slacker

I was determined to have a real workout. I was out of town for a meeting and my travel schedule was interrupting my training schedule. In order to stay on track and be prepared for my half marathon that was 2 months away, I knew I needed to go for a run. And it couldn’t be just any run. It had to be a good run, a hard run, a challenging run. And so I headed out the door, hoping to find good weather and a safe route for this important workout.

Shortly into my run, I came upon a gated park. The path looked inviting, leading off into the Ponderosa Pine forest, and the sign saying “Residents and Guests Only” made me want to discover what was behind the barrier even more. And so I took the path. It was a great start to my run – semi-paved and shaded by the trees, it led me to increase my pace and enter into that intense workout zone. I was cruising along when all of a sudden I was confronted by a hill. No, actually, it was a small mountain that rose up in the forest and taunted me from a distance. I judged its distance and incline and determined to keep running so that I could still get in a good training run.

I began to suck wind 2 minutes into my ascent. This was a serious hill with a serious incline and definitely not a place for a long distance training run. I needed to keep running. I needed to get a good run in during this trip or my whole training schedule would be thrown off. I needed to log these miles so I would be prepared for the miles of my race. But there was no way I could keep running up this hill. I was gasping for air, my hamstrings were screaming, and I was starting to get dizzy. So I stopped running.

Feeling defeated, I walked as fast as I could. Hiked, actually, as I was now on a dirt/rock path and was trying desperately to avoid twisting my ankle on the boulders. And the whole time, I was cursing this stupid path I decided to take. Private park? Nothing special here except a ridiculously steep hill. Training schedule? Shattered because I couldn’t run at the pace I needed to run. This crazy hill had ruined my workout and my day. All of those thoughts ran through my mind as I continued to climb and hope desperately that around the next bend would be the flat, beautiful part of the path that would redeem my run.

When all of a sudden I looked up. My eyes shifted from scanning the path for boulders to the view above the trees. And I was blown away. There beside me was a panoramic view of the valley – the homes in the neighborhood, the school at the corner, the fields of sunflowers across the street that faded into the base of the mountain peaks that rose up beyond the clouds. I could see for miles, and it was glorious.

I slowed my pace then. I didn’t care that I was missing out on an intense workout, because I was experiencing the intensity of the beauty around me. I had been so focused on my goal that I almost missed the opportunity that rose in front of me. And I had to laugh at myself. My workout was no longer the most important accomplishment of the day – what I valued more was being in the moment, being present to the beauty of the world around me.

I had been so angry about having to slack off my pace to climb the hill that I failed to see that the hill was leading me to a beautiful place. And I realized that I would have missed it entirely if I hadn’t been a slacker.

I get caught up in my regular life, too. I get focused on a goal and feel pressure to meet expectations from within and from those around me. But more often than not, the antidote to that hyper-focus and pressure is slacking off, taking a deep breath, and looking around. Because that’s where the Spirit is at work, swirling around me in creative bursts of energy and life, drawing me into new possibilities.

I’m grateful for that hill. I’m grateful I was forced to be a slacker. And I’m grateful for the chance to notice all the ways the Spirit is creating and renewing and completing life around and within me.