Going in Circles

While out for an 8 am run with my one-year-old, Alice, earlier this month, my mind began to wander as is usually the custom when I’m working out.  As Alice learned back in the reclined seat of our green jogging stroller, giggling nonsensically at the passing scenery and peeling back the Velcro straps of her silver shoes like thick, sparkled bandages, I began to think about all of the passing trends I’d seen in church culture, as well as in my own spiritual experience, since my young years as a Christian pre-teen.  I realize that may have been a heavy topic for a sunny morning run, but it was on my mind nonetheless.

…And it made me feel instantly weighed down, discouraged.  Depressing thoughts make for a decrease in pace, so it took a concerted effort to keep pushing, to keep my legs pounding the pavement in forward friction as I rounded a corner of the winding path and entered into the second half of my one-mile loop around the cat tail-fringed fishing ponds at Dalbey Memorial Park. 

I had seen the preeminence of prosperity preaching, the push for pursuing a purpose-driven life, and most recently, the rallying cry for an overhaul over the way we’ve been doing church overall.  I’d watched the question, “What would Jesus do?” fall from a source of inspiration inscribed on wristbands, T-shirts, and bumper stickers, to something with which people were ashamed to admit they’d been so closely aligned.  I’d seen preachers, speakers, authors, and musicians put up on pedestals for passing periods and then promptly pushed aside to pave the way for the freshest crop of provocative personalities.  I’d been in circles where prophesy was prioritized and even idolized, where foreign missions were the main ambition, where raving about the anointing of “this generation” seemed a prerequisite for participation, and where praising and worshipping through song was itself a thing to be worshipped.  

Even in my personal walk I’d vacillated between an emphasis on overt evangelism—to feeling the pressure to preach to every passer-by—to becoming an unofficial member of an unofficial campaign (run by someone whose name rhymes with “Payton,” I’m sure) to clam up so as not to offend or profane Jesus’s holy name with my inadequate ramblings.  I’d gone from eagerly attempting to engage anyone with a Christian-themed graphic on their T-shirt in a conversation about how much we both loved God—in public restrooms, in the hallways at school—to withholding such unadulterated offerings of unearned trust and camaraderie out of skepticism for the sincerity of such strangers.  I’d transitioned from feeling “on fire,” to dutifully plugging away, asking God when those times of refreshing would come round again to enliven the gray.  I’d shifted from denying myself—to putting to death the lusts of my flesh (Romans 8:13) in heartfelt, hidden discipline—to giving myself over to guilty pleasures that I knew weren’t good for me.  I’d also loosened my lips to let unfiltered complaints and criticisms roll out recklessly—and I did it all for the sake of being “real” and relatable, because those were the qualities the church was encouraged to convey in those days.

In one season, I’d place special emphasis on the events of the End Times, in the next, I’d stress spiritual warfare, as well as individual study of the Word and group study, being mentored and mentoring, hearing God’s voice, Scripture memorization, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, self-sacrifice, local church involvement, community outreach, and so forth and so on—all the while unconsciously convincing myself that my current course of study would finally be the key to unlock His fullness in me.

As I panted round the ponds, breathlessly bringing my increasingly restless and rowdy little rider’s attention to birds, bunnies, and puppies that we passed along the way, I realized I’d come to a place where I felt calloused and confused, wearied from what also seemed to be a journey jogged in circles when it came to my spiritual sojournings. 

I’d branched out bravely, wide-eyed and wonderstruck, spending years listening and learning and studying, carefully considering unconventional viewpoints when they came along, wrestling to rightly divide the Word with my friends, sincerely searching and struggling, only to find myself coming back to many of the same convictions I’d carried when I’d first set out as a stick-legged school kid nearly two decades before. 

I felt like a character in one of those movies who’d spent hours trying to find her way through a labyrinth-like woodland, positive she’d made progress, only to realize that she’d wound up right back where she’d started.  I felt hopeless and disheartened, sickened by the cycling scenery, siding with King Solomon when he said, “The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.  The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course” (Ecclesiastes 1:5-6, NIV, emphasis added).

And then, all at once, it hit me.  I realized that, just because I’d been travelling in circles, it didn’t necessarily mean I was lost.  Suddenly, I saw myself like a lump of clay on a pottery wheel, which I realize is a common analogy for Christians in the guiding hands of God, but the thing that stood out to me most about the metaphor this time was the spinning, and the shape I was taking on as a result—the rounding out.  I was growing and evolving through the revolving.

I’m sure there were times where I’d wandered too far in one direction and others where I’d played it safe—colored a little too well within the lines, if you know what I mean—and that’s why He kept me spinning, round and round like a top, reigning me in and drawing me out when need be.  It may have been dizzying, and even sickening at times like I said, but it suddenly struck me that perhaps it was to keep me from toppling over, from careening right off the corner of the counter.

Circular motion often gets a bad rap, with well-known expressions like “vicious cycle” and “spiraling out of control,” but as I charged past my van sitting stationary in the parking lot for another go-around the park, I remembered that there were also alternative idioms about “coming full circle” and being “well-rounded.” 

Circles were a symbol of completion, I mused, and it was comforting to know “that He who began a good work in [me would] carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6, NIV).  Very comforting, indeed.  Even invigorating. 

The stroller wheels rumbled across a wooden bridge and I remembered that spinning wheels also signified progress and forward movement—that it was through the rotating round and round that a person on a bicycle, a car, or a skateboard was able to traverse from point A to point B.

Spinning did not mean that I was stuck.  Quite the opposite, it meant that I was getting somewhere through God’s gentle guidance and grace.  And even more than spinning, I was spiraling, not out of control, but with increasing precision, zeroing in closer and closer to the goal of knowing my Creator more intimately, of serving Him better. 

And I knew this didn’t only go for me, but for the body of Christ as a whole of which I was a part.  I knew that it was The Potter’s desire that we would “all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;  that we [would] no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, [that we would] grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ” (Ephesians 4:13-15, NKJV).

It gave me great assurance to know that, as long as we submitted ourselves to our Savior’s sculpting, that He wouldn’t allow us to be caught up in a continual tossing to and fro devoid of meaning, but that He would carry on cupping us in His clay-coated grip, carefully crafting our curving contours and keeping us on course because “He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6b, NKJV).

In her bestselling book, One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp called herself “the one who lives her life in circles, discovering, entering into, forgetting and losing, finding her way round again, living her life in layers—deeper, round, further in.”¹  It reminded me of the final two chapters of C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle in The Chronicles of Narnia, where the main characters are repeatedly encouraged not to stop running, but to keep pressing “further up and further in,”²  to Aslan’s country in an endless, ecstatic dash of discovery that never leaves them breathless from the bolting, though quite possibly breathless from all of the beauty they’re perpetually beholding.

As I sprinted back to the start of my three-mile run, my eyes staring squarely at the spot where I was about to stop, I bent down and breathed to my baby, “Good job, Alice.  Good job.”  And while I walked slowly over the bridge, watching the sunlight reflect off the waters below, I swore I could hear a soft, steady Voice reassuring me from somewhere deep inside, “You’re doing a good job, too.”

Loosening my patient partner from her straps, I silently decided we’d set out again tomorrow.

1.  Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan, 2010), 105-106.

2.  C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle (New York, Scholastic, Inc., 1995), 196-203.