Again

I signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon.  This will be my third trek up Summit (while the race is 26.2 miles long, it's those last 6 in St. Paul that are burned into my psyche, as if all 26 happen on that last grinding hill) and as I paid my fee and picked my tshirt size, all the malaise of the last two months started to fall away. After last year's half-marathon-every-month (plus one road marathon and one trail marathon), I've struggled to find any joy in running.  And I didn't push it.  After December's half-marathon I just told myself running was no longer necessary.  I still went to the gym but rarely looked at, much less climbed on, the treadmill.

But I still signed up for races.  I signed up for the Get Lucky, a half-marathon in less than a month.  And I signed up for two trail 15 milers, one in April and one in May.  While my body was still rejecting any push to run, my brain had already decided that running would resume, whether my body liked it or not.  Some part of me, the part of me that has done 3 marathons, 1 trail marathon, 2 trail half-marathons, 3 trail 15 milers, and about 30 road half-marathons, knew that the running would come back.  I've been burned out before.  I've reached points before where the thought of running filled me with dread and I just couldn't love it anymore. But those are always relatively short seasons.  They always follow the completion of a goal (a marathon, a year of half-marathons).  And sometimes they coincide with other life events, work, relationships, particular stresses, whathaveyou.  It's as if my running self goes into hibernation, tucked into some corner preparing for a knee-pounding spring.

I signed up for the marathon last Friday and last weekend I started running.  Again. I slipped on the ice, bit a chunk out of my tongue, and spit blood back to my apartment.  I'll be treadmill-bound for another month, I imagine. But walking back to my apartment with blood pooling in my mouth, a bit banged up on the knees and elbows, I made my way with the bounce I've come to recognize.  Within a mile I'd managed to injure myself, but it was enough to remember what running feels like. Not the painful part, or the exhausting part, or the part that makes me hungry. Not the time-consuming part or the part that requires a lot of laundry trips. The part of running that makes everything else a little less daunting, a little less scary.  The part that reminds me that today is a gift and I will make my heart beat faster so as to enjoy it properly.  The part that holds discomfort like a specimen, turns it around, says, "that isn't so bad, you can push harder."  My body finally woke up, stretched, emerged from hibernation, and listened to the voice in my head that began planning said reemergence weeks ago. A little blood in the mouth, a little bruise on the elbow, the pavement has been christened, it's time to roll.

Oct 6th, here I come.

Lenten Days

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and thus begins the Lenten season. Raised Baptist, I didn't really hear about the "give up something for Lent" concept as a kid.  I'm sure the word "Lent" was used in my childhood churches but I didn't really grasp the idea of Christ's last days until I was much older. And while I would sometimes half-heartedly (and, more often than not, belatedly) give up a certain activity or food for a couple weeks, I'd usually mistakenly fall back into it at some point. Out to dinner with friends, I'd remember I'd given up dairy midway through cheese pizza slice number two.

I think I struggled with the sacrificial concept in the past because it just seemed like such a ridiculous comparison. Giving up cheese to mimic my Savior's pain on the cross?  Am I really comparing these two things? Or, I'd commit to doing a particularly grueling workout everyday for Lent, telling myself it was all for the glory of God, enduring something arduous, just like Jesus. Please. Jesus had zero to do with that. I wanted to lose 10 lbs before prom. I'd last maybe a week, chide myself for being a poor, ineffective Christian, and then console myself with the knowledge that Baptists don't really care if you give anything up anyway. Leave the sacrificing to the Catholics, I'll take my sola gratia, please.

I'll admit, it's a sloppy relationship with a legitimate concept.

But what makes it a legitimate idea, a potentially encouraging spiritual exercise, has nothing to do with comparisons. The beauty of "by Grace alone" rests on this idea that we have nothing to offer capable of echoing Christ's sacrifice.  What we do have, what we are capable of, is obedience. Not perfect obedience, hence the need for Grace, but we can look to Christ and do our best to emulate Him, do our best to follow his teachings, and do our best to remember Him in every moment.

