JustRunJustLiveJustBe

It never gets easier. I count myself lucky that I’ve seldom had to do it. I’ve been blessed with good people, I’ve chosen well. But recently (and reluctantly) I had to let someone go.

It was sort of like firing; I had to fire her from being my friend. The chances were out, the strikes, way beyond three. I gave it time, a lot of time. I thought having the bigger heart and waiting it out was the way to go. After all, my friend was going through a hard time, and if I couldn’t hold on then, what sort of friend would that make me?

I held on, I let time pass. I let the emotional roller coaster cycle through, time and again. I thought as long as it wasn’t my emotional roller coaster, I could let it pass. But then, she discovered this. She realized that somehow, my choice of not letting her decisions affect me meant something was wrong.

We now know this something as drama.

I saw right through it, though it wasn’t her plan. She wanted to pour oil on the flames, I had the extinguisher. She was sliding down a steep, slippery spiral, I wouldn’t sacrifice to go with her. I couldn’t. It wasn’t because she was asking too much, it was because she wasn’t. She assumed I could be there, without question. Or morals. Or self-preservation.

I did question, though. And chose morals, and self-preservation. I had to.

The entire thing felt very business-like. Sort of similar to when I’d have to give bad feedback reports on volunteers, in my college internship days. I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s day, I didn’t want to be negative, but when it came down to it, I had to be. It was hurting the cause, affecting more than just me.

She wasn’t always bad, which is the part that makes it difficult. There were good times, times of hard work and play. But choices were made, and roads were chosen. Priorities changed, in ways I never expected, and very few people surprise me. (Us closet cynics have that sense.) Sooner or later, things like that just bring everything to a halt. A grinding halt.

So I let go. It’s not easy, not without a share of guilt. But it’s right.

My sister, always the athletic one, wants to start running again. She asked me to help her, to get her into some training. Maybe motivate her a little. (This is how we know we’re grown up. She can ask for help, I can give it, and we both come out alive.)

So today, after my long run, I met up with her and we did a little “trial run.” She needs some time to get acclimated, not just to running again but to living at six thousand feet. When you run here and you just start out, you are pretty sure your lungs are going to burst into flames. It takes a couple weeks to adapt to that- the feeling doesn’t go away, but you get used to it.

We set out for three miles today, with planned walk breaks. We made it through a half mile, she was still smiling. We walked a bit, and then ran another half mile. I stood there, beaming at her with pride. A new or returning runner is always so exciting, but when it’s your sister [and you’re me] it’s all you can do to not jump up and cheer her on with pom poms.

“You just did something 99% of people cannot do,” I told her, as we took another short walk break.

“What?” she asked me, while she gulped her water.

“Most people on this planet cannot run one mile. How do you feel?”

“Dumber than most people on the planet, to tell you the truth.”

This is going to be great!

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Thanks so much to everyone who commented and emailed regarding my last post. I know that by and large, everyone I ever “know” here or anywhere else on Earth is great and sometimes, there are exceptions. It makes me appreciate you all more, that’s for sure.

Between you all and being able to look at this little face everyday, I have no worries. Life is good.

I started this site something like one year and seven months ago. Over that time, aside from the occasional strange comment or mean email, I’ve had nothing but great experiences reading about people’s lives, opinions, questions, jokes and so much more. The fun I’ve had expressing my own thoughts here has far outweighed anything negative I’ve ever had to deal with. I just consider myself lucky. I’ve avoided the controversy/drama/people with their heads in their hiney quite well.

Then, as I mentioned in my last post, someone made a comment to me on another blog that I let hurt my feelings. Fine. Another person on Earth doesn’t agree with me. Not exactly shattering information here. I talked about it, I got over it. This other person though, (we’ll call her Amanda) did not get over it. In fact, Amanda took it upon herself to follow my link to this site, find my email address and send me an email.

She tried to start out being kind “look, I ain’t saying you don’t know anything.” Okay fine, Amanda. Thanks for that. Then it gets better, much better! “I just think that if you were a good Christian woman you would know what I meant.” Okay, so now I’m a bad Christian woman. She goes on to say “maybe if you focused a little less on thinking you knew what you were talking about and a little more on actually learning and developing your life in a good way, you’d recognize where you were lacking.” I was unaware I’ve been underdeveloped so far. “It has been my experience that people without faith have little to offer when it comes to giving others direction.”

