right now

i have been running a lot more than usual lately - well not really running running, more sort of mellowly jogging. i am very much enjoying it, because its giving me more energy and helping me get some time to contemplate and talk to God. I find i talk to God better when i moving around and looking at the ocean and listening to amazing music (current favorite running music = Yppah). a couple weeks ago, i felt almost all my relationships were strained and it was frustrating me. I was running/walking/praying on the beach, asking God for answers, wanting Him to show up somehow, perhaps even subtly wanting him to justify my frustrations and make my struggles go away. As i was saying this, i looked up and saw a red mark ahead on the rocks in front of me. As i got closer, i saw it had a word above it. A few more steps and i saw. It said "MORE" and beneath it was a red heart. And i stood there smiling, looking at the MORE LOVE rock.

today, i ran again all around my neighboorhood and then on the cliffs and then to the lighthouse and then took a 20 min walk on the beach. I prayed into the wind, Yppah playing in one ear and my own voice sounding like whispers from someone behind me in the other ear (i have to pray out loud or my thoughts takeover my brain and i can't concentrate too well). my mom had just finished telling me i need to learn to be in the moment, a message i have heard far too many times without much change on my part. I walked on the beach praying and hoping no one would hear me and think i was crazy. then, ahead of me i see a tiny blonde girl playing in the waves. Her dad is watching her, holding her pink sweater and she is in bright fluorescent bathing suit and nothing matters to her right then except that she is playing in the water and that her dad is watching her. And then next to them two girls walked, a puppy between them carrying a stick in his mouth and they smiling and laughing. The puppy ran ahead and caught the eye of another blonde girl playing in the sand and they had a moment. The puppy then raced off to be with his own girls and i smiled. And i became overwhelmed. And i became happy. A few things i have loved with an inexplicable love since before i can remember are the ocean/any body of water and puppies/dogs. I was a little fish as a kid, always wanting to be in the pool or river or creek (we lived in landlocked ohio, so the ocean only became a love once we moved here when i was 5). Also as a kid, i loved dogs and would constantly be playing with ours or anyone elses who would let me. Also, i was a very blonde haired little girl.

Walking back home through the sand, smiling about puppies and blonde girls and laughter and watching fathers, i felt happy. I walked in the sand and started to walk in the deeper tracks left by cars who had crisscrossed the beach some other time or day. I started thinking about how hard patterns are to break, how easy it is for me to live in some other time, to live in expectation, to live in fear, to live in doubt and to always wonder what is next... my own thought patterns well worn and entrenched before me. Without thinking, i stepped out of the tracks into the sand where only a thousand foot steps remained, aiming myself not in a familiar well worn path, but in the direction that would most quickly lead me home.