The Reward for Going the Distance

(Here's another offering from my docs file that I've resurrected.)

Summer, 2008 7/11
Today I ran again. That’s twice in the same week. I want to tell myself, you need to stop this or it will become a habit.
I only ran a mile. I know it’s laughable to call that running, especially when my husband ran two 5Ks this morning. He ran to a dock at the park near our house, and ran back. The reward for distance is a great view.
I get kind of funny toward the end of my mile. I appreciate my mp3 player so much, but at the end I can’t focus well. I just go into survival mode. I feel like my limbs are going to flop off my body.
In the beginning, I notice things like the tops of the trees layering against the sky. Tidy gardens testify to the studious care they receive. And other yards betray God’s care by their unkempt, rustic bursts of beauty. I prefer both kinds of beauty, the planned and the unplanned. So our yard is never perfect. I like to give space for God to break through.
By the last quarter, I know I will finish the mile. I’m reduced to a panting sweating desperate mess, but I will finish. I focus on the crack in the street between the asphalt and the concrete driveways. They tell of a meeting of two hard places, though they were once soft. One side is dark and mottled. The lighter side looks harder to me, density made out of tiny grains of sand. I try not to look up to see the distance to the house. In front of a house near our corner, a prolific mower left grass clippings in the street. They fan out a blazing green over my path. Underneath the clippings I notice small tufts of crab grass growing in my crack path. The little islands in the hardness continue to cheer my path. See us, they say. We are Life, bursting out of death.
As I stumble into the house, I want to write. I realize, I’m a panting sweating desperate mess, like everyone else, and it’s my story to write.