I recently started running again after a seven-year hiatus. I tried for a few weeks last fall and the fall before that. But in reality, my running shoes have been collecting dust since I finished my last half-marathon in the spring of 2017. I could blame it on rolling my ankle a few times or the birth of my fifth child or even the fact that I am now in my 40’s and my body is showing significant signs of aging with all the aches and pains to bear witness. And while those things are all true, I think there may be a deeper truth I am only starting to uncover.
I am an organizer by nature. I love all things administration. Spreadsheets, schedules and checklists are basically my love language.
I once tried to explain to my husband that my brain is like a web-browser with 100 tabs open and my mind constantly scrolls through the tabs processing all the information simultaneously.
Which is why we can be standing in the middle of the kitchen discussing our weekend plans and I suddenly jump up and remember I left the curling iron on in the bathroom and a wedding invitation unanswered lying on my desk with an RSVP deadline of right now.
While this multitasking brain function is an absolute gift from the Lord when it comes to managing my family of seven with all of our competing schedules and activities, it’s akin to living in a scene from Inside Out where all the emotions are screaming at one another and mass chaos ensues, but twenty-four hours a day and with what feels like 100 more voices at times. My mind is a very “noisy” place.
As I have grown to know myself better, I’ve realized that if I really want to think – to have peace – to quiet all the “noise,” I actually need to drown it out with music. A constant steady background track to my life enables me to think more clearly and actually hear myself above everything that competes for my thoughts. This, of course, is perplexing to my husband, who prefers total silence when he is trying to think, and finds me absolutely batty when I’ve got the windows open and the music blaring. Clearly we were made for each other.
This kind of “musical thinking silence” always seems to find me at the beach. When I am parked in a chair with my toes in the sand, the sun on my face, and the music of the wind & waves washing over me I feel completely at peace. My mental spreadsheet goes blank. And I can hear my own thoughts. I’ve known this since I was a kid, and look forward to it year after year as we respond to the call of the ocean for our family vacations. What I had not expected to discover, and really only did by accident, was that I also experience this kind of peace when I’m running. With headphones in my ears and my feet against the pavement in rhythmic motion, the busy-buzzing of my checklists and schedules is dulled and I can once again think. It is in this silence – the space hovering between my thoughts and the melodic line – that the words come to me.
I first started blogging in 2013.
All the young stay-at-home-moms I knew were doing it. Blogging was still fairly young and fresh with ideas and we all were naively excited about the ability to share our thoughts and connect with people “out there” as our worlds of toddlers and tantrums felt at times incredibly small.
Like a baby on wobbly legs, my posting was tentative and clumsy at first and I wasn’t sure I’d ever get the hang of it. Sometimes I had things to say and other times I felt like I had nothing to say at all. I had always wanted to be a writer. Good marks and encouragement from the English teachers of my past had given me the hope maybe one day I could. But back then I was young enough to still be quite foolish and yet old enough I felt I should have some wisdom worth sharing, so the tone of my written words at times was muddled. Looking back now, most of those words are a little bit relatable with a hint of superiority and never really anything people cared that much about (for the record most of those early writings are now off the web and tucked safely in my file archives).
As I grew – in life and in maturity – I began to write about things that were more real. That required more vulnerability. I began to share about my miscarriages and my struggles with breastfeeding and my experience of being a –newly single stay at home mom of four– when my husband was sent overseas for three months, and the superiority in my tone began to fade away as it was replaced with more humility, compassion for my fellow man, and a confident reliance on the Lord. As others began to respond to these poured out words on a screen, my voice began to feel as if it had a purpose. To bring encouragement. To create community . To offer hope. To share strength in times of weakness. And most importantly, to proclaim Christ and pursue His purpose, in every season.
In 2015, the Lord began to write a new chapter in my life, although at the time I didn’t know it. My world was about to turn upside-down and I would be tested in ways I could not imagine. This also happened to be the year my friends finally convinced me to make a New-Year’s Resolution (something I had never done before and haven’t done since) and as a result, I began to run. I will spare you the details of my couch-potato-turned-runner saga, but note the more I ran, the more my mind was silent. And that silence, the words came. And while I thought I had merely resolved to exercise more, it turns out the Lord had planned something different for me. I wrote more blogs those next two years as I trained for two 10Ks and three half marathons, than any of the previous years, or the years since. It was a season where the words were plenty and flowed from my fingers with ease.
