The purpose of running

Well meaning people say “Stop running from your problems!”

And they are right. We need to face our problems.

So why don’t we take their advice and stop running? It sounds so easy, “stop”, like playing the game Red Light, Green Light. But we don’t stop, we continue on.

We run because it’s all we can do. It’s all we know to do. In a way, we’re not in our right minds; we are desperate and we yearn for something. We’re searching for more, looking for answers, hunting for love and acceptance, and we know we’ll die if we don’t find it soon.

Those watching the runners, (friends, grandparents, parents), need not agonize that the runners are going to end up at hell’s door. Oh, they will end up there. They need to end up there. But it’s OK because it is there that they find out who they really are. We should worry more if they don’t run there.

It is at the darkest times, lonely, despairing of life, afraid, when we have no more fight or flight left in us and we realize that we’ve been told many lies, like that we don’t need anyone or that we aren’t lovable, and it is then and only then that the Truth comes to us and we can see our own light glimmer. We begin to forgive, and to love, and to be set free.

Sometimes all you can do is run; run from your family, your pain, your past, because the journey, at the end, sheds the darkness and will take you to the light that is you.

So run free, my children, run to the Light. But you must know that the journey first takes you straight through the portals of hell, but fear not, for I am with you.