a new peace and maybe even some redemption

I found a new peace today.  A new way to calm myself.  Those who know me will be surprised, if you go way back you might even be floored.  I ran today, and I enjoyed it.  It was me, Lecrae (Christian rapper), and the track.  I just went until I couldn't anymore, then I walked for awhile and did a couple more laps.  It felt amazing. Workouts are never regretted, that's for sure!  I'm newly committed to this, and it makes me really happy.  In the darkness of my junior high years, I would say that PE was in the worst of those memories.  I once had a teacher laugh in my face because I couldn't hit the volleyball right, and lets be real, I don't run fast or have great hand eye coordination.  This led to being last picked for teams/partners, one of the last left running the mile, the one that the opposing team got excited to see when I got up to the plate for kickball.  I hated PE.  I am perfectly competent in the water, but we didn't have a pool, so I never got to show off those talents in class.  In a time of life when I was already desperately lonely and insecure, it was an area of life where I was incapable and unwanted.  Running was a big part of PE, feeling like a cow going to slaughter as we walked up to the track, as I got lapped, and it killed any desire I had to run for fitness.  So all through high school I was resolutely a "swimmer and NOT a runner."  I love being in the water.  However, freshman fall semester I was in a class called Health Dy(namics) with an amazing prof.  We got to run around Holland in the fall weather.  Picture, cute little cottage houses framed by giant trees with leaves in every shade of fire, crunching through the leaves in golden sunlight.  I could have my ipod with me to run, and I had a friend who I paced well with so I wasn't alone.  Besides, in college everyone is more mature than junior high.  No one really cared how fast I ran, or probably more accurately, I didn't think that they did.  (Spotlight effect... gotta love being a psych major).  After that semester I ran a few times sporadically, and when I heard that there was going to be a Color Run (google it!) in Seattle right after I get home from this semester I knew I had a goal.  I'm going to run that race.  I'm going to do that.  By no means do I consider myself a "runner" but God is redeeming my hatred of running, a hatred of working out, to be for His glory.  I get in a zone with Him as I'm pounding around and around the track.  It's all for His glory.  "...let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." -Hebrews 12:1