But then came the drought.
An unexpected pregnancy caused me to pretty suddenly hang up my running shoes. I tried to keep going, but after those early few weeks my body just couldn’t manage it any longer and I had to let it go. As my life circumstances changed and things became more complicated in my personal life, I found it harder and harder to quiet the noise in my mind. I was swirling down a drain, circling and circling, but couldn’t find the way back up. The words were gone. And rather than sharing my suffering, I was drowning in it. God felt distant and there was just nothing. So much nothing. I believe this is what the professionals refer to as writer’s block.
The ache in my heart went on for a while but then things started to get a little better. I felt better. My body was better. I had been meeting with a mentor and she was helping me to process some of the difficulties I had been experiencing. I had time on my hands and needed something to fill the space, so I picked up a pen and tried to get back into writing. But the words didn’t come. I took classes and attended conferences, but no matter how hard I tried to force them, I couldn’t get the words to come out. Everything I wrote felt hollow. Like it was missing all substance. A facade. Empty words with no meaning.
And then a pandemic hit. My family of seven, plus a covid-dog-baby, were all inside together, all of the time. My husband was teleworking and my kids were being homeschooled for the first time in their lives and we couldn’t see our friends and our world felt so small. There were days I felt as if I was suffocating. So we did what everyone else in the country did during that time – we went outside, into the fresh air, and I started to run again.
It wasn’t long before the words came back.
Even though I had prayed and prayed for the words to come, it turns out I didn’t actually want to hear them. I didn’t want to write about the pain I had experienced or the trials I had just come through. I still felt broken. The wounds were still fresh. I just wanted to move on and put it all behind me – not share it with the entire world. I tried to ignore the words. Turn the music up louder. Or turn it off completely. But still they came.
And I refused to write them.
I don’t remember exactly why, but at some point I stopped running. Maybe it was time. Maybe it was life. Whatever the reason, as I packed away my running shoes into the back of the closet the words were forgotten with them. For the last two years my blog has been silent, save one post after a nearly fatal car accident when I was compelled to give praise and thanks to the Lord for his sovereignty in sparing my life.
Which brings me back to this morning. As I was running, only 8 days into a new workout program I am using to try and fight peri-menopause, I heard them.
In the gentle space between the noise in my head and the sound of the music in my ears, they were there. Words. Speaking to me. Urging me. Breaking my silence.
But this time, I felt ready for them. Like an old friend, their presence calmed me and was a welcome surprise.
As these words from Kelly Clarkson, a power diva from my youth, dulled the hum-drum of the ever growing to-do list drafting in my head, I was immediately struck.
You think you got the best of me
Think you’ve had the last laugh
Bet you think that everything good is gone
Think you left me broken down
Think that I’ll come running back
Baby, you don’t know me, ’cause you’re dead wrong
I began to reflect on a recent situation. And while it was not an ex-boyfriend, there was an ex of sorts that I believe really did want to see me broken down. And Kelly had been right. The situation didn’t kill me. It has made me stronger. I give credit to Kelly. Her lyrics did get me thinking, however she and I differ in this point. Her resolution is “just me-myself-and I”, whereas my resolution is always “Father-Son-Spirit”.
Philippians 4:13 says,
“I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”
I think most often when this quote is used, at least as I have seen, the focus is heavily on the first part of the verse. All that I can do in Christ. But for me, as I reflected this morning, I felt heavily moved by the latter half. On Christ. Who GIVES STRENGTH.
If I was relying on me-myself-and I, I probably would be broken down right now. And while I’m not ready to go into details, I’ll say that I’ve recently walked through a season that was quite trying for me in many ways. And I am certain that relying on my own strength I would have buckled under the weight.
But Christ. He GIVES strength. HIS STRENGTH. Living in me so that I can take the struggles, the pain, the heartache – all that life throws at me – and not only endure them, but turn them into to praise and glory to God. Into encouragement for others. Into a testimony of God’s great goodness and mercy. All by the strength of Christ.
So, if the Lord has opened the door for my writer’s block to end and the words to return, I am ready to share them. I am no longer afraid of what I’ve walked through or the opportunity to use my experiences to give glory to God and offer encouragement to others. There is no hesitation to lace up and hit the pavement because I know whatever may come – whatever words I hear – whatever words I am being compelled to share – I can do it. Because the Lord gives me His strength. And I can trust in Him.
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