love on the rocks

I set out for six miles tonight, pissed, and hurt, and sad.

I came back after seven and a half, victorious, and joyful. I'm still hurt, but that's okay. The pain is part of chasing pavements, which I always believe is a good idea, until its not anymore.

You know, "should I give up or should I just keep chasing pavements"

You ALWAYS chase pavement.

SOOO many things are worth it.

Anyway, here's the chronology of my run, physically and emotionally. 

I go out quick because I'm mad, and crack a smile at my stupidity when I decide to slow it down. The first mile was pretty easy and quick and I did a lot of angry thinking and spitting. Just because its cool to gather spit in your mouth, eject it, and watch it disappear in one swift motion. Reminding me that this too shall pass.

My right hip popped every step for the last part of the first mile and I thought I was going to injure myself but I smiled again because I was NOT about to stop a run that I felt that good on. 

Anyway, my heart rate gets up, my legs are sore from yesterday's run, and I decide its time to shed my hoodie (while still running)- and my dignity. I threw my hoodie in the grass at the entrance to the turnpike trail, suddenly remembered some song lyrics that spoke to my exact heart situation and promptly started bawling. It was probably an interesting sight, sometimes I wish I had cameras around to catch these things.

And that's when this run became religious.

Somewhere between mile 1.5 and 2, I started laughing after the tears, and what followed can only be described as victory. I booked it down that hill. 

Give me pain, I'll take it for a run and come back with joy that I don't understand, coming from I don't know where.

Give me that kind of joy, I'll take that, run with it a while, and turn it into the kind of tears that let you know that pain is temporary, no matter how bad, how much it aches.

I felt healing. Physically too. After two miles, my feet hit a rhythm, a beat that went through my head and my heart beat and I realized that this beat was healing. After tonight's run, I consider my stomach sickness completely manageable and therefore irrelevant in my life.

After that, I can conquer anything. 

I hit my turnaround point, threw a fist up in the air, pointed to the sky, smiled, and carried on. 

Around mile four, the physical difficulty of a long run, went away. I stopped hacking and spitting because there's no more spit to gather. My legs stopped struggling to make it up a hill and my heart was all I could hear. Strong and steady. I've never admired my heart more than tonight. And since I have this tendency to cry at beautiful things, and strong emotions lately, I cried again.

To my heartbeat.

I. Have. Lost. It.

It was just that its there, making me alive, adapting me to whatever is going on in my life, making me stronger. Beating out the  pain, physical and emotional. 

And then you smile. And then you feel once again that the world, hurtful and just plain wrong sometimes, is wrapped around your finger. I can do anything.

Some of its timing, some of its luck. Call it destiny, call it not in the cards, call it God's will, it doesn't make a difference because its happening anyway. Regardless of what I have to say about it.

At six miles, I was pretty much back to my house, but I ran past it. I went through some roads back in my neighborhood, getting faster (the last mile and a half was faster than my third mile), thanking my Jesus for that kind of strength- the physical kind that wouldn't let me stop, and the emotional kind that reminds me as well that I should press on. I thanked him for healing my stomach. I thanked him for the heartbreak that led me back to the worship experience that I find in running. 

I sprinted back home. The human body knows few bounds, but I haven't a clue where that kick came from.

My feet eat pavement. They eat it and they spit it out behind me and turn this crazy mess into something I can handle. They stomp the soundtrack of my life out, telling me that there's pain and joy and healing and victory and heartache and its all jumbled into one and its messy. But.

But it will work out

Have faith

It

Will

Work

Out

My feet eat pavement.

What do yours do?

 

I might buy me a cabin, and take all that I need

"In the short years I've lived, I've learned a lot of things, but the one thing I know- it takes more than just me."

There's a lot of things going on right now that I don't understand. 

"Monkey in the middle" is the only way I would know how to describe it.

I'm being pulled a thousand different ways over a thousand different things, and though I exaggerate, it sometimes feels like that number is accurate.

I know who I want to be. Correction... I THINK I know who I want to be.

And while I don't know what I want to do, I have a lot of good ideas.

I want to study exercise science, hit up a midwifery school, and open a birthing center, with prenatal workout classes and relaxing birthing experiences. I love women's health!

I want to conquer the world (go to medical school), say I can do it, and actually do it and be an OB/GYN

I want to get into the music business, move to a big city and do all sorts of high rollin' city girl, legit music business type things. Put on a concert, plan a tour.

Sometimes, though, I just want to get married, live in a house, and spend my days cutting the crust off of peanut butter sandwiches and wiping snot. I don't know why that sounds so great, but it does.

There's this policy I have now. Its unspoken but I've been living by it pretty consistently recently.

Okay, say there's a fork in the road, a decision to make.

I, first of all, evaluate my choices. 

Then, I pick the risky one, something out of my comfort zone.

