Walk on Water

A migraine snuck up and slammed me in the head this morning. I woke up at 4:43 with a tightness in my scalp that signals a bad one is coming. I was too sleepy to get up out of bed and go take anything right that second, and I lived to regret it. By 8:00 I was miserable, by 9:00 it was unbearable, and by 10:00 I was confused and disoriented. Yes, I know it is past time to go back to the doctor. I just hate that place, but I now need something better than the over the counter medicine he recommended a few years ago.

I bumped into my masseuse at a house warming party for a friend. She worked on my pressure points for about 15 minutes, bringing a small measure of relief. I was able to remember how to find my way home and think coherently for the most part, in spite of the excruciating pain.

When I got home, I was desperate for relief. I decided to try running. Endorphins, right? Well, running with a migraine is more painful than childbirth - I've done that 4 times, I should know. The jostling makes the pain worse, to the point where all I could do was count my breaths in and out and try not to vomit from the pain. In my haste to run, I set my ipod to shuffle random songs, hoping that the music would be soothing. Sometimes that helps. Instead it was a hard pumping Audio Adrenaline song.

I have not listened to Audio Adrenaline in many, many years, and their songs are not in any of my favorite playlists on the ipod. However, a random shuffle pulls up anything in the entire library of music, and "Walk on Water" came on. At .5 miles, I realized I had been listening to the same song the entire time. See what I mean, my processing is greatly impaired when I have a migraine - It takes me about 7 minutes to go .5 miles.

I'm not sure how it got stuck on the loop track, but to change the setting after I've turned on my GPS function on my phone will erase my running data that I am charting online. So I just kept listening. Somewhere around the first mile, God reminded me of our call into church planting, "Get out of the boat, get ready for the call, I'm going to show you how to walk on water." I thought about how many times this last 18 months God had done exactly that. He has used us in ways we never, ever dreamed that he would. But the strange thing was the thought that chased after those remembrances. It was God, I think. "I'm ready to start teaching you how to walk on the water."

What the heck? What have we been doing? What are You fixing to do, God? I'm afraid. I'm already in way over my head. I already feel like I'm drowning so many days as we try to figure out this living missionally thing.

God's response, "I said, I'm ready to start teaching you how to walk on the water."

Okay. To quote my favorite pastor, I guess wet underwear is better than splinters in my butt from the safe boat. My answer in advance is yes. Let's go. But You have to help me to be obedient even when I'm afraid of the unknown.

After running nearly 2 miles, I returned to the house for an hour of brutal weight lifting. By the end of some long stretches afterwards, my headache is significantly better. It's not completely gone, but I should be able to function. Now my mind is just racing around that voice I heard, wondering what it all means. Or maybe it was just a crazy thought in my head, brought on by the meds and the pain.