At church two weeks ago, The Husband and I closed our eyes along with everyone else as our pastor prayed, then we jabbed each other like kids at the dinner table when he mentioned our names and prayed for our pregnancy. I felt my face flame up a little bit, because that’s what happens whenever I feel the spotlight of unexpected attention fall on me (along with an unflattering and hormonally-enhanced level of underarm sweat; that happens too), and then I felt profound gratitude to finally be a part of a community that knows my name, even when that knowledge leads to a little discomfort. We are known, we are prayed for, we are kept. There is such great beauty in that.

Then last week, same pastor, same time of prayer, same closed eyes. This time, though, news of another couple who had miscarried, a dream finally realized only to be shattered on the floor. Their names uttered aloud and lifted up. I thought about our nursery freshly painted blue, the sound of our son’s heartbeat three days ago, the kicking now in my belly, abundance and loss coexisting in the same community. What it means to be known and kept, how to believe that whether we are walking in apparent darkness or light.

I grew up going to a church where one could sneak in and take a seat in the back and leave without ever having to interact with another person, and that is the style of living I find most comfortable: introversion, coming and going at will, never being asked to give too much. Now, when I step forward to take the bread and cup, I hear that He was given for me, my name uttered in my ear by someone who knows it, talking about Someone who knows me, and though it startles me out of my comfort zone, I am thankful. I know there are all different types of communities and all kinds of ways to show up on Sunday and in life, but I am thankful to have finally landed in a place where I am recognized. God knew I needed it, this reminder that I did not just happen, some random distribution of cells and molecules; but that I was always intended, designed from the beginning, that to him I have always had a name. No matter what is happening around me.

TH and I, at that heartbeat visit last week, were asked by the doctor if we had any questions, and I looked to see my better half’s grin at the one he knew I wanted to ask, the issue we had been lobbing back and forth since the first trimester and its accompanying anxieties transformed into the preparation of Now. So I asked it: “What about a few sips of wine on the weekend?” And I expected a stern look and pat answer. What I got instead was a smile and permission. And one of my favorite quotes yet from a health care professional: “If there’s anything wrong with him, it’s not going to be because you had a few sips of wine on a Saturday night.” I turned triumphantly to TH, who laughed, because that’s some language I understand: the imperfections that we can’t control, the flaws that were built in long before we had a say. I’ve had my hands pried away in recent years as I’ve learned what sovereignty means, as I’ve seen what I called shortcomings in a new light, as I’ve learned redemption by walking through it. My eyes that shift back and forth, my inclination to take things too seriously, my pregnancy getting in the way of work–each of these, and countless others, have been met with balance and blessing, whispers of truth and moments of joy beyond what I could have, would have, planned. And so it will be with this little boy, that his design is for something greater than perfection, that his purpose is beyond our ability to imagine or screw up. He has a mother who helps maintain her sense of humor with wine, and a Harvard-educated father who can narrate an exhaustive history of the East Coast-West Coast rap feud. He is surrounded by love from friends who wish us well, celebrating us in the midst of their own struggles. People who live life well and imperfectly, under clouds of insecurity and inability and infertility, because we all have the things we would change–and they happen to help make us exactly who we were designed to be.

We have given our son a name and we call him by it now, so that the kicks and constant peeing and wine-limiting have a proper noun to be pinned on. And so an imperfect and beautifully-designed identity begins.

I was going to write earlier today but got sidetracked by an emergency: a Ryan Reynolds movie came on TV. Specifically, the movie Definitely, Maybe, which falls into my Films I Have to Stop and Watch category because it was shot in New York and I saw it while living there. So…priorities.

The opening credits are set to Reynolds’ character, Will, walking through the city while “Everyday People” provides his soundtrack. It reminded me of my constant city companion, my iPod, and the hundreds of songs it contained that were the backdrop to my five years of island walking. Heartbreak songs and pump-up songs, mellow songs and feel-good songs flowed through my earbuds and served multiple functions: preventing me from looking like a tourist (and prompting people to ask me for directions, which I loved), and amplifying the already-amplified experience of life in Manhattan. I created my own world with music, and I happily lived there from the moment I skipped off my front stoop until I reached my destination.

