Why I changed the title of my blog

So I realize this posting will seem windy, but I wanted to explain why I changed the name of my blog and the significance of the new name.

The other day I was running through my favorite trails in the Corvallis, Oregon area when a thought hit me so clearly and I think it will end up being one of those key moments in life that I'll look back on and see how it set me on the path I ended up on. I love those moments of epiphany running seems to bring to me.

First some context: Recently I found my passion for running after having taken several years away from it. In fact it's really been 6 years since I've had this kind love for running. (How I found it again is another story. Maybe I'll post it sometime.)

I got back into running a little too exuberantly. After taking those years off, it was only a few weeks of training before I ran 40 miles in three days and played 36 holes of golf. While doing some speed training on the third day of that stretch I “tweaked” my hamstring and started feeling pain in my hip as well. I didn’t do a good job of resting to let the injury heal after that and for the next 7 weeks + I struggled to reconcile my reclaimed passion with my body’s need for healing rest.

I prayed with fervor, continually asking God to heal me and allow me to follow this “bliss”. For me running is a spiritual experience. When I’m on my own in the woods, early in the morning, slightly chilled in the mist that shrouds the top of the evergreens on the hills, I feel so blessed. My heart responds in worship and gratitude to my creator and savior, and I have a sense of simple communion with the God who loves me.

I found it difficult to understand why God would gift me with the talent to run, fill me with a burning to run, bless me with His presence when I run, and then not allow me to run. Of course, God is not a vindictive sadist, and I realize I brought this injury on with my own lack of judgment. Nonetheless, I argued to God that it only made sense to heal me and allow me to spend those times worshipping Him.

As time continued I began to get paranoid. Maybe God, in His omniscience, knew that running would bring me down a wrong path and had allowed my hip injury in order to spare me from something. Of course, this thought scared me and seemed so tragic. “Whatever lesson you want me to learn, Lord, please teach it to me without taking running away from me”, I kept praying.

I started stretching, icing, resting, taking anti-inflammatories, going to the chiropractor, got a sports massage, and wasn’t seeing much progress. So I tried something different. I found a book detailing an approach to running based on engaging your core muscles, rather than using your leg muscles. Many of the ideas of the author were gleaned from martial arts. The premise is something close to the idea of leverage. That is, utilizing your core abdominal muscles, the rotation of your spine, and the reaction of your leg tendons you can run the same mileage- or even more –with much less wear and tear on your body.

One of the key principles is to adjust your posture. Incorrect posture causes undue stress on nearly every area of your body. The principle of engaging my core muscles, and utilizing the leverage of my spine seemed intuitive to me. The principle of adjusting my posture in general, and while running seemed like a no-brainer, but something I had sorely neglected.

As I worked on my posture, continued icing and taking anti-inflammatories, and worked on my flexibility I hoped for positive results. More importantly I had come to a place of surrender to the Lord. I had decided in my heart regardless of whether I got my way, I would praise His name and surrender myself in obedience to the will of Christ. Of course, I was still honest with God that I would be sorely disappointed if I couldn’t run. The important thing to me was that I would say “blessed be your name” (great song) regardless of my circumstances. I trusted that if I was not able to run it would be for my best whether I could see that or not. In the meantime I would try my best to run again and ask for God’s blessing in my efforts.

I did begin to see results, and now I’m cautiously optimistic. I’ve run twice in a row without pain. It had been something like 8 weeks since I had run without pain, so those two runs have me very hopeful (one of those was today…see the posting just before this).

The real story behind all this is what I realized about both my running and life. As stated earlier, the idea behind the book I’ve been reading is if your body isn’t properly aligned you will pay the price. If your posture is incorrect you will be on a path to pain. You may not experience it right away, but over the years you will put undue stress on your joints and muscles eventually wearing them down. You can keep it up for so long, but at an unexpected time you will break down. Additionally, if you use your muscles in a less than optimal way they will wear down. You can do weight training to delay this “meltdown”, but it will still come.

The only real solution is to correct your posture and run from your core. If you drive your movements from your core you will not only run farther without breaking down, you will also recover faster from your runs.

Back to the moment of epiphany on the Corvallis trail…I was focusing on my posture and on using my core to drive my movements, when I suddenly realized, this is the same problem I have had in my life. It doesn’t just apply to my running. Suddenly it was so clear to me.

In life, just as in running, if you are “running” with poor posture or by using your “leg muscles” instead of your core you are going to be causing stress points which, if not addressed, will cause you to break down. So simple, and yet we fail to notice this so often!
Think about it for a moment, and let me paint the picture a bit more. If we are leading ourselves in our careers, relationships, and life decisions, we are using our “leg muscles”. What’s more, if we’re not spending time reading God’s word and meditating in prayer, our core is so weak our life’s “posture” will surely be twisted and tilted in unhealthy ways.

No wonder so many are tired, stressed, weak, and wondering why things are not going their way. Just as I wasn’t running from my core, so many of us aren’t living from the core. And what is our core to be if not Christ Himself? I realized, without spending time in communion with Christ, allowing him to correct my spiritual posture, I am creating unnecessary stress points in my life. I’m sure there are many I don’t even know about. They’re festering, gaining intensity, and eventually will strike and leave me wondering what happened.

This is no new concept and I don’t intend to claim it as mine. Christ modeled this “postural” approach by spending countless hours in communion with the Father. He was aligning Himself to ensure His core was filled with the will of God and He would be moving with the leverage God gave him, rather than of His own will.

While it’s not a new concept, it is a new mental image for me, and something I want to spend time thinking about. I may develop the concept for myself as I think about it more, and while it’s pretty raw right now, I hope this has spurred you to think about your spiritual posture and core. Is your spiritual spine twisted? Are you getting a hunched back? Is your core strong? Do you have a spiritual “six-pack” or a “spare tire”?

So let’s focus on meditating on God’s word, spending time in communion with Him, and allow him to adjust our posture, and build up the strength of our core so we can “run the race and fight the good fight”!!