I do not walk with God because I could not possibly keep up with Him.But He walks with me and He waits for me every time I fall behind.
My mother, may God bless her, is a very strong woman. My mother has never let anything stop her from doing what needs to be done.
For as long as I can remember – since she was pregnant with me as her eldest living child – my mother has had very severe varicose veins. All my life she has hidden those veins under support stockings and pants and longer skirts because she believes that they are unsightly.
But the ways that those veins look in her legs is the least of her problems in relation to her varicose veins. You see a vein is a blood vessel that has valves in it. While arteries are used to pump blood from the heart out to the rest of the body, a vein is used to return the blood back to the heart to become oxygenated again. Because the veins carry blood on its return to the heart – which is the pump – it is more difficult for the veins to push the blood back up from the legs (for example) against gravity to the heart, And this means that inside the veins there are valves who close with each beat of the heart to stop the blood falling back into the legs and not progressing smoothly up to the heart again. When a person – like my mother – has varicose veins, those valves do not work efficiently…
Instead the blood is only partially returned to the heart and some of it remains inside the veins in the legs (most particularly) and this blood sits inside the veins making the legs feel heavy and throb with pain and causing the area where the veins are to feel (and look) bruised).
Because of this, I have always tended to walk slowly nbext to my mother, because walking is very good for a person with varicose veins, but it is also very difficult, because there is pain in the legs. And so, though she walks and has walked many thousands of kilometres in her life, my mother often – though not always – walks more slowly than others…
And this has made me think. Because I do not walk with God because I could not possibly keep up with Him. But He walks with me (just as I walk with my mother) and He waits for me every time I fall behind.
Because my God loves me more perfectly than I love my mother.
And that is a marvel that I shall never understand. For He knows that I am weak and limited justas I know that my mother’s varicose veins are something that slows her down. And even despite that and despite His ability to be infinitely ahead of me, God still makes an effort to stay slow for me. Because He loves me. It is as simple as that…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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