I think about that same music as it flows now from my iPod to my car stereo, the creation of new landmarks against the backdrop of old soundtrack (supplemented by The Husband’s tunes, a major benefit of marriage), and about all the other material that sings through my life and gives everyday moments their emotional resonance. About the words not set to music: the Bible verses I’ve known since a child that have transformed from comfort to rock; the encouragements from others on cards and in letters and emails that remain filed and kept; the leather-bound book full of quotes I’ve transcribed over the years–C.S. Lewis, Lord Byron, Flannery O’Connor, The Lord of the Rings, The Velveteen Rabbit…Bill Cosby.

I wonder how many songs, how many words, I haven’t heard over the years, and I want to listen better and add more to my soundtrack. But most of all, I think about how rich a life must be to always have the gift of words to return to, and set it to music.

A funny thing happens when you buy a house after a decade-and-a-half of living in rented apartments: you begin to care about where you live.

I’m not talking about location, or pool size, or neighbor attractiveness quotients. I’m talking about the bricks-and-mortar construction that has become your home. All of a sudden, a scuff mark on the wall is a bigger deal. A leaky faucet is a Real Problem. And cleaning is even more of a priority.

The Husband and I bought our house six months ago, and we’re still growing into it. We apparently displaced some cockroach families when we moved in, and I love it when TH tiptoes downstairs first thing in the morning–while the lights are off and the blinds closed–and tries to sneak-attack these creatures and sign their community death certificate. Much like wives feel when they see their husbands hold their baby for the first time, I feel warm all over when TH advances on insects with a shoe in his hand, or sets up the sprinklers out in the yard. It makes me feel taken care of, protected. (Even if he still leaves crumbs.)

This week we had the double fortune of an overflowing washing machine and a leaking toilet. Within hours of each other. TH and I were still on the same team by the end of it all, but it’s amazing how issues like human trafficking and genocide can take a backseat to domestic disturbances when you can’t call the maintenance man to come fix everything. We’re here to stay, and so we are the maintenance men. I’m rarely comfortable with bucks that stop with me.

As I drove to work after discovering the toilet issue I felt my day had already unraveled by 8 am. I envisioned a flooded second floor filled with dancing roaches upon my return home that evening. My shoulders took their position of anxiety right beside my ears, my heart rate increased, and my old friend Worry offered to take the driver’s seat.

And then a funny thing happened: I told Worry to suck it.

Okay, maybe it didn’t go quite that brazenly. But I did choose to pray instead of fear, and because the best part of prayer is listening, I heard the relevant question pierce my heart: Which will you let be bigger today? A leaky toilet or my protection? And I remembered that home can be both a work in progress and a shelter from the storm, even when it’s leaking, because it’s held in bigger hands than mine.

From the seventh floor of the midtown crisis pregnancy center where I volunteered, the explosion sounded way too close, and way too familiar–even for those of us who had not been Manhattan residents in September of 2001. But on that day in July 2007, universal protective instincts kicked in and within seconds we found ourselves running down flights of stairs toward the front door, not knowing if we were escaping disaster or heading straight into it.

The mind is a jumble of mostly incoherent thoughts at times like these, but the few ideas that do fully form are captured in singular words: Terrorism. Bomb. Attack. Death. And from the corner of 40th and Park, looking up at a plume of smoke rising in proximity to the Chrysler Building and Grand Central, I wondered if any conclusion drawn from this scene could be too melodramatic. If now was the when, not if that we had been told to expect. Just like everyone else in the crowd, my instinct to run was momentarily stunned into submission by the sight of the rising cloud. Then, a second later, running won out.

But back to the stairwell. We know now that it was a Con-Ed steam explosion, an accident and not calculated maleficence–though you couldn’t have assured my feet of that as they raced down six flights of stairs. And yet, throughout my flight downward and the flurry of anxiety buzzing around me, a peace descended on me that truly passed all understanding. I had no idea what I was headed toward, but I felt protected in a way that transcended the possibility of danger. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that no matter what happened, I was going to be okay. I wasn’t sure what okay meant or how it looked, but my heart told me I was ultimately safe. I felt kept.

Disaster, chaos, confusion, turbulence, brake lights approaching too fast–danger has a way of distilling everything we believe into one moment. We are reminded of how little we control, and this is either a horrible realization or a great gift. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, but my future did. And it told me, via an undercurrent of abiding and unexplainable peace, that everything I believe in is true.

Fast forward nearly four years, to a day filled with different drama, work and personal issues invading my efforts at serenity and leaving my heart pounding and pits sweating, and I’m wondering if it’s all too much, this constant leap toward anxiety that my body seems to take by default, if it will be harmful beyond what I know, if I’m truly going to be okay. Shocking revelations coming to light, potential bad news traversing a desk and puncturing hope. Then, the car ride home…and that same peace descending on me. The reminder of my ever-present powerlessness, but with it an assurance that I am not as fragile as I think I am; that I am, still and always, kept. Held. For a Type-A anxiety-ridden control freak, this can only be news from an outside source.

