It was a funny thing, this morning. Lately, (and for awhile, actually) I’ve been feeling inspired to start my days by watching a creative baking competition and, rather than focusing quite so much on the ‘what’ of my day, tending to the ‘how’ a little bit more. This has actually seemed to increase my productivity significantly.

But, today, feeling grateful for inspired content with a genuine smile, when one baker made mention of an experience in her life that reminded me of a serious trauma, it felt difficult to maintain.

Why had this struck such a chord, I wondered, and why hadn’t I felt inspired to walk away from or just mute the program at that moment? While it may have been a moment of absent- mindedness on my part, recently, this kind of thing has seemed to happen on occasion even when I am feeling fully receptive and responsive; and I feel there may be a reason.

I have written before about how helpful the practice of running has been to me in the past as a low- stakes arena for the prescribe of prayer and even, sometimes, am analogy for aspects of life. Particularly when I feel I am trying so hard to do my best, but a project or difficulty seems exceedingly uncomfortable or daunting, I get to remember that, while there are many times when making progress that there is a sense of ease and flow, there are others that seem to require more endurance. In the past, during an endurance run, I have enjoyed sprinting at to speed near my finish line; but, particularly when I have beaten a personal best mile time, the last minute tends to not be fun. At all. Within moments of accomplishment, however, I feel fine again, and even exhilarated for having followed my intuition instead of my body and gotten results. Nothing was wrong, in other words, but I was taking new ground and, frankly, it did just seem to hurt. 

It occurred to me this morning, when feeling tempted to just put my sleeping mask back on a minute and just cry, to ask, in prayer, whether this was really something I needed to address and, a little bit to my surprise, I felt the response was a distinct ‘no.’

Every once in a while, this just is the case for me, and, increasingly, I’m thinking of it as a sort of exposure therapy. Why did God let that happen? Because I’m ready for it, and I trust Him enough to do what is best for me and others regardless of the sights and sounds with which I seem to be surrounded.

While I continue to believe emotion can be a better guide for action than human logic alone, it is still not the best, as experience is teaching me I can lean on God to tell me when to go forward and how regardless.

Armed with this kind of well-founded trust, I look forward to seeing the way the rest of my day develops.

-they developed in the snow

Fox healing