Next, I enjoy the journey of stretching and bending to make it work, learning new things along the way until it either turns out, or I go back to square one and try something else.

My logic on this comes from the fact that I'm a dreamer, so why not reach for the stars, while I'm still young and the world hasn't taken all my freedom and hope (if it ever does.)

But I stopped last night. For once I knew the right choice. I knew what I wanted. I might have even known how to acquire it, hook, line, and sinker. 

I gave up. 

That's the way it goes sometimes.

Maybe it will want me back someday.

But, like the song goes, 

"Not today, today, today. Tomorrow it may change."

Also tomorrow, I get to see this

 and this

 and this

 and this

this is NOT what I need to be doing right now

    

      Sometimes, life knocks the wind out of you. Maybe you forget that you could feel so much because certain emotions don't come along everyday. So when you feel it, it feels unfamiliar. You become aware of your soul again, what makes you tick. I got in my bed the other day, legs numb from the cold, and I was undoubtedly aware of an ache I had never felt before. Like there was wind whistling through me. It hurt. My skin was porous and my body was hollow. And it burned. But once you can feel pain, you know how to fix it.
     Sometimes, after the wind is knocked out of you, you move on. You keep breathing, no matter how hard. And the breath comes back. Even if you don't know how. Its involuntary, living is. Its your default. The wind becomes pleasant again. It awakens the scent of the trees, makes you feel like you're moving again and you wonder how the wind was ever painful to you. You find inspiration in a picture, words that touch you, a person that fixes you up, turns you around, and sends you on your way because they know its what's best for you. It's funny how quickly the heart switches from one emotion to the next, feeling joy sometimes so overwhelming that it can forget any hurt.
     Sometimes, when you least expect it to, life makes it up to you. Another sunrise comes, bringing a beautiful day. Inside jokes crack me up. My baby girls call me on the phone. And suddenly, I'm reminded that its about balance. And not necessarily that my life is balanced, but that I'm reminded that life goes on in all the best ways regardless of what conflict is in my head. And heart for that matter. You move on. Regardless of what it was, why it ever happened, what actually happened, what would've happened, where it was going. None of it matters.
      Sometimes, though, you feel it again. A moment that catches you off guard. A song. Picture. A thought. Just a memory. The hole burns again, raw, from the wind whistling through it again. It fades quickly but, even if you're able to smile at what once was, it feels like its your reality again. Its mysterious, but its all there to remind me that I'm alive. Alive. Living. Feeling joy and pain. Enjoying an uninhibited array of raw emotions that are only human and therefore in themselves beautiful and God given.
So thanks. For reading, for feeling, for being there.

the right thing

doesn't feel quite so right anymore
when you consider how hard it is
to actually do the exact opposite
of what it is that you want to do.

                                                  And this my friends, is what that feels like.
                                                                          Sometimes.

the cave

Caitlyn was here.
But not anymore.

I've been thinking a lot recently.
Thinking.
Running.
Running and thinking.
And music.

I'll let you know what I come up with.

something

I was just thinking about this semester, what's happened and what hasn't happened.
About 15 weeks ago, we were given these step logs for wellness. One to turn in for each week. I remember looking at that stack of papers and turning in the first one, thinking, "only 14 more to go" and thinking it would be forever before I turned the last one in.

I turned the last one in today.

I feel like I've been everywhere, and nowhere all at once.
     I've been to Dallas twice, St. Louis, Spearman, all down I40 and back going home and coming back                  here. And at the same time I feel stuck like a pin, with little to show for what I've done.
I've conquered the world and I've done absolutely nothing.
     I've officially kicked my anxious, stressful ways and moved on to enjoying life instead of fearing what might be, but I can think of no one that I've helped or impacted in a big way this semester.
So many things conflict all at once that I feel balanced, and yet completely out of whack.
The first semester of college, done, almost. And I did my best for the most part.
I only have to do that 7 more times, and just like the step logs, I'll put my last semester in before I know it and wonder what I did that mattered that entire time.

Things came together for me this year, in a lot of big ways.
     I found a place where I can be social and love the people I'm around every single day.
Its also fallen apart in some things that I never thought I'd lose.
     I've had to let go of two things that have taken up most of my time and shaped the last two years of my life.
I've made life altering mistakes, and decisions I never thought I would make, are now resolved.
     Let's not forget my first college blunder- doing a crappy job on that stupid photoshop assignment because I was so frustrated, turning it in half done, thereby lowering my grade a letter. And my big college triumph- declaring a major!
Sort of sad that I have to write about my first semester saying, "I don't really know what to think about it"
Sad, and exciting to have to figure it out.


I can say that I love this place, these people, the direction things are heading, and I appreciate the people that had a place in getting me to this point all the more.

                                          The only picture I have of my first week of college.

A picture from last week