In the Dark

Running isn’t really therapy for me; no, it’s more or less the downfall of my OCD brain. I count steps, calculate percentages, compare paces, and more math functions I can’t even remember. Not because I want to, but because it just comes naturally for me. My brain processes numbers.

About this time last year (maybe a touch earlier in August), I had been on a running hiatus pretty much since the weeks of my half and my duathlon. With full journals and a renewed faith, I decided I needed a new outlet, a place to get away from all these thoughts, and I hit the pavement, intent to just run. To get from it what others do. To be in a place where I couldn’t write it or process it, just think it and pray about it and keep moving.

I got to a spot in the road that evening that I had run by tons of times during my training. It’s no spot in particular, but it’s the spot where my thoughts once got the best of me. I kept having terrible “what if” thoughts, and I broke down, literally weeping in the street. I took the quickest route home and decided maybe running with my thoughts wasn’t for me after all. It actually took quite a bit for me to get back out there in any capacity for fear it would happen again. I let myself do math on my runs again after that. I have made a conscious effort to pray for things in our neighborhood as I run or pray for things on my heart.

As I ran by that spot in the dark this morning, I was so grateful for where I’d been. So grateful that God has brought me so far. So grateful that even though that spot was once dark, He brought me into the light. I don’t have to have “what if” thoughts; He’s already covered them. I run by that spot nearly every time I run, so I’m not quite sure what was different this morning, but as I was praying for our neighborhood and the school, I was just hit with a huge sigh of relief. A huge thank you for not letting that happen again-type thing.

It’s the type of relief you can’t get on your own. The type that comes with a peace only God can bring. I hadn’t thought about that day much at all in the past year, but it was a peaceful thought this morning–a place of reconciliation.