Amanda, apparently the one person on Earth with a red phone to the Lord, went on for quite a while. I’m not sure if she read all four hundred or so of my posts or none at all, but she sure does believe she knows me. And not all but about 90% of the bones in my body are telling me it doesn’t matter what Amanda says. So you got a random email, big deal. But then there’s that part of me that’s irritated. Because how dare she. How dare Amanda, never having commented on my blog before or since, insult me. How dare she insult my Christianity. My faith.

I know I don’t talk about my beliefs much around here. And believe you me, it’s not likely headed that way. But regardless of what I’ve posted or not (I know it is shocking to you, Amanda, that someone’s entire life may not be on their blog) I have deep beliefs. Beliefs that I rarely doubt or question and though I am not perfect, I am profoundly offended that someone would use my choice to talk about my faith sparingly as a tool to insult me. To make assumptions about my life. I find it hard to believe, in all her “experience” Amanda hasn’t learned the number one rule when making assumptions. (Hint for Amanda: It starts with A-S-S.)

Shallowly, perhaps, I wonder about Amanda. I wonder why she feels the need to judge a stranger. I wonder if, on her blog, she shares these opinions. I wonder if she has readers that think like this. I wonder what I’d say to her, if anything. But after going through all this, writing it all out, I have nothing for Amanda.

However, it does remind me of a Sunday School lesson when we learned that even if we don’t care for some people, it still might be a good idea to pray for them.

Some friends of mine have been renovating their new home. Mostly, they’ve been doing the work themselves. In the beginning, I think they were excited. “A real bonding experience,” they thought. Now, I think when one of them doesn’t throw a belt sander at the other’s head, they consider it a good day.

“Jill? JILL!”

“WHAT!” She wasn’t asking a question.

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

“I’M OUT FRONT! Could you please not yell across the house for me… at least not right now.”

Sam shows up on the front porch. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t yell across the house for me when I’m bringing trash from the house to the porch.”

“Okaaaayyyy…” Sam doesn’t know where she’s going with this.

“You just can’t yell and draw attention to us with all this trash on the porch! Then we’ll be known as ‘those people with the trashy house who yell all the time.’”

They hope to have all renovations complete by Thanksgiving.

I am insane. JACC was right. To counter, apparently, my 4:00 a.m. run from my last post, I decided tonight, an 8:00 p.m. run was in order. I was busy earlier, I told myself. And it was hot, my gosh was it hot. I think it was four hundred degrees as it has been for the last week. So I told myself I’d wait. Or maybe do another early run tomorrow. These were all good excuses, I thought. But as I ran tonight, I just got to thinking I’m so all over the place lately, it’s obvious my urge to run is no different.

There are a lot of reasons for it, I suppose. In a lot of ways, it’s been evident all around. The following, because I lack creativity at the moment, are good examples of the crazy that has been me here lately:

- I actually woke myself up in the middle of the night by talking. Of course, I’ve been known to talk in my sleep (I used to scare my sister out of her room when we were younger) but this was just a bit much. I was having a pretty serious conversation.

- I have been relying entirely too much on cold cereal to sustain me. Don’t get me wrong, I love cereal but even I know this is not good.

- My sister and nephew arrived yesterday. They’re here for the duration, until my brother-in-law comes home. This is not really an example of why I’ve lost it unless you count that I actually believe deep in my heart that I really can sing just because a one-year-old dances when I do.

- The other day, on someone’s blog, another commenter made a [what I consider to be closed-minded] comment to me and it actually hurt my feelings. I inexplicably got pretty offended when I know I shouldn’t, because I don’t know this person. I think if you make comments on a blog, they’re fair “game.” I guess everyone does not see it this way. Alright, enough of that.

- I have really been in the mood to mow the lawn. I offered to mow my mother’s tonight and she told me no. No. I couldn’t believe it.

- I am starting school at the end of the month. Oh, I haven’t mentioned this, you say? Yeah, I know. It’s because I haven’t thought about it. I keep telling myself I’ll get into it. Any minute now…

- I bought a lottery ticket. Need I say more?

My run this morning was forced. Not the steps, but rather the time. Because I insist on starting work early (or at least showing up) I’m not a morning runner on weekdays. I figure I’m up at 5:00 a.m. as it is, getting up earlier just seems a little… wrong.

