Life is Lived in the Hallways

So after 4 months of training and 2 weeks of not really running (& letting tendonitis finally heal itself) I set out on a run this morning. It was a perfect T-shirt & shorts running morning. 60 degrees... beautiful blue sky and a light breeze. I left the house feeling lighter than usual...no fancy watch, no water belt, no detailed 16 mile course this morning, no GU packets in my pockets... Just me, my shoes, my ipod & my prayers cruising around the beautiful canopied streets of PV. Exhilarating. I found myself moving at a quick pace as my thoughts and prayers took over.

So one of the books I'm reading right now is Work in Progress by Kristin Armstrong. She's in short my hero. She's a talented writer, an awesome runner and just an all round pretty cool lady (from what I read in her blog and books). She's a Christian and she's real. (In other words, I'm pretty sure she would talk about God while drinking a margarita with me. My kind of lady.) Its not unusual for my thoughts to turn to one of her blogs or chapters when I'm running.

So back to her book. She has this chapter on courage, which has really captured a lot of my thoughts this week. In this chapter she says, "When I get up in the morning, I always ask the Creator of time to ordain the next twenty-four hours of my life....I want God's presence in everything. From the order of my day, to the prioritizing of my to-do list, to the extra padding of time between tasks so that I have more liberty to listen and adjust to any of God's changes to my schedule. I want him in charge of everything."

I've been convicted over the past few months about how many times I try to fit God into my schedule. I don't just mean fitting in prayer or church time, I mean the big picture. Coming to him with a To-Do list (kind of like I do with Mat when we need to get stuff done on the weekend.) I look back at the last 29 years of my life and I think that has been the consistence of my prayer time. Asking for what I think I need (or want) instead of going to him and asking him to "ordain the next 24 hours". I love this thought. Its so simple, yet what I needed to be reminded of. When I ask God to "ordain the next 24 hours" I am letting go, taking a step back and trusting Him that what He puts in my path is exactly what or where He needs me to be or to be doing. I love this thought. Its not just the big things... but the small things - the ordinary things, as she quotes "Life is lived in the hallways". My prayer for the next year of my life is that I can become better about turning over my to do list every morning and fit into His agenda instead of the other way around.