The Sunday evening sermon (aka. when all the hills are up)

About a month ago, I started running again.  

Over the summer, with all the work on the house to do, the foster kids to watch, and all the little things you have to do to keep life going (not to mention that it was about a million degrees everyday), I quit working out.  With limited time and options, it just seemed easier to pause for a while.  It was one of the longest seasons of my life with zero exercise.  (Dog walking notwithstanding.)

Exercise has always been my stress management system, and we've had plenty of stress this year.  (Not all bad, for sure, but we've had a lot going on.)  So it felt good to start again.

But wow, starting over is hard.

Something about the area around the lake - it's ALL hills.  All of it.  And somehow, they all seem to be up.

On my second day out, after surviving the first, I made it to the stop sign at the end of the neighborhood.  Since the route to town is to the left (a long, gradual, obvious hill), I decided to see where the road went to the right.  I had never been that way, and from the stop sign, it's just a slight hill to the horizon line, which I couldn't see past.

"I'll just run five minutes to the right," I decided.  "And five minutes back."

It seemed like a good plan.  You can do anything for five minutes, right?

So I ran the short distance up to the horizon line.  It took about 30 seconds.

And then I looked down.  Way down.  I had no idea that the direction I chose was such a steep incline.  The good news: the next four and a half minutes was all down hill.  The bad news: it would take all five minutes to get back up the hill again.

So I ran down the hill, and this is what I saw:

This hill is actually a lot steeper than it looks in the picture.

And see those two poles at the top?  That's really not the top.  When you reach the poles, the road plateaus for about 20 feet and then starts going up again to the left.

So I stood at the bottom of the hill for a few minutes, trying to talk myself into starting back up.

And I started thinking about what a great metaphor that hill felt like for my life.

This house is one of my current hills.  It's a big project, and a project I love, but it's been full of ups and downs and I haven't been able to work on it at the pace I'd like due to our foster placement dragging on.

The foster placement is another hill.  Between the lack of communication from the Department of Children's Services, the fact that they never listen when we talk to them, and their general lack of urgency in working on our placement's situation, it's been frustrating.

And of course there's the myriad of smaller hills there always are: nagging little health concerns, questions about the future, indecision about major life decisions, etc.

Sometimes life just feels like one long hill.

So I took a deep breath, put one foot in front of the other, and started up that hill.

Truth be told, I walked about ten steps in the middle.

But I made it up.  Barely.  But I made it up.

I did not run fast, I did not do it gracefully (or with any style at all), and I thought for a few seconds I might be having a heart attack and regretted not owning an apple watch so I could call 911.

But I made it up.

And as I willed myself up, I talked to myself: The house will get done.  Our foster placement will end.  My myriad of little issues will either resolve themselves or I'll die on the hill, which would also resolve them.

But I will make it up my hills.

In fact, I've been running regularly since my near death experience, and I'm pretty sure my heart must be about as strong now as it's ever been, thanks to the Pine Lake Hills.

And aside from feeling MUCH better, the other positive the hills have given me: the joy of making my son run up them with me.

I'm still on the hills.  I'm going to make it.

But I may ask Santa for an apple watch this year just in case.  Just sayin.'