Why my Walk Across America must pause and why it’s not ending anytime soon

Tonight,my heartis heavy.

After over 190 days of walking across America through heat and cold, through towns and forgotten highways, through moments of extraordinary grace and moments ofbone-deep exhaustion, the doctors have told me I must pause.Surgery on my heel is scheduled for March 30, and next Thursday, I must see a cardiologist as well.

I did not plan for this.I wanted to keep walking.

FROM NASHVILLE TO CHICAGO’S SOUTH SIDE, FATHERLESSNESS HAUNTS AMERICA

But I would be lying to you if I stood here and pretended I was not emotionally broken tonight.This journey has taken everything out of me on a physical, spiritual, and emotional level.Every reserve I had when I started this walk, I have spent.There is nothing left in the tank that I put there myself.

I know I will keep walking, because I keep thinking about the children on the South Side of Chicago for whom we are building a Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center.Every mile is for them.Every step is for the opportunities we are creating. 

And yet, I know I cannot quit.I know I cannot go back home to theSouth Side of Chicagoas a quitter.I keep coming back to a verse I’ve leaned on many times before: Philippians 4:13: “I can do all thingsthrough Christ who strengthens me.” Not through my own conditioning, not through willpower or toughness or sheer stubbornness, but through Him.Because if this walk depended on what I had left in me tonight, it would already be over.

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The pain started with my heel, a pyogenic granuloma.It is the name for the painful growth I had cut off before, only to wake up recently and find that it had grown back.The pain was excruciating with every step.It is the kind of pain that makes you question everything.Pain has a funny way of doing that.It makes you ask why you are doing what you are doing.It makes you ask if what you are doing is worth it.

But I know I will keep walking, because I keep thinking about the children on the South Side of Chicago for whom we are building a Leadership and Economic Opportunity Center.Every mile is for them.Every step is for the opportunities we are creating.My purpose is stronger than my pain and I believe that now more than I ever have before.

But the body has its own accounting, and eventually it presents the bill.

I think about theApostle Paul, who wrote from prison.He had been beaten, shipwrecked, and left for the dead.He said in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that we are “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed;perplexed, but not in despair;persecuted, but not abandoned;struck down, but not destroyed.” I admit this is not poetry to me tonight.But it describes my situation, the road that I am on.  I have been pressed on every side.I have been struck down.But I am not destroyed.

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God did not bring me 190 days and 3,000 miles to leave me on the side of a Louisiana highway.

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I have to believe that.I do believe that.Even tonight, when belief costs more than it ever has.

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The walk will pause for surgery, for healing, for whatever the cardiologist finds when he looks at my heart next week.

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I will not pretend I am not scared.I will not put on a performance of strength that I do not have tonight.What I have instead is faith.Hebrews 11:1 reminds us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.I cannot see the finish line from where I am standing right now.But I have walked 190 days on the evidence that it is there.

pastor somewhere in Louisianawho is broken and hurting and trusting God, and who will be back on that road as soon as the Lord allows.

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The walk may pause, but the purpose cannot.The children of the South Side are waiting, and I am still coming.