Living Limited
Every New Year’s Day, a contingent of my family participates in a 5K beach run. My role is to bring water and cheer them on at the finish line. As 2026 dawned, only my husband and oldest son were running. I was late leaving the house on my bike, so they had already reached the halfway point by the time I rode onto the beach.
Following behind the hoard of runners toward the finish line, I thought I had plenty of time to get ahead of them, camera ready. However, I did not count on the strong headwind off the ocean slowing me significantly, so I buckled down and pedaled harder. But despite my determination and effort, I made little progress against the wind’s sustained assault.
I spotted my son well ahead of me, making better time running than I was biking. My inability to catch up made me feel unreasonably frustrated, but I was too focused on the task to analyze my emotions. Standing up, I used all my strength to push the pedals, but I was still no match for the relentless wind. I felt myself becoming exhausted by the effort; my muscles began to scream.
Watching my son grow smaller as he neared the finish line, I knew I would never make it before he crossed. So, with my goal in sight, I gave up, accepting defeat but hating it.
As I hopped off the bike, I was surprised by an overwhelming feeling of sadness. I had been running into my limits too often lately, and walking with loved ones and friends who were grappling with theirs as well. Reminders that resources like strength, health, and time are finite and often beyond our control stir up all kinds of negative emotions. Because underlying all limitations is fear of not being in control of our lives and not being able to show up for and love others well.
Of course, none of us is superhuman. But the needs and demands around us are high. We want to remain capable of caring for others and doing good things in the world, unhindered by our limited natures. We want to believe that if we try hard enough, we can scale barriers – squeeze more into every hour, or push through our body’s need for sleep, or exercise more to live longer, or juggle three needs at once. But there are so many limits facing us each day, and dealing with them is exhausting.
We operate within boundaries created by illness, disease, injury, responsibilities, nature, finances, and even closed doors. And, of course, time, the parameter that affects us all. We sometimes live in perpetual denial of the fact that we have an expiration date. But growing older means pushing closer and closer toward our final boundary of time. And the closer we get to it, the weaker and more limited our aging bodies may become.
We all want to believe that we can exercise significant control over the quality, direction, and even duration of our lives. But we cannot fully control what limits us (and how) any more than we can control the wind. But, oh, how we wish to be unencumbered by such restrictions! They feel like walls, blocking us from doing good things, even biblical things.
When we encounter roadblocks, our knee-jerk reaction is often the same one I had on the beach: to exert intense effort to overcome or avoid them. We live sleep-deprived in order to do more. We fight aging because we do not want to become dependent. We strive to make more money because we do not want to curb spending. We break rules because we do not want to be told “no.”
Striving to push beyond limits comes naturally to us. But whether insisting on independence when we need help or pushing through illness or injury to work or serve, we often pay a heavy price for not living within the boundaries of our flesh. And when “trying harder” does not result in our overcoming the limitation, we risk growing bitter. Our failure to achieve what we consider good can even lead us to doubt and question God.
And yet, to deny that we are limited is prideful. Only God is unchanging, infinite, all-powerful, and omnipresent; we are mortal, mercurial, and (if we are honest), weak. How quickly we forget.
But when we remember God and turn to him, he offers another way to deal with our unwanted limits. Instead of striving, we can choose a path that at first seems harder, because it requires admitting our weakness and acknowledging our limitations. The hallmark of this path is dependence on God. In our pride, self-sufficiency, and impatience, we resist. However, by prayerfully and gratefully remembering God’s provision and consciously entrusting our future to him, we gain peace.
Accepting limitations by entrusting our life to God is different than resignation. It does not mean giving up on being well, healing from injury, rebuilding after disaster, or dealing wisely with obstacles. It means giving up the illusion of being limitless while actively moving forward with a spirit firmly resting in God’s unlimited power. It means laying down our fears and weaknesses, knowing that even though bones may break, strength will diminish, and undesirable things may happen, Christ’s body was broken for us so that we can rely on something that will never perish, spoil, or fade.
Exactly one month after the beach run, I had an unavoidable opportunity to practice living this truth. In the aftermath of a winter storm, I slipped and fell backward on the ice while unloading groceries from my car, suffering a significant wrist fracture. In the ensuing months, my abilities and independence were limited in ways I never imagined. Immobility, pain, weakness, disability, and even sleeplessness slowed me down. My ability to perform even basic tasks was severely diminished. In an instant, I went from serving others in the storm to being unable to dress myself.
But during the long and painful recovery (still ongoing as of this writing), the lesson of the ocean wind was a gift. Until that morning on the beach, I did not recognize how much I had been striving, pushing beyond my limits to love others well and contribute to the world. I was not watching my son run toward the finish line of a beach race, I was watching him run into the future. And, in the natural order of life, I would not be there to encourage him all the way to the finish. But having seen my error of putting more faith in myself than God, I was better able to trust him in the face of my terrible injury and its ensuing limitations. I was able to give my burdens to him and rest.
On that first day of a new year, God reminded me that it is okay to hop off the bike when the wind becomes too powerful to overcome. Because what carries us to the finish line is not the strength of our legs (or the wholeness of our wrists), but the strength of the One who created the wind.
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Photo by Christopher Stites on Unsplash