This week, I rearranged a few days, freeing up Sunday as a day of complete rest from work and running (i.e., a precious PJ day and a welcome break from rushing out the door to beat the Texas heat). The schedule ended up looking like this:
Monday – 5 miles easy
Tuesday – rest
Wednesday – 5 miles hills
Thursday- 5 miles easy
Friday – 3 miles easy
Saturday – 12 miles LSD (13.1 with walk breaks every mile)
Sunday – rest
Total: 30 miles
This week included running with God in its truest form–praying on the run, with or without music. I actually felt energized after my hill workout, which I did considerably faster than last week, despite more climbing. Clearly, a miracle.
As I talked to God on my next easy run, I came to see the parallels between running, my personal life and professional life, and my spiritual life. In each case, I have something I am focused on right now, as well as a vision for the future. The things I’m doing today are preparing me for what will be 5-10 years from now and beyond. Yet, the things I am doing now have inherent value, regardless of what the future holds.
Perhaps the most concrete example is with running. I’m training for the marathon in Las Vegas in November…which I would enjoy even if I never made it to Boston. But I sense my training for Vegas also serves to further prepare me for Boston someday.
Likewise, I hope to someday finish writing the books and launch the businesses currently in my head, but the business I have today is important and meaningful. I hope to marry someday, yet my current relationship has value either way.
Most importantly, I embrace Kingdom living now and delight in my relationship with God, such that even if this whole afterlife thing turned out to be a hoax or some kind of big misunderstanding, my spiritual investment in this life would not at all be wasted.
It’s exciting to dream and think about the future. Yet I’m glad to know that each day can be celebrated as meaningful in itself, while also paving the way to my ultimate destiny.
On the long run, God shared His perspective. I was listening to a CD of spoken blessing, and one of the instrumental tracks came on–one of those scores that carries the feeling of something epic. As the music was building, I was running strong and free, feeling fully alive, gliding down a hill with ease, the sun rising over my shoulder. It was like something out of a movie–part of a montage where after a few minutes of hard work, the character emerges strong and/or beautiful for their date with destiny (a la the Rocky training scenes or the Barbara Streisand makeover in The Mirror Has Two Faces). In God’d view, my whole life on earth is like a montage–just a few moments in the greatest love story of all time. (Spoiler alert: We live happily ever after!)