Encountering Holy Desire—Staying the Course

Three weeks ago, I purchased a new pair of running shoes and printed out a Couch-to-5K run plan. Then, I got up early the next morning, laced up my new shoes, walked out my front door, and began my first slow yet determined walk-run down the moonlit road.

At first, I didn’t know why I suddenly decided to take up running again for the first time in almost a decade. I thought it might just be a surface desire to lose a little weight or stop huffing and puffing every time I climbed the stairs at school. I even considered that it was just because all the cool colleagues seemed to be taking up running lately, and the little green monster inside of me desired to be just as cool as they were!

But none of those surface desires felt like THE reason my feet decided to hit the pavement that first morning. Instead, it felt like something deeper was pushing me forward.

It took a couple of weeks following the plan for my feet to regain the rhythm of running, for my left heel-to-toe strike to follow in a steady beat with my right. But once I felt myself regain my old familiar stride, my brain and then my heart seemed to settle in with the rhythm of my feet. As everything started to beat as one, I felt God speak.

Heel, toe, heel, toe… Remember you are strong.

Heel, toe, heel, toe… Remember you are capable.

Heel, toe, heel, toe… Keep moving ad Majorem (“toward the greater”).

Heel, toe, heel, toe… One more forward step.

Truth be told, it takes a great deal of effort to quiet my mind to listen to what God is trying to tell me. Most of the time, God sneaks messages in between my constant stream of unbridled thoughts so I can discover them later, captured in my writing or in my speaking to others about faith. I feel kind of bad about how hard God has to work to reach me most days.

It was not until I started running again that I remembered how God always used to be able to reach me on the road. I had forgotten how much running centered me and aligned my head and my heart enough to hear God speak.

Lately, I have been experiencing doubt and uncertainty about the deep desires I felt God so clearly revealing to me during my journey through the Spiritual Exercises. The journey towards realizing those desires over the past few years has been a bit rocky, filled with great strides forward and even greater strides backward. Still, I have mostly stayed the course with a deep sense of confidence in God at work.

Recently, however, that confidence faded a little, and I found myself wondering if I had it all wrong. Maybe what I thought were my deepest desires, revealed to me by God, were just my own brain telling me what I wanted to hear.

At the height of my uncertainty, God did what God always does for me—snuck in a sneaky little message that led me to inexplicably buy some shoes and start running in the moonlight.

And when my head, heart, and feet found their rhythmic beat, I could finally hear God say:

Heel, toe, heel, toe… Gretchen, stay the course.

Going Deeper

• Is there a way of prayer or a place for prayer that your heart might be longing to return to? Reflect on times or places when you have clearly heard God’s voice in the past and consider whether or not God might be inviting you to return there.

• Are you also having unexpected doubts about your desires creeping in? One Ignatian way of proceeding is to practice “Agere Contra”. Read about the “Voice of Fear and “Agere Contra” here.

• Do you need encouragement to offer hope in your desire? Revisit Lived Hope—Parenting is a Journey of Hope by Stephanie Clouatre Davis for some concrete steps to invite Jesus into your doubt as you pray.

Photo by Bro Takes Photos on Unsplash.

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Gretchen Crowder

Gretchen Crowder has served as a campus minister and Ignatian educator for the Jesuit Dallas community for the last fifteen years and counting. She is also a freelance writer and speaker. She has a B.S. in mathematics and a M.Ed. from the University of Notre Dame as well as an M.T.S. from the University of Dallas. She resides in Dallas, TX with her husband, three boys, and an ever-growing number of pets.