Change Of Focus

I’ve been working the last several months on learning to run. I know that probably seems weird, but I’ve never been much of an athlete (unless you consider shopping a sport, for that I have a gold medal). I’m not one who enjoys suffering by choice much, which makes the whole athletic thing a little more difficult for me. I see these people running in the 102-degree heat, sweat pouring off of them and I think “How Cool”. I’ve always wished I was a little more determined about competition and endurance but that’s just not the way I’m wired. Anywhoo…. A friend asked if I would start running with her a few months ago, so I agreed. The first few weeks we ran on the track at the gym every morning, and for the first few weeks I was literally mad at her by the time our workout had ended. I had almost convinced myself that I had some kind of physical problem that caused me to feel like I was having an out of body experience about 39 seconds into my run. At 42 seconds into it run my thighs felt like they were literally made of steel and my feet felt like concrete blocks. The horrendous gasping noise that bellowed from my lungs pretty much disrupted the friendly basketball game that went on below us. Lucky for me we moved our workouts back to the treadmill and the elliptical machine where they belonged. My inability to gracefully suffer was more controllable on the machine. I didn’t completely give up on running, when on the treadmill I’ve been running a minute walking a few minutes and gradually working my way up to….. This morning. This morning I got in the zone, found my mojo, Stella got her groove! I found a spot on the wall in front of me, I created a visual image of His arms reaching out to catch me and I began to run. I continued to run toward that image and found I didn’t want to stop. I felt like I was flying. My legs didn’t hurt, my lungs weren’t screaming, all I could feel was an energizing light coming from someplace on that wall. When I ran past our scheduled workout time, my friend looked at me in complete amazement, (I have that affect on people sometimes) and asked what on earth had happened. It’s just a matter of changing my focus from being on me to being on Him.