Not less than a heart-beat
I was a pretty nerdy athlete for much of my young life. I was told once that I should chart my waking heart rate. Apparently, by keeping track of it you can have a pretty good read on whether you're overtraining, getting sick, or getting fit. I have charts somewhere that have a bunch of 50's and 60's written on them. I think I hit something like 52 once and was pretty proud of that.
To give you some perspective, elite marathon runners have a resting pulse of somewhere in the high 30's to the low 40's. It's pretty unreal.
But there's something about a beating heart - no matter the frequency it beats at.
When we first heard the heart-beat of our boy, he became real to me for the first time. He was suddenly more than my wife feeling exhausted and sick to her stomach - he was a beating heart.
Sometimes when I run up a big hill, stretching to reach the top as quickly as I can, a throbbing will reach my ears. I realize how much of me depends on my beating heart.
The evening I proposed to my wife, with every step closer we got to the place I had stashed the ring, my chest pounded harder and louder. I wondered if she could hear it like I could. I'm not less than a beating heart.
Our hearts beat on and on and on and on, until they don't.
I'm pretty sure, when I get to that last beat, all that counting I did when I was younger will have seemed pretty frivolous.
I wonder though, when we get there, when we reach that final beat of this life... I wonder when we reach that moment when God breaks in and steals our heart beat away to Himself, as we look back on the beats we spent walking and talking and sleeping and running and selling and buying and wasting and taking for granted and cherishing and loving... I wonder what heart beats we'll look back on and think to ourselves, those were beats worth living for; those were beats of the heart worth feeling and hearing and listening to.
I have a feeling it'll be the beats that rang in our ears at the top of mountains courageously climbed, when we stop at the top and have a look around.
I have a feeling they'll be beats that we hear through the skin of a mother's belly.
I have a feeling that the beats we'll look back on and remember the most will be the beats that hardly stayed inside of our chest as we risked it all for the one or the ones we loved.
Because we're not less than a heart-beat. And neither is anyone else.
To give you some perspective, elite marathon runners have a resting pulse of somewhere in the high 30's to the low 40's. It's pretty unreal.
But there's something about a beating heart - no matter the frequency it beats at.
When we first heard the heart-beat of our boy, he became real to me for the first time. He was suddenly more than my wife feeling exhausted and sick to her stomach - he was a beating heart.
Sometimes when I run up a big hill, stretching to reach the top as quickly as I can, a throbbing will reach my ears. I realize how much of me depends on my beating heart.
The evening I proposed to my wife, with every step closer we got to the place I had stashed the ring, my chest pounded harder and louder. I wondered if she could hear it like I could. I'm not less than a beating heart.
Our hearts beat on and on and on and on, until they don't.
I'm pretty sure, when I get to that last beat, all that counting I did when I was younger will have seemed pretty frivolous.
I wonder though, when we get there, when we reach that final beat of this life... I wonder when we reach that moment when God breaks in and steals our heart beat away to Himself, as we look back on the beats we spent walking and talking and sleeping and running and selling and buying and wasting and taking for granted and cherishing and loving... I wonder what heart beats we'll look back on and think to ourselves, those were beats worth living for; those were beats of the heart worth feeling and hearing and listening to.
I have a feeling it'll be the beats that rang in our ears at the top of mountains courageously climbed, when we stop at the top and have a look around.
I have a feeling they'll be beats that we hear through the skin of a mother's belly.
I have a feeling that the beats we'll look back on and remember the most will be the beats that hardly stayed inside of our chest as we risked it all for the one or the ones we loved.
Because we're not less than a heart-beat. And neither is anyone else.
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