And that's how Lenten changes began to work for me, began to make sense.  Not when they had anything to do with sacrifice, but when their purpose was  to remind me of Grace, remind me of how big Grace is and yet how specific it is in its embrace of me. And so I try to make changes that I must revisit and remember multiple times a day. The easiest way to do this for me is with food.  One of my most effective changes was when I made a rule that I would never read and/or watch TV and/or play on my computer while eating.  This seems like it would be easy.  But I live alone, and with nobody to talk to across the table for many meals, I found myself reading the paper, emailing, or watching TV during almost all meals.  At work, I ate at my desk, typing away between bites.  Forcing myself to just sit and eat was excruciating for the first couple of weeks. I broke down a couple times and "cheated" by allowing myself to call a friend and talk while I sipped my soup. But for the most part, I held fast. And every time I sat down, I remembered why I'd turned all that extra noise off, why the action was important. That change actually became a fairly solid habit so it's no longer something I'd consider for Lent. But food changes work for me so I'm sticking to that genre.

I've been a vegetarian before, for several years actually.  And I can easily go a week without eating meat, although fish is almost always in the equation.  But I'm giving up meat (red and white) and fish this Lent because removing it as a possibility will require thought. I will have to think about it when I make my lunch each night.  I will have to see the meats in my freezer and remember that they are not an option.  When I try out new restaurants, something I love to do, I will have to review menus with an eye as to what my meatless self can eat.  This will rarely feel like sacrifice to me, but it will always require planning. And it's the planning and the thinking that I desperately need where God is concerned.

Because the sacrifice I can take for granted.  The Cross, the Grace, all of it.  If I do not force myself to remember what has been done for me, I will ignore that sacrifice because it is so easy to do so. I will go to work, I will see my friends, I will date, I will write, I will explore the world God gave me and I will never think of Him. This is how I am programmed, my easiest temptation, to wander away not because I'm angry or disappointed in God, but because I stopped caring enough to remember Him. And Lent is the season I try to reel my wandering self back in and remember several times a day, that God is in my life, in my heart, and on the Cross for me.

Happy Distraction

I've clearly been away from this blog for awhile.  I blame my enthusiasm over one of my other blogs, The Minneapolite, and how much time my dedication to its growth entails.  What began as a somewhat organizational inspiration (keep the recipes to the food blog, the cultural stuff to The Minneapolite, and let my oldest blog continue its use as a catch-all for anything else I want to say) has morphed into a genuine curiosity in social media, marketing, communications, and how all these things wrapped together influence public opinion. It's all quite magical to me.

I tweet now. Which is odd.  I try to keep my tweets limited to things that interest me in the area, restaurants, shows, museums, etc. I'm not tempted to expand my tweets into more personal territory.  I link to my blog when appropriate and watch my number of blog visits ratchet up little by little.  I follow people on Twitter who have crafted careers out of their blogs, developed a personal brand (so to speak), and rely on that brand to impress upon others the worth of their opinion.  I find that fascinating.  It isn't anything I'm trying to do, as I do have a wholly-unrelated career I enjoy.  But I am curious. I find it amazing when a restaurant I review references me as a "local blogger," and links to my not-fancy posting on their website. When did I get a title? Who is this "local blogger" and what else does she want to explore?

I'm an unabashed extrovert. We recently took the Meyers-Briggs test in a group at work and I remain a steadfast ENFJ, with little to no deviation on most indicators. And I think this new blog and my foray into Twitter reinforces those traits (strengths in some ways, faults in others) and feeds that flagrant people-person personality that other areas of my life lack. I've met new people thanks to my blogging, which is pretty much the equivalent of Christmas to someone like me who is constantly in need of new people to know, learn from, connect with, and cherish.

And it is not lost on me that this happy distraction also provides an opportunity for growth, developing skills in social media that may or may not be important in my career down the line. I think this must be the happiest of ways to develop new capacities, to simply fuss around with a new curiosity and watch it bloom, enjoying the frustrations as growth pains and the minor wins as unexpected triumphs.  So often "development" seems like the result of some trial, a forced change in the face of undesired circumstances. To be playing around with a new medium, learning from vastly more experienced bloggers, and pondering where it goes next...it's too fun to feel like development.

It's a good reminder for me, this adventure, not to ignore my own curiosity. I think wonderment is a beautiful, God-given thing, meant for some purpose. Which isn't to say that I think God cares a great deal about who has the best cheeseburger in town or whether or not I get a kick out of my first opera. But the curiosity is a result of the personality He built, and while only God knows what doors may open as a result of embracing a new endeavor, I trust that there is good in it.