I Cry

The last three weeks have been emotional. I think you probably gathered that if you read my last few weeks of blogging. So I'm going to share some of the things that have elicited emotion from me lately.

Proverbs 3:5-8
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
    and do not lean on your own understanding.
6 In all your ways acknowledge him,
    and he will make straight your paths.
7 Be not wise in your own eyes;
    fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
8 It will be healing to your flesh[b]    and refreshment[c] to your bones."

What's interesting about that is that I was reading it in reference to the first two verses, specifically, "do not lean on your own understanding." As a scientist, as an athlete, I am inclined to believe that things like a stress fracture do not happen randomly, but because of a trauma, case closed. Yet, experience has taught me there is often much more to learn than I wore my mountaineering and ski boots for three long days in a row, before ramping up my running and cross country skiing mileage. Certainly that is a lesson to be learned, but seriously, I've been a lot harder on my body before and it hasn't broken like it did this time. So I'm legitimately blaming stress at work, loss of sleep due to work, and the chemical changes in my body because of that exertion, so I suppose there is a lesson to be learned there too. Yet, it does not equal my own understanding though. A stress fracture? I have only run two workouts in 2015! I haven't been over 60 miles per week since early November, this still does not totally make sense to me.

I watched the latest Hunger Games movie twice the weekend before last and cried both times. Are you kidding me, the Hunger Games?! That is not a manly thing to admit to. I mean, men cry during Braveheart, maybe Forrest Gump or the Green Mile, but the Hunger Games? However the story of this person of which much is expected, who has her strong moments, and her significant vulnerabilities, and is losing her naïveté resonates. It's like when Americans visit legitimately poor places in the world and cry afterward because we could do so much more, but we aren't, and we feel we are expected to do more, not by anyone else, but in our heads we know exactly how we are failing to help others.

I am telling you this because I fear people thinking of me as someone who it all comes easy for. Life, school, work, running, maybe I do well at these things, but they don't come easy to me. They chew me up and spit me out so I end up crying at the Hunger Games on the weekend. Okay, so maybe that's a little unusual because I have a stress fracture, but it happens.