*the road in texas that showed me freedom is more than an ideal*

Friday, March 25, 2011

Raspberry


I pitched my tent in the backyard last weekend. Like an 8 year old boy I dragged my prized possessions haphazardly to my blue castle and tossed them in, rolling clumsily after them. I sat there rapped in my ripped-ripping patchwork quilt, exhausted. Gosh, I was so tired on Friday. After walking to the bank I could hardly keep my head up. Logical fix: pitch the tent.
With crisp sun-splashed air and not a trace of snow, it was the perfect day to introduce Raspberry to 2011. In the backyard.
Throughout the next couple days I read a few pages of capote, a few pages of works of love, wrote a little about the child of this new Spring, drank out of my clouding mason jar, listened to music from home, and to the birds mingle with traffic I could not see. For hours I did this.
Sunday morning I ran across frosted wet grass barefoot, pulled up the stakes, rolled the tent and the tarp into a heap and ran back inside, throwing them in the corner of the foyer. What had been my haven now sits in a puddle in a corner inside. It's not where it wants to be forever, but right now it's okay there, for as soon as the sun shines again and the sugar snow melts away, it's going back outside where it belongs.
Just like me.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

listening

[this is me not beating myself up for not updating this blog regularly, as I said I would]

My knee finally crumbled.
A week ago I felt the need to go, so I threw my running shoes in my car and started driving. I ended up at home. Home as in, hometown, home. Of course I knew this would happen, I just couldn't admit it to myself until I was pulling down the road to a beach on the opposite side of Lake Ontario, an hour from my parents house.
I fell asleep that night in the bed I'd slept in for years, fell asleep thinking why the heck did I just drive home?? The next morning I layed in bed thinking the same thing.

But I know why I drove home.
I drove home because just knowing there are heaps of mountains just a little over an hour away sets my soul at ease. I drove home because for some reason I can access Jesus there in a way I haven't been able to anywhere else. I drove home because something about running on those particular country roads lets me breathe easy, lets me relax.
I drove home because I needed the river, the woods, the big green couch, the perfectly brewed coffee, the cabinets and cabinets full of whole foods.

I ran 33 miles in 3 days, 58 for the week, and now my knee is crumbling.
Perhaps it's because when I added up my miles from the past six months I realized I ran 1256 miles in these shoes (that's a little more than the suggested 300). Maybe I gained a few pounds and my knee doesn't know how to handle it (its a joke). Or maybe just maybe my body wants a break. I don't want to give it one, but I think our bodies know more than we give them credit for.

Part of what I've been doing the last year or so is really listening to my body. Sometimes I'll jump up with a sudden need to eat something green. Strange? Maybe. Or maybe my body knows there's something in the green stuff that it wants. Sometimes I know I need to be in the sun, need to do yoga, need a glass of soy milk.
So when my knee aches, my body doesn't want to run anymore. If I'm going to honor it by letting it run when it aches to run, then I also must honor it by letting it rest when it wants to rest.

Dear Knee,
I'll let you rest. But please, please feel better soon. There are miles and miles we have not covered, millions of thoughts that still need to be sorted out. Don't fail me now.
xo
Kendra