running thoughts

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I ran today for the first time since about the last time I posted on here…hurray for revival of the fittest.  Running induced this overflow of endorphins and I felt them surf their way through those blood vessels, and I was on top of the world, I could run to McDonalds and back and resist the urge to splurge I felt so good.  Okay so that isn’t really the response my body had to my decision to get physical. But it did create a space for me to think.  Being in a time of transition between two significant points along the timeline of my life, I have been thinking a lot about me and where I fit in relation to this bigger smorgasbord of human lives.

I’ve had this growing intrigue over the years about this thing called love. phileo. agape. eros. all of the above.  That, intertwined with the concept of beauty, intertwined with my story, and how that relates to others’ stories.  I’ve had an odd fascination with father/child relationships as of late.  Dads taking their daughter to the beach for the first time.  Reading bedtime stories.  I know this pukes of idealism…reality is not all fathers are all that great.  I’ve camped with the cynics for so long, without realizing that cynics are truly idealists at heart.  But there is something in this dad/child scenario that taps into the internal of the internal.  I’m realizing more and more how it is of the utmost importance that I bathe myself in the knowledge that I am loved. And don’t stop at knowing; I need to feel, hear, experience love. I get nowhere in my ideologies if I bypass the immeasurable weight and power that Love holds.  But this is not so easily retained.  I only really began to understand in the emotional sense about what it meant to be loved when I got to college.  Since then it has been a rocky road towards discovery of this beautiful tapestry.

You will lose your confidence.
In times of trial, your common sense.
You may lose your innocence,
But you cannot lose my love.

-sara groves

I feel more often that I am losing rather than gaining.  I am losing time.  I am losing youth. I am losing innocence.  I am losing the child in me.  I go on runs like I did today and my mind is flooded with thoughts. What ifs, how cans, Whys, Buts, Whens, Hows.

I was walking down a path, not sure where to go.  I didn’t have a mapped out route, I just wanted to go somewhere away.  I reached an intersection, and realized I had reached the cemetery, just a highway-crossing away.  I don’t know how God makes things work the way he does. But he makes it work.  I will never tire of watching the sun slowly descend into the horizon.

Maybe this was made for me
For lying on my back in the middle of a field
Maybe that’s a selfish thought
Or maybe there’s a loving God

-sara groves

I don’t feel at my greatest right now.  Having not had dental insurance since college, I went to a dental school clinic to get my teeth cleaned the other day.  I sat in a chair for 3 hours, half of it with my mouth open, sharp metal sticks scraping and pulling and poking. Left my poor gums and teeth sore for days.  Oh, the imagery.  For all the good things in my life, and for all the things I wish I had explanations to, for all the ways that I feel like I am losing, I want to know more of this love that supposedly trumps lacking of any sort of thing.  I want to soak in why He did what he did because he loved the world so much.  Roll around in it like a mud puddle in a rainstorm.  Bake in it like a lump of yeast, flour and water turned into a loaf of bread. I want to see it in the drunkard asking me for change.  I want to feel it in the dirt of the earth. I want to hear it in the heartbeat of the drum. I want to taste it in salty tears.

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.

-john mark mcmillan

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