Soul Searching Run

I LOVE mornings...today I finally had one of those mornings that seemed a little bit like routine and normal. What is normal, though? For me a schedule and a plan is normal. And seeing that my life has been in constant movement and in 3 different places and I have only been back in the States for 2 and 1/2 weeks, normal and routine haven't been a part of my vocabulary. Don't get me wrong--I have ENJOYED every moment of my time back in the States.

And I have to say my friend Mandy, got me onto these vitamins that have changed my life--they aren't that ground breaking....just the stuff you know you should take, but made so easy. And they don't break your budget, nor does she "recommend" you take $700 worth to "feel better." In transition and change and a lack of schedule when I would normally be pretty emotional and pretty frazeled on the inside I have been centered and calm. I have had emotions...lest you be confused that I have changed....still SUPER emotional. Instead of fighting through emotions and craziness in my head I have got to just enjoy this transition and recognize the change and my emotions for what they are---this is a miracle!

I digress, back on topic. This morning I woke up rested, read an email from my guy in NZ, and the migraine I fought for 2 days was gone....the start to a BEAUTIFUL day. Raya got in bed and gave me a cuddle, then I realized that I was feeling pretty good and if I planned right I could get in a quick jog before I helped get Raya ready for school. I got her breakfast and told her to brush her hair after she ate while I was gone and I would get her lunch when I got back--SORTED :)

I set out with a little Coldplay and ran McConnel....the trail I ran in school and when I worked at the University. It is a trail FULL of memories and life change and spiritual & life epiphanies and many tears. As I jogged down the familiar trail, I couldn't help but miss the quick 5 minute jog to the beach and the run down the beach I did with this view on the way home every morning in New Zealand..



I would time my run so that on my way back down the beach I could watch the Sun rise....paradise.....



While it wasn't the beach it was awfully cool to reflect back on the last few years of my life. Wow...is all I can say when I remembered I walked in as a freshmen girl 14 years ago! YIKES....when the heck did that happen!?! To think back to all the soul searching that I did on that trail, all the tears I cried, and all the life processing I did. I was chatting with one of my best friends, Danielle, today about how life is full of working out our crap. I was just telling my friend Anna who is going to turn 30 in the next couple of years how much I LOVE being in my 30's....simply because my 20's are over. Man, your 20's are full of seeing your crap, sorting your crap, missing your crap and seeing it hit other people and having to clean up messes. Not to say, that once you hit your 30's your are perfect, but it did seem to lessen a little bit. Maybe it is that we learn to manage our issues, but let's think positive and believe that we conquer some insecurities and grow into who we were created to be...let me live in denial if that isn't true.

As I ran today, I was reminded how the minute my running shoe hits the ground something in me is just okay. Even when I was dying around the back of the trail wondering why I thought running was a good idea, but not because running is that amazing, but because I had a chance to reflect. For me running is the place that I "work a lot of things out." This season of life is surprisingly great...transition isn't always like that for me. It is a welcome surprise. It might be the way God has continued to love me and be patient with me over the years. Or I guess it could be the fact that my LA friends were AMAZING at welcoming me back into the life of the States, my NZ friends continue to text, email and call me, my parents have gone ABOVE AND BEYOND--like always, to make sure I am okay, my Redding friends have made my stay here comfortable, fun and special, and I have a great guy in NZ who adores me and has reminded me that my bar for men was way too low in my life before him. But beyond all that I think that maybe the truth is that it is a little from column A and a little from column B.

I think life is complex and doesn't have a formula and a plan to it. (which I secretly hate!) God is not just in a religion or a church. God is intertwined throughout our world and through the people that we interact with all the time. There was a time I thought that God only changed me or talked to me through church and Christians, but as I have walked through life I have realized that the God that I read in the Bible is a little bigger than needing to be in a church or religion or a spiritual person. And He only seems to back that up with the personal encounters I have had with Him. When I read about Him in the Bible and encounter Him, who He is He longs to love us and longs for us to know the reality of His unconditional support and love, not to condemn us for not being perfect or tell us what to do....I feel like the last few years has been learning lesson after lesson in that area. Ironically, not just from Christians and the church...but through people who knew God, who don't believe in God at all, who believe very differently than me, who have different world views from me and even from places that have nothing to do with God, like Weight Watchers and the bar I hung out in while I was in NZ--Astrolabe. His goodness is real and His love is tangible...life is definitely not always good, and as I walk with some friends through some REALLY intense stuff, we are all acutely reminded of that, but today I was reminded that He is in the craziest places and sometimes the most unlikely...funny maybe the Bible is on to something. When you read that He is rarely where we think God "should" be, maybe I needed the reminder that He is God and I am not. Sometimes I forget that or worse yet I think He is my assistant....lucky that He is a loving and gracious being....

Funny what one simple jog can remind you of in life....