i run again

The woods turn golden this year, a fierceness in their leaves. The wind has changed its rhythm along the familiar path. I set out over the stream, across the roots of the ancient trees, weathering the season with them.I often wish I was more than I am.I pound down the first path around the smaller pond. It is always muddied by couples trying to find the gravity to keep them  together in a midnight walk or the cross-country team training for the weekend. I pass no one in the afternoon, and my feet are angry against the earth. I feel them praying resistance to God even though I pray out loud for a heart that can hear, a listening heart. Our whole bodies pray, don't they. Mine prays at war, angry and confused, patient and devoted. It is an out of rhythm prayer. The sweat clings to the back of my neck and I dart among the corners of the path, chasing myself, or God, or running from both.I often wish I was more than I am. The old lie, that there is an other we might be, better than what was first made and called good, cuts the air from my lungs. The path widens and I hear behind me another runner and his dog. The dog bounds up beside me - a beautiful lab, her fur the color of wheat in summer, deep-set eyes and a lightness to her running. She touches my leg with her wet nose. I look down, smile, but ignore her as I run ahead. The dog hangs back, but only for a moment, and then she races forward to tag me again, a bark to get my attention. We go on in the game, running ahead only to be caught. We stop together at the opening to the pond, where the wind is, and the dog dashes into the water and begins to play."She likes to run with the head of the pack," the runner explains as he catches up to us. I smile slightly. "She's beautiful," I say. Another moment, watching her chase down a shimmer of sunlight, and I keep running. I wonder about the dog playing tag with me on such an ordinary day.We  often choose to wish we were more than we are."Thank you, for the dog," I hesitate - could God be pleased with that? Was that even prayer, to be thankful for a dog while out running in the woods alone?There was a poem that a friend gave me, about geese that turn into light. About how we were not leaving, but arriving. About an indescribable wedge of freedom in the heart. You know this poem, I pray - David Whyte, The Journey, a poem that changes you,  clings to you like the leaves piled high in the silent woods."Sometimes everythinghas to beinscribed acrossthe heavensso you can findthe one linealready writteninside you."The one line, the one about freedom, the one about the golden fall and the leaves that cling like fire to the trees, the one that captures, just for a moment, the certainty of the presence of God?"Thank you," I whisper, over and over, tears falling, as I turn left up the steep hill to go home. "Thank you, for the dog."I wish for nothing but to draw nearer.Love,hilary

i go running

It's been almost a year - a long while, a longer journey, when I wrote a letter to my friend Preston about a run I went on. In that post, I wondered about how God is glorious. How God gets right near us, and asks us, "What are you doing here, Hilary?" and how on that particular run I responded, arms flung wide in front of people passing me by, "I'm here for You."It's been a winding road since that blog post, since that run. When I stepped onto the trail yesterday afternoon, I couldn't feel the glory. I willed myself to praise Him - to say thank you for sun and warmth, to sing out next to birds and crickets, to imagine that all the beauty, it is a sign of the brightness. Of the light.But I didn't really want to do it, and so I gave way to a smaller heart and even smaller thoughts. All of this is unfair, you know, God. I don't see your plan for me. What happened to that promise I made you all those months ago?I might have said thank you to God, but I think my heart said a lot more of, but still... I felt, suddenly, how I must be caught in the thicket of my own heart, tangled in its desire, lost in its fear. I felt the way it must look to God: me chasing around after thoughts, trying to follow them to their logical or beautiful conclusion, following plans until they disappear back beyond my horizon line, running in circles hoping that I'd free myself of the confusion and the mess.And His gift to me was a run. A real, physical, sweaty, sun-beaming down on my oh-so-pale skin run. A run behind the woods I've become almost so familiar with I miss how extraordinarily beautiful they are. A run around the ponds, past the water, past the white ducks, past the trembling, tentative green leaves. A run up hills and over tree stumps. A run that asked me to pour out my real physical effort, to strive and challenge, to waste no more breath on thoughts but instead drink in the oxygen for the basic, beautiful purpose of breathing.His gift was that I went on a run. And as I ran, my voice quieted. I didn't have the physical breath to complain... I couldn't tell Him just what I think of this, just what I worry about, just what He hasn't answered and how it's been year and didn't you promise me that if I became yours I would have... and do... and be understood...I went on a run that put real ache in my muscles and real air in my lungs. It made everything physical again, and I heard that it is a gift to have bodies. A gift, to get tired and sweaty. A gift, to be pushing yourself up a long hill breathing in the scent of almost spring, a gift that all we think, all we yearn for, lives inside a body. A body that can run. A body that can carry me when I caught in the thicket of my heart.Yesterday, my body could sing louder praise than my words. Yesterday, it was my muscles and lungs that held onto His promises far more than anything I could think or feel or speak.And His gift was that I went running.Love,hilary 

when you tell your abs you love them

"You're good to me, abs." I pant around the corner of the lane, 4 miles from home. The sun doesn't seem to move across the sky at all, and I run in and out of the shadows of the trees lining the sidewalk. They're gnarled and old, full of stories, branches climbed by eager children. They've shed thousands of leaves in the few seasons I have been alive, and there is a steadiness to them I wish I had. Perhaps they have their own small jealousies, seedlings wishing they could become trees faster, a maple that wants nothing more than to be a cherry tree or a redwood. Perhaps oak trees are jealous of the cool white birches, and some days all trees want to burst into the fiery flames of tiger lilies. But in the midst of the quiet afternoon, I somehow doubt that these steady limbs and leaves long to be something else.But I do. In miles one and two I told my body it should be smaller, easier to carry around, more like a gazelle than a zebra. When I hit mile three, I got quiet for a little bit, but the voice in my head said that all of it would be easier if I just ate less and ran more, that I could solve all the disappointment on this earth if I wasn't a disappointment (that they wouldn't leave if I was something else). And the good girl in me, the one who believes in grace for the rest but not for her, felt the sun on her sweaty neck and said, "if you were more beautiful, Hilary, you'd know more, love more, be more graceful, less impatient... if only you were all those things. You'd even run faster."In these moments I usually resign myself, agree with the voice. After all, she talks so matter-of-factly, so practically. She tells me that I could just stretch my arms a bit father and I would be there, I would make it, I could become all those many things I wish I was. She gives me what I hear as good advice.But on this Sabbath day, I hear my voice creep out of my mouth, right out into the street where those long limbs cast their shadows, where I can hear pool filters running and the squeals of children chasing the late afternoon. "I love you, feet." A strange silence as I hear my words caught by the wind and then gone again. I exhale, push my way up the hill. "I love you, knees and hamstring muscles. I love you, abs. I love you, arms. I love you, I love you, I love you."My voice grows louder, my footsteps clanging on the pavement. This is not the day where I tell my body one more time that it should be better than it is. This is not the day where I ask it to run faster or farther, to go without, to have brighter skin and bluer eyes and curlier hair. This is not the day when I accept that cool, matter-of-fact voice in my head that whispers to push just a little bit more and things would heal."I love you, abs." Now I'm laughing at how ridiculous I must look, all sweat and hair falling out from its bobby-pinned obedience, limbs waving in the breeze and lungs gulping air. "I love you, body."On this day I won't ask it to be anything else. I won't demand the stride of the gazelle. I won't say, "be smaller, be taller, be more beautiful.""I love you."I will feed it those rare, sweet words of satisfaction, and hold it out before the world: one among the many miracles that sing His praise.Love, hilary