If we look to the world for the answers we seek, we will always come up empty. Like Javert, whose universe only extended as far as his judgmental and false morality, and when faced with love and forgiveness beyond what rules prescribed, he lamented:

I am reaching, but I fall
And the stars are black and cold
As I stare into the void
Of a world that cannot hold

It cannot hold, and so he jumped. I cannot look to this world, demanding good news and restoration and peace, and expect it to always deliver. But I know now that I don’t have to. Being held changes everything.

I’m not going to lie to you, because I have nothing to be ashamed of: I woke up on Friday feeling like a kid on Christmas morning. I could barely wait to get downstairs and turn on the TV to make sure it had happened, and of course to see what she had worn. And maybe to make sure that the little red light on the cable box was on so that I’d know the whole thing would be waiting for me when I got home from work.

Yes, it happened. And yes, I watched the coverage later–all six hours of it. My only source of Cool Points Pride is that I didn’t rise at 4 am to watch it live. But that afternoon, I sat in the wedge of our sectional, popcorn bowl between my knees, and alternately laughed and cried with rapid-fire succession as two people promised to love each other all their lives. I felt transported back to my own wedding eight months ago, when The Husband and I stood in front of a beach instead of at the altar in Westminster Abbey, and the only queens invited were more of the Elton John camp than the Elizabeth II variety. But the universality of it all hit me: the promises to God and each other, the nervous smiles, anxious laughter, waiting champagne. The feeling that we were embarking on something so much bigger than ourselves.

TH was more of the Jerry Seinfeld opinion, the “what’s the big deal?” naysayers who remained above the royal fray. And I spoke to others who just did not get it, this excitement over people none of us know, the ostentatiousness and expense of it all. While I allow them their opinion (I’m generous like that), I have to wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, I’ll do one better than that: I’m going to bring God into this mix.

Watching all the pomp and circumstance, hearing the trumpet calls and clanging bells, feeling the hope that only overt love can provide, I knew that for me, this wedding was more than just a fashion show or even historical event. There is a beauty in two people choosing each other to the exclusion of all other options; a grace in a promise that spans now and forever. We were made for so much more than this world we live in, this broken planet full of disasters and loss. We were created to inhabit a kingdom that never ends, and there is something about the presence of crowns and tiaras, of gilded script and grand cathedrals, that hints at the glory for which we were intended.

And as if that weren’t enough, there were bacon butties and laughing at the altar at Prince William’s “I just thought it would be a small family affair” joke.

Laughter, large-scale beauty, true love. What about that doesn’t call for celebration? I could easily be one of the mockers, part of the down-playing “when there’s so much pain in the world, why this?” refrain. But no. When this world gives us opportunities to witness light and joy, and our heavenly-designed hearts whisper for us to let beauty remind us of gardens and lead us to golden streets, I gladly accept the invitation.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation…

It’s Maundy Thursday, and that word means holy. But my day hasn’t felt holy. It has felt completely shitty. Lungs-of-steel children screaming for hours straight taking a break only to yell at me that they can’t breathe. Broken fillings, rude parents. ENOUGH! I thought as I made an escape to my office, and I was not referring to the holy Enough, but to my capacity for frustration and irritation. How am I supposed to write about Jesus later? I thought next, because when I committed to a (holy) week of daily blogging in short, reverent pieces, my commitment was made in the quiet of prayer, not the din of chaos. A place whose noise and lack of cooperation will not change just because I stomp my feet and say bad words.

End of the work day, quiet car. The Husband tells me via phone about his own terrible day, and we make plans to hit the wine bar tonight. And hit it hard. And then I remember what this day means: the Last Supper. The Garden of Gethsemane. Not my will, but his. And the only one who ever really meant those words.

I come to the Table not for rehabilitation, but redemption. A few years ago, I would have given in to guilt, confessed the potty mouth and tried harder next time. Now I know about the sin beneath the sin–my constant dissatisfaction with everything in the garden, my demand for the forbidden tree. And his response–drops of blood-sweat in the second garden, an ascent to a fatal tree. Old redeemed by new. Perfect symmetry.

I drink the cup of wine now because of the cup he took then. I cast my deadly doing down, along with this unholy day, and I walk my woefully imperfect self to the Table. This is where I belong. This is home. There is a place for me–he bought it with his life–and I sit and eat.

