Please Tell Me Again.

 Tell me again.  Tell me again that I am too old.  Remind me again that I have AFIB.  Tell me again I have a train wreck of a left  knee.  Runing or even walking 26 miles on that would be a horror show.  Oh Lord, Tell me again.  I don't seem to get it. So, tell me again. Remind me again of the struggle I would inflict on my family.  Tell me again I have not been riding my bike outside in over a year. Oh Lord, put some sense into me and tell me again to forget this triathlon stuff.  

Oh I need to be refreshed on all the good things I could be doing for God if I didn't bury myself to brain-dead in ironman training.  I need that one word for God.  "STOP"   Or how about three words, "LET IT GO!!"  But I haven't heard it and I go on sort of mentally disabled with "What if" thoughts.  It doesn't do me any good to  go on hungering for the opportunity to do an expensive self-destruct. Oh Lord quiet my heart.  Tell me. Tell me again.  Maybe this time I'll get it.

When I Am Me Again

 The Miles of the Journey seem tedious and weighty at times.  A departure to a rest stop seems soothing at first.  However, there is a tension over time that builds and builds.  The antidote to that tension, for me, seems to be vigorous exercise, letting go of worldly responsibilities and other people's issues, and just go out with your hair on fire, and start again on the Miles of the Journey.  There is a sort of a peace that comes with that afterwards and it is like I know, beyond any doubt, that that was right. It was right where I belonged in that moment in time.  I was truly alive in my life.  I was me again. 

This is crazy stuff, I know.  And I could gloss it over with smattering of normalcy, but all the cover up won't make this any different.  No apology; I am just this way.  I must move and move regularly and purposefully to be at peace with myself in the long haul. 

But age says slow down and I feel so out of place with others my age.  I don't take any medicine. So I don't have that  in common with most my age.  I don't go to doctors very often or have procedures. Common ground is hard to come by with people my age.  If I say to much about how I feel about things and what I do, the curtain ggoes up.   How could I ever convey the joy of pouring yourself out in training  to those who are disabled to greater or lesser degrees?  And I don't think they really want to hear it.  At my age, fitness and health can put you in a lonely spot. 

However, the end game is that I am grateful for my health and fitness.  I am immensely grateful, grateful to God for given me this life and this health.  And the lonely nature of my lifestyle pulls me closer to Jesus as a friend.  "What a friend we have in Jesus,"  the song goes.  Indeed, what a friend who has been my friend during these wonderful Miles of the Journey

Born-Again Loser

Is that me out there?  Was I out there rocking and rolling in the water and waves with other souls of similar nature?  Will I ever be in a crowd like this again?  Do I REALLY want to be out there?  Does it hold the same passion, the same challenge, the same adventure as it did in younger years?  

This doesn't look as comfortable as my recliner does. This is a lot more tiring than visiting, sitting, and discussing how the world is going to hell in a handbasket or the latest in dietary considerations.  Yeah, this looks like it could hurt and there could be a risk involved.  Why take risks when you don't have to?  Save your life from that distress.  You are old and worn out.  What are you thinking anyway?  Do I  really want to do this anymore? 

The photo below stirs an old musty memory of being out there in the fray, feeling keenly alive.  This memory is so unlike recliner and conversation duty where I feel somewhere between very comfortable and very tired, half alive and half dead and ready for bed. The comfort of going through life, even at my age, and just checking the "being  good" boxes of life is  obviously not going to be enough for this old and restless  spirit.  The Bible says, "Whosoever shall save his  life  shall lose it. And,  whosoever shall  lose his  life for my sake shall find it."  I will have to find this again or something  else of similar passion and challenge.  Yeah, maybe I am to be a loser for God and "run the race that is set before me."  Praise God, I am a born-again loser.