people around me still suffering depression and hopelessness. I run for me and for them. Maybe I run for you, too.

There is always hope.

And then I have days when I am not angry. Instead I am simply filled with awe that I am running at all, that I am no longer lying on a couch in a pit but instead I’m sweating outside in the fresh air, feeling the exhilaration of God’s love fill my lungs and heart. As I run, I run towards Him. It is as if I can see Him in the distance and with depression behind me, I run to Him with my worshipping legs. In this way, running has become both an act of rebellion against depression and a declaration of freedom and life in Christ. LIFE! I experience Christ’s defeat over the enemy, sin and death when I’m out pounding the pavement and not lying on my floor or in a grave. 

I guess you could say, I run against depression and I run for life.

At the end of the day, I hate depression, oppression and death so much more than I hate running. So I’ll keep running, until I run all the way home. 

** Postscript: I wrote these reflections in November 2012, seven months after returning home from India, still in a dark season of life. Running, of course, was not the cure of depression nor can I mark this time as the end of depression. There were more dark days ahead, more battles, and more healing to be had. But the truth found in these reflections remains and I believe this truth today as much as I did then. Though I am only human, with ups and downs along the narrow path of faith paved through wide open spaces, I am coming to understand and accept the things I can and can’t control.

The “cure” for depression is a recipe of simple and purposeful acts mixed with deep and complex mysteries – acts we choose to live out every day and mysteries that hold onto us with faithful, timeless love. But this not a recipe that will make us completely full and satisfied in the here and now. It is only an imperfect appetizer we eat until that day we finally feast in heaven with Jesus. On that day, all things will be made right and brought to wholeness, including us. On that day, we will not have to run anymore.

Running continues to be a mental battle for me. I sat in my workout clothes for over three hours this past Saturday before I went for a run! I still don’t run a lot. I believe exercise should also be enjoyable, and so I’ve found other enjoyable ways to stay in shape. But because running is such a huge mental battle for me, when I do it, once a week or so, it is also a huge victory! It’s a helpful indicator of my mental health. I will not let running defeat me. I will run! That is to say, I will not let depression defeat me. I will live!

There’s no ball in my hand when I run now – no distractions. I look at running square in the eye and I do it. It is no longer just about running.

We are not children anymore, pacified by distraction and humoured by false realities. When it comes to choosing between death and life, these are the tricks and the deceptors; these are the numbing agents that keep us lying on the floor; these are the short-lived bandage solutions that only cover up the long-lived wounds of our hearts. Friends, as the author of Hebrews reminds us, let us strip ourselves of these things, lay ourselves before the only One who can ever truly heal us, and then… let’s go for a run!

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© Stephanie Ratcliff and stephanieratcliff.com, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Stephanie Ratcliff and stephanieratcliff.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net.