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I Run



I Run…
I run to face life...  I run to face my problems… I run to evacuate the suffering I’ve witnessed…
The congruency to move the body and stay quiet.  I relax my breathing.
You run to pray… there is a prayer of nature…to mother nature…to the all that is Divine… Even when you are broken… you run…you run through the brokenness…
There is nothing but effort, yet peace, even in personal rage and anger…you will oscillate back and forth between Anger, Love, Rage and Peace… You begin to dig deep into the why’s of life… The guts of humanity…
It drives me…when I don’t want to run…when I’ve been told you can’t run…you shouldn’t run… You will die if you run… Yes, I’ve been told that, now nearly thirty-five years ago…And I’m still alive… Your heart is no good… You have fractures in your back, ribs, legs, feet, arms, hands, face, collarbone… Running through kidney stones, burst ovarian cysts, internal bleeding, asthma attacks… You defy the tumor…you defy the auto-immune disease over the years and run it the best way you can with the running prayer out of your life so daily…the doctors shake their heads… You run past the point of exhaustion…countless times…because you’ve been warned…you’ve been told…it can’t be done… You accept no excuse…for yourself…to the point others take offense at your presence…because you run… You fear the dark…you run in the dark…You pick the darkest nights…the darkest areas and run through them…petrified, yet the praying mantra you hold at two in the morning cycles through…because you know what’s good for you… This is just what you do… yet it does not matter what has occurred… you do it anyway…by choice… to face the pains of life…the physical pain is disregarded…  It is the pain within, without… the unkindness of humans that smashes your soul to the point…you want to give up on humanity…so you run to fight the demons…of the world…as you run…you pray…it is just what occurs… 
I worked on my discipline of maximizing the best control over my pulse my blood pressure, it took me years as a child to master… but without running long distance I don’t think I could have achieved it to the point of having surgeries without any anesthetics …
I’ve run with the deer; watched hawks and eagles float above me…bats in the dead of night… Met up with a Bear in the woods deep… Met criminals in the process… Met the Big Bad Wolf… Met interesting people… Met saints as well… Stopped crimes… Saved birds… Been saved…in free floating form…When there was no hope….No way out… seemingly, but the gutter…awaits…Then you grab the back of your shirt, your jacket with your right hand to your posterior left shoulder and physically encourage yourself out the door…as if God were pushing you ahead…God pulling you to come outside…Life will be better when you run…and…you just know it…it is the gift you were given that NO ONE will EVER understand…but your MAKER will.---Jody-Lynn Reicher

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