Keep Your Shoelaces Tied and Trust God With It All

My track season ended over a month ago, but before I move on to share stories from my summer, I have to talk about how I qualified for divisionals.

Having the opportunity to run at divisionals is something for which I’ll always thank God, especially after what happened to me in the week before the conference meet.

All season, I had been preparing for the conference meet, since my performance there would determine if I qualified for divisionals.

Now, some of you may remember that the day before my first cross-country race last year, I had an allergic reaction that sent me to the hospital.

Since then, I’d been getting treatments, sometimes weekly. And the treatments were going really well.

Which is why I was taken completely off guard when, a few minutes after another regular round of treatment, a ringing sensation started in my ears.

I felt like I was going to pass out.

And I was having another allergic reaction, this time to the treatment.

This second time felt far more painful than the first time. To spare details, my internal organs started overreacting, and the contractions caused the most physically painful experience of my life.

In that moment, all I could think about was my pain.

My pain and how it hurt so much that I couldn’t even feel the epinephrine needle slice through my skin.

My pain and how it didn’t seem fair that God would allow me to feel it.

I cried out His name many times that hour. Not in my head, as I often did while praying in discomfort and joy and even in the mundane.

I cried His name out loud. Not in vain, if my circumstance could ever count as vain.

No, it was always a prayer.

Pain reveals–like nothing else–where you’ve decided to put your trust. When it hurts, whom do you trust enough to call on first, call on without thinking, call on while you’re raw and vulnerable and ugly without a chance to dust yourself off, call on and expect help to actually come and things to actually change and clouds to part in heaven?

That’s what my pain taught me.

I’ve grown close enough to my Creator to call His name first.

I know that now.

But I left the hospital that day with a lot of unknowns.

I didn’t know how long the washed-out sensation of the epinephrine would last. Would I have enough energy to go to school the next morning? Would I be able to run the rest of the week, and would the epi-shot in my leg make my muscles sore?

Such questions were floating in my mind in the late spring of my junior year. This was the time when I was preparing for some of the biggest exams and biggest races of my entire high school career.

But I couldn’t have prepared for this.

At a time when I wanted to believe my success rested in my own hands, God had given me another much-needed slap in the face to remind me that I’m not the one in control.

This time, the slap in the face really hurt, haha.

So a week later, when I stepped onto my favorite track to run the conference meet, I remembered that I had to trust Him.

Trusting is hard.

I had planned on getting a PR in the 1600, since I imagined that was the only way I could qualify.

Instead, my shoelace came undone in the first lap, no joke. It destroyed my form and kept me from running my best. Given the circumstance, my finishing time was actually quite good, but I had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to be enough to make divisionals.

After all that’s happened, why couldn’t you just keep your shoelaces tied? I asked myself on the field.

As I jogged a cooldown lap, I prayed for the chance to run the 1600 again at divisionals, but I also knew that God was already giving me a second chance this same day.

I still had a 3200.

This time, I triple-knotted my laces. I had learned my lesson.

And in this 3200, every lesson that I had learned all season, all the little phrases that I had written on the sticky notes on the back of my closet door, came together.

It was beautiful.

I made my last lap into my fastest lap, hitting my mile pace. It hurt, but I could handle the pain, as the allergic reaction from a week ago taught me. It hurt, but I could handle those negative splits, as an unusually-paced 1600 from a few weeks before taught me.

My first event had again been disappointing, but this was again my chance to make today count, and God again was going to work it all out in the end, as a previous meet taught me.

No matter how I placed in this race, my performance wouldn’t change my identity, as another previous meet taught me.

Years of hard work had brought me here, and I had to keep running well, as still another previous meet taught me.

The entire race felt perfect. I finished in a time that I had never imagined being able to reach again. And it became my ticket to the divisional meet.

It wasn’t my only ticket, though. I also qualified for the 1600, despite the shoelace incident. My prayer was answered there, too.

I even got my 1600 PR at the divisional meet. Being on that track, surrounded by friends and rivals, representing my school and most of all Christ, felt like the perfect way to end my best track season yet.

From the beginning, I dreamed of reaching that track at the divisional meet. From the beginning, God knew that I was going to get to that track.

And from the beginning, He had been giving me the right lessons to take me there–and to help me remember to keep my shoelaces tied on the big day.

Hebrews 12 is true. Our heavenly Father disciplines us. He lets us feel our pain because He loves us.

Trust Him.

Perhaps the best way to close is with a poem that I wrote before even starting high school. This poem is so ironic (but so perfect in God’s timing) that I’d almost consider it prophetic to my life, as you’ll soon see.

keep your shoelaces tied

You watch your Father’s nimble fingers
tie your laces into knots
and you take His loving hand
as He pulls you up, above the ground.

And as you take those first few steps
down this road that we call Life,
you follow in His lead
and you hear His gentle voice:
Keep your shoelaces tied, child.
Keep your shoelaces tied.

But as you run along
down this road that we call Life,
your laces come undone
in the chaos of the journey.

And as you run along
down this road that we call Life,
you get bumps and bruises,
scrapes and scars, with every fall you make.

But as you trip and fall
down this road that we call Life,
you try to force yourself back up
amidst the stinging pain.

And as you trip and fall
down this road that we call Life,
your scraped knees and weary heart
keep you on the ground.

You’ve taken many falls
and you’ve made a few wrong turns,
and maybe now it’s time
to take your Father’s loving hand,
to let His nimble fingers
tie your laces once again.

Maybe now it’s time
to follow in His lead
as you take those next few steps
down this road that we call Life.

And maybe now it’s time
to listen to His gentle voice:
Keep your shoelaces tied, child.
Keep your shoelaces tied.