I’m trying to spend more time in the quiet this week, Holy Week. I’ve finished one life-changing book and exchanged it for another and I’ve let the words wash over me, rest in my soul and change my thinking and my heart, all to help me contemplate these days that loomed before him, that contained the pain and the purpose of his life. His life for mine.

And today, driving in a silent car and just thinking on it (why is that so hard to do?!), my heart felt the weight of a simple truth that means everything.

He turned toward Jerusalem.

He turned toward the holy city that would be the site of his seeming demise. Head bound for thorns, back bound for whips, side bound for sword, hands and feet bound for nails. He knew.

He turned toward Jerusalem, knowing, and he began to walk. And with every step, he thought me.

There are not words enough in the world for this kind of love.

Speaking of mandated delays, the last seven post-race days were an unchosen rest period for me.  During about mile 10 of the half, I picked up on some pain signals from various parts of my body.  On the way down to Seaside, I had flipped through the training manual that got me through my first half and once again internalized the message to, when noticing such pain, invite it along for the run. So although I felt like a total douche even saying “Come run with me, pain!” only in my head, I did it anyway. What I didn’t count on during my endorphin-sponsored high was that the pain would not only come running with me, but stick around for the next week.  Cut to the pirate-walking and week off from working out.

(And in case you’re wondering, yes, I did just learn how to embed a link.)

So last week, rather than rushing to the gym after work or fitting in a morning run, I took it easy.  Very easy.  I read, I baked cookies, I watched daytime TV.  For me, daytime TV consists of the Travel or History channel paired with lunch (Hello, my name is Rigid).  And so it was that on a lovely Thursday afternoon, I was housebound and riveted by a documentary on the rise of the Third Reich.

My newfound focus on gratitude is causing me to flex previously undiscovered muscles, for being thankful is not my natural inclination.  So although I was trying to see my injury positively as an opportunity to take a breather from sweat and cardio, I was still a little resentful over being told what to do by a bum foot.  So I may have already been on the temper flare-up register when I sat down to Hitler’s face on my flatscreen.  But the longer I watched, the angrier I grew.  Then I learned that German Jews who left their country in the late 1930s to escape rising persecution were forced by the government to leave 90% of their wealth behind.  The choice was either start from scratch, or face death.  And in the end, the wealth left behind funded 30% of the German war effort.

I stared at the screen.  Thirty percent of the war effort.  So what you’re telling me, Mr. History Channel voice-over man, is that the Jews–the very race facing genocide during this war–ended up paying for almost a third of their enemies’ costs?

Hitler’s stupid mustache flashed on screen and I wanted to kick him, but my foot advised against it.

After the anger subsided and my blood pressure returned to normal, and because let’s face it, everything is about me, I thought about the war effort in my own story. The very real presence of evil in this world and its insidious subsidiaries who infiltrate my life like roaches before I realize there’s a problem because come on, who really believes in the horns-and-pitchfork Bad Guy?

I don’t believe in the outfit, but I believe that evil is real and personified.  I also believe in my own brokenness and the power it has to become The Most Important Thing in every moment, manipulated by the hand of evil to render me hopeless and selfish.  The way it can leave me feeling isolated and beyond help, defensive and screechy.  The way it has me echoing Eve in the garden, all “You give me paradise and withhold that tree?  What kind of God are you?”

And the ways I contribute to my own demise!  Renting out space in my mind to negativity, living as both reservoir and dispenser of constant complaints, dictating how the path should proceed despite my blindness.  My perpetual willingness to see the downside, to capitulate to my cynicism, to trust my omniscience, needs more than happy thoughts and a flowery journal to be overcome.  And evil requires more than an alliterative five-point sermon and do-it-yourself guide to happiness to be vanquished.

I need someone with fighting experience, someone who has been to the battlefield and returned, and will lather, rinse, and repeat that cycle.  I need a warrior.  And I think I may know someone.

God is not a kindly old uncle, he is an earthquake. (Jewish proverb)

When I realize I’m not the general of the army, that the outcome of the battle is ultimately in someone else’s hands, then my share of the fighting takes on a counter-intuitive look.  Resting.  Laughing.  Trusting.  Not taking it all so seriously.  Giving thanks (even before the win).

Turning off the History Channel (that’s quite enough education for one day).  That cookie dough isn’t going to eat itself.

When I realize that it is not God who is in my debt but I who am in His great debt, then doesn’t all become gift?

Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

I’ve been thinking for awhile about Lent: what it means, how I can live in its purpose, what I should give up.  And almost immediately I was challenged, by that voice in my heart, to rethink it this year.  Rather than “choosing the scene of my own martyrdom” as Oswald Chambers would say, what if I took something on, embraced something?  I hear every year about the sacrifices of chocolate and Coke and can only think, “This is what Jesus’ death inspires?”–this second stab at a New Year’s resolution, this self-ordained mash-up of religious ritual with personal improvement?  What’s the ratio of humble austerity to Facebook status update material in these choices?

So I decided to devote each day to praying for someone specific.  That’s the first idea that popped into my mind in accordance with the add-on theme.  And I felt it affirmed when the subject came up in conversation and I responded to the “What are you giving up?” inquiry with my newfound answer.  Uncomfortably, I might add, because I didn’t know this person well and my glass-half-empty mentality assumed laughter would be the response.  Instead, it was “You can pray for me.”  And so the conversation lengthened and deepened.

Then I came home yesterday to a faulty internet connection, and I woke up this morning to a broken ice maker.  As the frozen shards sprayed across the hardwood, I yelled for The Husband’s help.  After assessing the situation and politely requesting that I work on the difference between “the ice maker is broken” and “an intruder is attacking me” yells, he–naturally–fixed the problem. That’s what he does.  What do I do?  Well…this time, unlike yesterday with the internet, I didn’t cry!  And I only cussed twice!  And this is a victory for me!

So I went upstairs and gazed at the unmade bed awaiting my attention.  Having recently entered the gratitude industry, I wondered how to be thankful for this task.  Maybe I’ll just smile while I do it, I seriously thought, then imagined myself with a fake grin and realized that turds don’t polish and Band-Aids don’t heal bullet wounds.  And then, in my waiting for the opportunity to practice thankfulness, it arrived.  I looked at the neatly folded sheet and cover on my side of the bed–Little Miss By-the-Book.  And then at the twisted-in-a-pile side of TH’s.  I laughed as I noticed for the first time how cute it is that my husband still sleeps like a little boy.  And love, rather than resentment, rose up in me and I began to get a glimmer of how gratitude can save us.

Then I drove to work.  Along with EVERY SCHOOL BUS IN A TWENTY-MILE RADIUS.  The yellow lights flashing, the stop sign slowly and creakily flapping out, the traffic halting.  And me, I’m thinking how this is going to make me late since there no way in hell I’m not stopping at Dunkin for my #5 and a coffee.  And I thought of all the other mandated delays that occur in my life: broken technology.  Traffic.  And the time eight years ago, when I missed the Atlanta exit on I-20 from Birmingham and ended up doubling my distance…and seeing Chattanooga for the first time.  The thought had entered my raging mind then: does God do this on purpose?  But with an addendum born not of Eve’s “he’s withholding” suspicion: does he want to get me alone?  Does he…want to spend time with me?  The thought recurred today, and I am not kidding when I tell you that I literally responded in my head, “Hang on, Jesus, just let me make this left-hand turn.”

I wait to give thanks.  I wait to give thanks. Until the ice maker is fixed, the traffic is moving, the destination is reached.  I put my heart and all but the tersest of prayers on hold until the situation has become more manageable.

I wait to give thanks until I see something I deem worth giving thanks for.

And, as previously established here and throughout life, my vision–my ability to deduce good and bad from what I see–is beyond handicapped.  More broken than an ice maker, more blocked than traffic.

What am I waiting for?  If all is grace, then what is there to do but always thank?

When will I believe it?  And how different will life look when I do?

And so for Lent, I give him what, like everything else, is already his: my time.  Doled out in sincere prayers of thanks, believing what I don’t always feel–that all is grace, all is good, because HE says so, and He knows.  So did Isaiah, the prophet and poet who wrote that my righteous acts–my 40-day abandonment of processed sugar that really only serves as a self-reliant prop–are filthy rags.  But my prayers?  They are “golden bowls full of incense” (Rev. 5:8).  In the kingdom of heaven, where there is nothing but perfect beauty, my prayers stand out, are inhaled as sweetness.  And so it can be with me, as I look to my life and breathe deep.

Well.

That’s over.

This was the weekend of the Seaside Half Marathon, and The Husband and I, along with The Sis and Bro-in-Law, convened in Montgomery to drop off their children (one human, one canine) at my parents’ and spend Friday night there before heading to the beach on Saturday morning.

