The One Who Ran

A Reader’s Note:

Some stories refuse to stay in the past.

You think you’ve understood them. You tuck them away, grateful for the memory. Then, years—or even decades—later, something happens that causes you to see them with entirely new eyes.

This past year, three moments found one another in my heart.

A conversation with my brother at Christmas.

A frightening week with my infant grandson in the pediatric ICU.

A verse from Psalm 23 I’ve read countless times.

Together, they uncovered something I had somehow missed all these years.

This is one of those stories.

I wasn’t planning to share it publicly.

But perhaps some stories are planted long before they’re ready to bloom.

“Surely Your goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life…”

—Psalm 23:6

I don’t remember the day starting with any sense of dread. I remember kicking a ball with my brothers—maybe a game, maybe just something to pass the time while the grown-ups worked on the house we were building deep in the woods.

We were still children, and children don’t always notice warnings that have grown hoarse from repetition.

The well hadn’t been covered.

We hadn’t noticed.

My father had asked—again—to have the well covered.

He had been assured it would be.

But it wasn’t.

We didn’t know that.

And in a blink, my youngest brother, no more than three or four, was gone.

I still don’t know how fast it happened, only that we couldn’t reach him. Our arms weren’t long enough. Our hands weren’t strong enough. We lay down on the ground, forming a chain.

But still…

we couldn’t reach him.

I watched him disappear beneath the black water.

I ran.

Not even thinking.

Just ran.

Hollering my lungs out for my father.

My father was tilling the far edge of the clearing, preparing the ground for a garden.

I don’t even remember reaching him.

Before I ever did, he came flying out of the garden.

Running so fast I could hardly believe it, jumping over tree stumps, roots and rocks without breaking a stride.

Nothing seemed capable of slowing him down.

I can still see his face.

I have never seen that look before or since.

It was a ferocity of purpose unlike anything I had ever seen.

Later, I asked him how he knew.

How he knew to come running before I had even reached him.

He told me it was the sound of my voice.

Not simply that I was screaming.

He said I had slipped back into Italian.

The panic had carried me somewhere beneath conscious thought, back to the language I had learned in Italy. My teachers there had been British and Australian, and somehow I had picked up their curious blend of accents. I was the only one in our family who spoke Italian that way.

Dad recognized it instantly.

He remembered hearing only a few words—

“Michael…”

“Well…”

—and my panicked Italian.

That was enough.

He knew.

He had reminded the workers numerous times to cover the well.

He knew they hadn’t.

He knew.

And he ran.

Not like a man runs.

Like something else.

Like fire on legs.

Like love with fists clenched.

Like mercy with no time left.

Like a father.

The only thing faster than his legs was his love.

He threw himself across the ground—splayed, dirty, arms thrust deep into the blackness of the well.

One try.

One breathless pull.

And there he was—

my baby brother—

covered in black slime,

not breathing,

held in the arms of a man who would not let him go.

My father gathered him into his arms and ran toward the garage.

Crying out his name.

Looking toward heaven.

“Please…

My boy…

My bambino…

Please…”

I remember his name being called over and over.

I remember how haunting it was.

I remember the garage floor.

The pleading.

The trembling strength in my father’s voice as he tried to breathe life into his child.

That was my memory.

Until Christmas this past year.

I told my brother how every time I hear the line from the worship song—

“Your goodness is running after me…”

—I see Dad.

I see that run.

I see the look on his face.

And I weep.

And I wish he could see the look of fierce love on Dad’s face.

But this time, he looked stunned.

“That’s how you remember it?” he asked quietly.

Then he told me his.

He remembered blackness.

A world gone silent.

Then light—

outside the garage.

He remembered seeing our father carrying his little body toward the garage.

He remembered our dad crying over him.

But he wasn’t in his body anymore.

He was trying to get our father’s attention.

Trying to call out,

“I’m right here!

See?

I’m over here!”

But my father didn’t hear.

Until—

somehow—

he did.

And Dad was hugging him.

For all these years, I thought I knew the whole story.

I didn’t.

Until my brother shared what he remembered, I had never considered another possibility.

That perhaps, on that day…

God gave our baby brother back to us.

I don’t pretend to understand such mysteries.

I only know this:

There has always been something different about him.

Not something you could easily name.

Not something you could point to.

Just… something you feel.

Something you somehow know.

It’s there in the quiet way he carries himself.

In the gentleness he extends to others.

In the strange sense that he has always understood life as a gift.

Maybe that’s simply who he is.

Or maybe every life returned from the edge carries a quiet awareness that the rest of us cannot quite explain.

I don’t know.

But whenever I look at him now…

I remember.

And I give thanks.

As though the story weren’t finished with me, it found me again.

Just last month, my eight-month-old grandson—who all of us have often remarked bears an uncanny resemblance to my baby brother at that age—was happily playing on the floor when he suddenly stopped breathing.

My mind rushed back to the black water.

To my father’s voice crying out for his son.

To that run through the garden.

The paramedics gathered him into their arms and raced toward the hospital.

Somewhere along the way…

his breath returned.

He spent the next week in the pediatric intensive care unit while doctors searched for answers.

They found none.

No explanation.

No reason.

Only another child returned to the arms of those who loved him.

As I sat with those memories, I found myself back at that old well.

Back to my father running.

Back to my brother.

Back to a Father whose goodness has pursued our family in ways I still cannot fully understand.

Twice now…

our family has held children we thought we were losing.

Twice now…

we have been given the impossible gift of holding them again.

I do not pretend to understand why.

I simply give thanks.

Gratitude has become one of the deepest languages of my soul.

That Christmas I told my brother how that experience gave me a picture of what the love of God looks like.

And it changed how I read Scripture.

I began noticing that same running—that same refusal to stay safely behind—in a place I had read countless times without ever seeing it.

Whenever I picture the love of the Father now,

I don’t begin with an abstract idea.

I see dirt flying.

I see my father bursting out of the back garden,

leaping over tree stumps,

roots,

and rocks

as though they weren’t even there.

I see that look on his face.

That ferocity of purpose.

That single-minded determination to reach his child.

No obstacle mattered.

Nothing else existed.

Only his son.

Years later, I recognized that same fierce love somewhere else.

Jesus had just told His disciples what awaited Him in Jerusalem.

The suffering.

The rejection.

The cross.

And yet…

He set His face toward Jerusalem.

The Gospels describe Him moving with such determination that the disciples struggled to keep up.

I have never been able to read those verses the same way again.

Now…

I see my father.

Running.

Not away from danger.

Toward it.

Toward the child who could not save himself.

Toward the darkness.

Toward the well.

Toward love.

Perhaps that is why, whenever I hear the words,

“Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life…”

I don’t picture goodness and mercy walking quietly behind me.

I picture them running.

I picture my father bursting out of the garden…

I picture Christ setting His face toward Jerusalem.

Love has always run toward those who cannot rescue themselves.

A Reader’s Reflection

When you picture love… what do you see?

Whose face comes to mind?

What moment taught your heart what love looks like?

Perhaps it was a mother sitting beside your bed through the night.

A grandfather who always waited for you on the porch.

A teacher who believed in you.

A friend who refused to leave.

Or perhaps it is a memory you have not thought about in years.

I wonder if those moments have been teaching us about the love of God longer than we realized.

For years, whenever I heard the words,

“Surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me all the days of my life…”

I pictured my father running.

I pictured the look on his face.

Only much later did I realize why.

Sometimes God has already given us a living picture of His love long before we have the words to recognize it.

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©️ Gilda Wray. All rights reserved.