Heading to LA....

Today, every inch of my body aches. I decided last week that I might take up running. For those of you who know me, this is shocking because it violates a long-standing objection I have with running: too much jiggles.

Unfortunately, the jiggling is still an issue. But I thought about how I walk and walk the streets of NY when I'm there and had wondered how much ground I could cover if I actually ran.  I thought practicing here in CA would help me to know if this is something I might enjoy.  I bundled myself up and put Evelyn in the Chariot stroller and hit the path. The walking warm-up was great. It didn't seem quite so cold. I had headphones in with some amazing and inspiring music....but the headphones kept yanking and pulling and falling out so I abandoned that.

As I turned the corner onto the bike path, I thought, "Here we go. Just me and the path."  I would love to report that I felt light and that the energy flowing through me created some amazing runner's high. But that would be lying folks.

Every step felt like pulling lead out of mud.  I noticed a few minutes in, as I constantly reminded myself to breath "in through the nose and out through the mouth," that my nose had become numb from the cold.  It was hard to breathe, but if I stopped breathing through the nose, the shooting pain would begin in my side.

My heaving chest wanted to stop only minutes in.  The frost took over my hands so that they were both numb and yet so full of pain that I couldn't move them. All in all...I covered a mile and a half. Not much by any runner's standard. And I didn't even run all of that.

And I would love to report that I feel amazing now, proud of the accomplishment and looking forward to the next time.  But that's not true either. I'm not sure I'll keep running. Everything hurts and I'm just not good at it. But I will keep moving. 

Today, I am taking Elijah down to CHLA to do blood work and meet with his oncologist.  Ever since I returned from New York, it's felt like my run. Life feels a little like pulling lead from the mud. This life can sometimes feel like that....like the biting cold, or the heaving of your chest, or the pain in your side.  

Perfect timing to read this yesterday:

"Some seasons are Naomi times.  You ventured out with those hopes, full--and you feel you've been brought back empty--disillusioned, withered dry.

In some seasons, for all their gloss and glitz, it can be hard to find gifts, and days can feel like fists....

The radicals and the reflective, the Ruths and the revolutionaries--they are the ones on the road, in the fields, on the wall, pointing to the dawn of the new Kingdom coming, pointing to the light that breaks through all things broken, pointing to redemption always rising and the Advent coming again.  Brilliant people don't deny the dark; they are the ones who never stop looking for His light in everything."-- Ann Voskamp

So today, I'm hitting the road. I'm not denying the dark.  But I'm looking for His light in everything.  I'm putting one foot in front of the other and I'm going to keep moving.