We arrived around 1 pm on Saturday to a tiny village clogged with people and their cars, all moving at a snail’s pace along 30A and through the town’s backstreets and competing for space with pedestrians and bikers.  No one was in a hurry–besides us.  We were aching to unload our stuff at the condo and head to Bud and Alley’s for some food and drink(s).  Once unloaded, we worked on getting loaded again at the beachside bar, which looked like an especially fit meat market for the occasion.

I have to say this because it’s on my mind a lot lately and I’m embracing gratitude: I love the time that TH and I spend with my sister and her husband.  Early on in our friendship, I had a vision of TH blending seamlessly into this (and every) branch of my family and pairing my third wheel self off with its perfect match.  I saw the four of us as the ultimate double date:  The Sis and me with our guys, laughing and living life together.  I had to keep those visions to myself because TH and I weren’t together and we never would be if he were aware of my stalker potential.  But I saw it.  And now it’s real.  And I hope I never stop seeing it, and being thankful.

Sunday morning’s alarm came brutally early, before the sun even crawled out of bed, and I downed some Powerade and prayed that the next two hours would fly by.  I feared a lot of things: pain, injury, embarrassment, failure–all defined by me and my fragile ego.  TH and The Sis and I (Bro-in-Law sat it out this year after claiming to forget to register) headed to the start line, located conveniently just steps beyond our condo, and listened to a shaky version of the national anthem.  Then the gun went off and so did we.

There’s something I forgot about races: pure adrenaline is a drug more amazing than Charlie Sheen and tiger blood.  The fear I had been both pushing against and operating out of drained away as my feet hit pavement in unison with two thousand other people’s–but two in particular.  I remembered my last race, two years ago, on a fifteen-degree Manhattan morning.  I ran it alone, other than the first few seconds that my friend AJ ran with me after blocking me while I took a pre-run tinkle on the grass at Tavern on the Green.  Three girlfriends and my new boyfriend would be waiting for me at the finish line, but that was two hours and multiple heinous hills and some potential frostbite away.  The Sis, whose own half-marathon completion a few months before had inspired me to do this one, was a couple thousand miles away in Atlanta.  It was just me, God, and my playlist circling Central Park that day.

But this day…this day had TH’s steps in sync beside mine, our nonverbal communication skills tested and triumphing as we jointly wove through the crowd.  We passed, and shared mutual smiles over, a girl whose asscrack was on display above ill-fitting shorts, an old lady in a tutu, and a man wearing a bikini top and Speedo.  We caught up to The Sis and confirmed with her that she had witnessed all three sights as well.  For 13.1 miles, we ran in perfect time with each other and didn’t stop until we reached the finish.  At which point I, grinning and near tears, turned to him for a fist-bump and he replied, “I feel terrible.  Let’s get out of here.”

We found the Sis and grabbed the Bro-in-Law and went out for a celebratory Bloody Mary- and mimosa-soaked brunch.  The revelry continued until we all doubled over in exhaustion last night.  And then…the day after and its reckoning.  I awoke with two bad knees and a sharp pain in my foot that persists now and is forcing me to walk like a peg-legged pirate.  My organs feel like they may fall out any second, and I’m wondering how exactly my intestines contributed to the race in a way so significant it caused them to be sore today.  I feel every bit the two years older that I am now than I was in January 2009, when I grabbed a Gatorade and headed home to a couple days of minor muscle soreness.  And then–the arrival back at my parents’ house today.  The Niece had a raging cold, The Mom had hit my car with hers and left a panel sitting lopsided above the rear tire, and–sorry, there’s no way to put this delicately–the canine child’s lipstick was stuck outside its tube.

Total, perfect disarray.

We’re all back home now.  My car is still jacked, our bodies are still in pain, and The Niece is still coughing; but the dog’s wiener is back to normal, so there’s that.  And in between doses of Advil and the Brookstone electric massager we got for Christmas, I am humbled by the remembrance of so many truths:

I still am a runner, even when I feel like a poser.

Training is helpful, but when it comes down to it, what happens on the day of the race may look like nothing that happened prior to it.  All my planning (and I am not just talking about the race here) is self-motivated, self-inflicted, and intended to make me self-reliant–and I am at my best and most free when self is the smallest part of the equation.

Running alone is no less valid than running with someone, and is a lot better than running with the wrong person.

Running with the right person can be heaven.

And finally…the Biebs’ anthem “Baby” can be just the push one needs to cross the finish line.  Who knew?