First entry...worst entry.

I love to run...and sometimes I run too much, over do it and injur myself. "Sometimes" is too lenient...I do it practically twice a year or so. And when I don't run for awhile, I lose all the conditioning effects that I worked so hard to acquire, so that by the time I start over, I'm practically out of shape and a "beginner" all over again.

I like to keep a running log, to track my frequency, distance, time, etc., of my runs. I have a catch phrase that I usually put on the very first log entry of a new running "streak"....it goes "first run...worst run." That's because the first run back after a lengthy layoff is usually the hardest, most disappointing run of the "streak" that is yet to come. I feel like crap through most of the run, and hurt like heck for the next few days afterward. It takes me about 6 weeks of consistant running before I begin to feel like "myself" again, and can glide along at a "reasonable" or "respectable" pace over an extended distance.

I've been a "runner" even when I'm not running, for over 20 years. I had a wonderful track and cross country coach in high school who showed us not only how to run competitively, but how to love running for the sake of running. He actually ran with us (as opposed to the previous cross country coach who used to ride his Honda motorcycle beside us) while we trained, and put in the sweat with us on very long weekend runs. He took us out on weekend running retreats in the backroads of the country, where we slept in a rustic barn on the most uncomfortable cots I'd ever futilally tried to sleep on! He lived running, and thus so did we...and some of us still do. One of my former team mates recently qualified for Boston. Running is in my identity, even when it's not in my actual practice.

For years I've loved the quotation of the British missionary Eric Liddell, from the movie Chariots of Fire. Liddell's sister is chastising him for his seeming preoccupation with running, as he is an Olympic contender in the short sprint races. She thinks he needs to get his focus back on God, the mission field, and going to China. Running seems to her to be a frivolous interest at best, and an idol distracting her brother away from the "true work" for God in the mission field. Liddell answers her concerns with this: "I know He made me for a purpose...for China. But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. To give it up would be to hold Him in contempt."

That's how I feel about running...I feel God's pleasure in me when I run, and to ever stop coming back after a leave of absence would be to deny God the pleasure of my running, to hold Him in contempt! What an incredible thought! I HAVE to run because it brings my Lord pleasure!?! We typically think that only our inconvenience or our suffering brings Him pleasure, and we base that on a warped, inaccurate inkling of what we think God is really like. There is nothing like the feeling of being set free to bring Him pleasure...there is no personal pleasure like it!

An acquaintaince of mine counsels sex addicts, typically men. One new client came into his office, and declared at the start of the session, "I've had sex with a hot babe, while high on drugs, on the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. If you can't offer me anything else that will give me that kind of rush, I'm not going to waste my time here with you!" His "pleasure" had the three most powerful componants that comprise lust: warped immitations of beauty, power and risk. Nothing but lust can compete with lust, and there's nothing akin to this warped idea of pleasure that can compete. But....if one can think outside the box of the warped mindset of lust, there is a richer, deeper, higher and more noble pleasure that lust has no capacity to touch...being in the center of God's will and flowing with His pleasure! (And that's exactly what my counselor acquaintance offered this man in response to his challenge!)

Perhaps this entry won't be my worst entry at all. Perhaps....someday I can honestly say, as Liddell...."when I blog, I feel His pleasure!" Time will tell.