But today was different. Today is already planned, taken up by incoming flights and driving. By early meetings at work followed by rushing out of the office saying “sorry, I have to go.” One look at Tuesday on this week’s calendar, and you’d see- there’s just no room for running.

So I decided it would have to happen early or not at all. Pre-dawn, or not at all. I got myself to bed at a decent hour (requiring a plan in itself), set the alarm for 3:50 a.m. (I know!) and set out my running clothes. To be honest, I gave myself a 50/50 chance of actually getting out of bed.

Somehow, though, I did it. The alarm went off, and I sat up. Wide awake; the kind of awake you are when you know you could lie back down, but you wouldn’t sleep. So I got up. I changed my clothes, glanced at myself in the mirror, grabbed my Garmin and was out the door. I pushed ‘Start’ at 4:01 a.m. It’s a little frightening to even think about that. It feels very unreal, even if there are people that do it every day.

It took me about a mile to settle in, to get over the feeling that someone was going to “get” me. I have a fairly constant, sometimes irrational fear of being gotten. Once that feeling passed, and I realized I was probably able to at least out run (if not pepper spray) anyone else out at 4:00 in the morning, I started to enjoy it.

The air was cool and almost crisp. It was lovely to feel more heat generated by me than by the environment around me, as has been the case with every other run this Summer. It was quiet, so peacefully quiet. The only souls I passed were a cat lying in the middle of the street, basking under the light of the streetlamp, and two paper delivery folks. All three stared at me like I was the crazy one. They’re probably right.

I didn’t feel crazy, though. I felt great. And as I kept track of the time, I kept telling myself it wasn’t “wake up time” yet. It was as if I was running before I was actually up. Ironically, once the clock neared 5:00 and I was near home, I did feel more awake. I watched a few minutes of the news, and then went about the morning as if I hadn’t just covered more than five miles.

It feels good to have done more before 5:00 a.m. than many people will do all day. I might just have to get into this pre-dawn thing.

Yes, there is a possibility that I have just been allowed to have it too good lately. Though I’ve been working hard enough to come home at the end of the day and tell myself “you’ve worked hard, you need a break” I also think I’ve been pretty lucky with the breaks so far.

If nothing else, I’ve at least been lucky to have spent them with really wonderful people. Although the places and the weather have all been beautiful, I can’t help but think the people you spend your time with, if they’re really awesome people that you love, would be people you’d be with anywhere.

I found myself thinking that a lot over the weekend. Around the campfire or on the lake shore, I just sat back and took it all in. I’m always in fear a little of bringing up the good. I don’t want to brag anyone to death or, heaven forbid, make it all go away by talking about it. At the same time, though, that is what the good is about, isn’t it? It’s there to enjoy- to celebrate as if this feeling, this moment itself might be what we always use to define good.

Earlier in life, at times when I didn’t know what awful really was, I wasn’t great at recognizing life’s truly good moments. I didn’t really know the stark, meaningful contrast between love and hate or peace and fighting. Hate was the girl that purposely kicked sand on me, war was a yellow button I wore on my jacket.

Growing up, growing old, is such a bittersweet contrast in itself. The nostalgia, the lust for those days gone by is only overshadowed by the appreciation that develops over time. Over the weekend, as is often when friends get together, the question came up of would you ever go back in time?

.

My first instinct is to say yes, knowing what I know now, of course. But then I think about it, and realize nothing I remember would have been remotely as grand had I not had the privilege of innocence. I wouldn’t have cared deeply about getting a perm or missing an episode of Beverly Hills 90210. I wouldn’t have gotten butterflies at the thought of a boy sitting next to me on the bus or have been surprised by Halloween haunted houses. So no, today I’d say going back would just not work. Mostly, it would prevent moving forward. It would prevent weekends at the lake, to be with friends and reminisce.

And what are good weekends with empty margarita glasses and clear blue skies worth if you can’t reminisce about being seventeen again? I certainly wouldn’t be able to tell the story of the last time I was at this here lake, when the girls met up with the boys, likely all having stretched the truth with the parents. Where we walked shoulder to shoulder, wondering if he was going to take our hand. The boathouse where the girls would go to tell one another which boy liked them and which was a “loser.” The hill where, in the late night hours, you might sneak off and, you know, read.

.

I don’t need to go back to that. Remembering it is part of the magic. And life, in it’s sneaky, quiet way just keeps getting better and better.