Friday, December 3, 2010

Guest Post- Going Fast

My fellow blogging sister, Sarah Markley at The Best Days of My Life is starting a series called 100 Joys.  I love this series...her challenge: in the month of December, choose Joy, and then write about it.  Every Monday we'll link up and share with one another.  I love the idea, and already find myself loving the posts...but this one in particular spoke to me today.  There is something joyful about the wind in your hair, zooming through life fast...and yet sometimes fast can be scary, or overwhelming or just plain too much.  God is calling me to slow down and quiet...to solitude, but I like fast! This post really spoke to me, I hope that it will to you as well.  I will be linking up with posts on Joy...won't you join us?






I’m teaching myself to run again. After about 1 and a half years of struggling to find motivation to get up and run {11}
to
catch
the
sunrise,
I’m doing it again. I’m lacing up shoes that need to see miles and hiding cold hands inside the sleeves of a sweatshirt. And running. I’m not racing for speed or checking off boxes on a to-do list. But I’m running because that’s me. And I’ve lost some of me over the past few years.
Here I am again. In my athletic shoes. Waiting to go fast.
One or two days a week I watch my oldest daughter ride a horse. She’s strong and sure and she’s already fast. Already, at roller-coaster-loving eight-years-old, she’s fast. It’s the speed, I think, that she likes. {12}
And she pauses in the corner of the arena, for a minute, between speed bursts and pats his neck.
You’re doing great, she whispers to him. And I think what she means is Thank you for being youIt satisfies me that she’s doing something she loves. And she’s doing it well. Sometimes I don’t take the time to “be proud” of her. But this afternoon I do. I watch. I listen. And I love her by thinking about the WHO of her. {13}
I called Chad on the phone in the middle of the day.
“The stress is literally strangling me, ” I said to him.
“What can I do to help?” is usually not what he asks but this time it was different.
I just let out a long sigh. There was no joy in this kind of fast. If I can only get the rhythm down between moving too fast or not fast enough then things might. just. work. I’m moving too fast, I felt. The list is getting longer and not shorter, I now have to swipe the page down to see all of it.
So I take a couple or three hours in the morning while the girls are at school, with my laptop and Jack Johnson in my ears and sitting with a cup. {14}
Quiet.
Still.
I’m allowing the slowness of life to refill me and not the stress to fix its hands around my neck. Finding the slow in a busy month {busier than I would have ever chosen} is helping my attitude. It’s beginning to help me see what is important. These joys, so far, are changing me. {15}
Have you been changed by JOY?
This a post in the 100 Joys project we are doing this month. Get ready to link up your posts on Monday and get the badge in my sidebar. Look for joy. Find it beneath your fingers.