A Snapped Tendon: My Soul Clings to Dust

My soul clings to the dust;
give me life according to your word!

Psalm 119:25

I have surgery tomorrow. 4000km from home.

I snapped a hamstring tendon on January 1 while running an easy 10kms at warm up pace, ready to think about the ensuing 364 days. Would I run all 364 of them? Probably not all of them but probably 320.

It was to be the start of a 4000km year. Same distance that it is between Perth and my home in Sydney. I’m stuck here in Perth. Immobile.

It was to be the start of a racing year again. I haven’t raced competitively for two years, what with all the to-ing and fro-ing in my life, moving countries, moving houses, moving states.

So “New Year New Me” it was to be. Or at least a returning to the me I used to be two years ago. Yet after a two kilometre limp back to the car, eight kilometres into the run, this was my Strava post:

Old me indeed.

The photo at the top is me running with a new friend called Michael. My last photo on Strava is he and me running around the outside wall of the old City of Jerusalem in late December.

Bitterly cold, windy, impossibly steep and slippery, it was the best 5km run in my life, simply because of the location and the occasion.

And now this. A torn tendon.

And this morning, in my “one verse of Psalm119 a day” I read those words above. Like all of the verses in that Psalm, it consists of two parts.

And the first part hit me hard. It’s not like our souls hover above the dust. It’s not like they can become so fit, with such good BMI’s and such a low heart rate, and such high VO2 Max, that we can escape the dust.

I often felt that sense of giddy high level fitness when running. Especially since I began running in my early forties. For fourteen years or so I have increased volume and fitness levels, daring my age to level me off.

Now there have been signs that it was levelling off. But I have put that down to the rapid changes in life, including all those moves and flights. And this year was the year to prepare for 2027 when I turn 60.

My aim has been – and will continue to be post recovery hopefully – to keep running sub 19 minutes for 5km. But at the moment that seems a long way off.

The Psalmist says “clings”. Whatever our circumstances we are supposed to remember that we are mortal and that even the best of us can have our lives taken away in an instant.

I fool myself into thinking that even if my hamstring tendon clings to nothing (4cm retraction thank you very much), then at least the rest of me is super sharp for my age.

We ought to speak a “memento mori” – to remember that we are but dust – to ourselves every morning. Our souls cling to the dust, whether we feel it or not, whether the heart and health signs say so or not.

To be honest, my immediate worry is more about sinking into a dusty funk. Running does a lot for my life, and it gives me shape to my day and my dopamine levels etc. Running is also the laundering process for my thoughts.

I never listen to music or podcasts running. I generally just try to become aware of myself and what my body is doing, and push the garbling thoughts and junk out of my mind that has collated over the day or the week.

Now I will have to figure another way to do that. And to not over-eat! And certainly not to over-drink. Already I’m shaping a “clean diet” to keep me lean.

Yet even as I figure out how to do life without running, I am reminded of that second part of the verse: “give me life according to your word.”

We are reminded in Scripture time and time again that it is the word of God that gives life, in its created sense, and it is the Word made flesh that gives life, in its salvation sense.

“All flesh is grass”, Isaiah reminds us, “But the word of God abides forever.”

What should sustain me in these next four months or so of rehab? Yes, the thought of rehabbing so well that I become even stronger than I have been these past couple of years.

But more than that, over these coming four months I should lean into what it means to have life in God. To lean into trusting him more, and to lean into what I need to learn from a mishap that snatches away one of the big joys I have in life.

I don’t want to be like the Israelites in the desert who were grumbling against God when they wanted food and comfort. We are told of them in Psalm 106:15:

And He gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.

May it never be so of us! May it never be so of me. I want a lean, fit body but not at the cost of leanness to my soul. These four months will test whether I am committed to the truth that God is my sufficiency.

And yes, I know it is a light trial, and not devastating in many ways, but these things are sent to test us, to “prove” us and refine us.

I want life, but I want it according to His word. That’s my prayer for the next four months and beyond.