Walking

Be patient...long story coming...this is what happens when you go for long periods without blogging.


I started walking 2 1/2 weeks ago. We live out in the country at a crossroads. The road going north is the least traveled so that's the one I walk. The road is lined with power poles.  The first day I walked a little over a mile. When I got home I thought I might die. The next day I decided to go one more power pole further and the next one more pole. My shins were hurting badly that week but I continued walking. 


Week 2 - I decided to walk to the end of the road which runs into a black top. That is approximately 1 mile, one way. My shins had stopped hurting by now, but the muscles or tendons or ligaments, whatever they are, right behind both knees started hurting as badly as my shins had the previous week. By last Wednesday, that pain had let up though. On Thursday, it was raining. I decided not to walk and just got ready for a normal day. Thursday is trash day, so I took the trash out to the end of our driveway. As I did, I noticed it wasn't raining and thought I could at least get in a mile before I leave for church.  All the roads around our home are dirt/gravel. The rain had made them muddy too. I was trying to find the driest wet parts of the road. As I did I left footprints and my shoes were quite muddy when I got home. 


Thursday night I got sick and was miserable throughout the weekend, so I didn't walk. 


This Monday I began my routine again (not sure if 2 weeks=routine though... :-] ). We had a couple of days without rain, but because the road isn't traveled much, it had dried pretty much as it was on the previous Thursday. I didn't notice at first but as I continued to walk I realized that my footprints which I had made four days before were still very visible. 


This made me think about the kind of impressions we leave behind in our lives. In my life. I didn't realize I was leaving a lasting impression on that Thursday, but it was very evident where I had been on Monday. Because we haven't gotten rain yet, the footprints were still visible Tuesday and again today. I look back over my life and wonder, "What kind of impressions have I left on life's path?" Because of my character flaws, I want to think that I have left a good impression everywhere I've been because I don't want anyone to think badly of me. I know that's a pipe dream and slowly, s..l..o..w..l..y, I am learning it not about me. 


I've been reading through the Psalms recently. David is one of my favorite Bible characters. But as I read some of the Psalms I think David is pretty arrogant. Time and again, he says he is blameless before God or in, what appears to me to be, an almost perfect relationship with God. Part of me wonders how that could be. I am jealous because I don't have, have never had, that kind of relationship with God. I've been reminded that it's because he walked with God and was honest with God. He cried out in desperation for God not to forsake him or begged for Him to listen and answer Him or wondered how long God would seem so distant from Him and usually before the psalm would end he was worshiping God for all He is.


I love David because he is known as a man after God's own heart. That is encouraging for me because that is the impression I want to leave behind, too. It's encouraging because we know that David wasn't perfect. He screwed up big time. I know there are no degrees of sin but I haven't screwed up as badly as David did. And if David can, after all we know about him, be known as a man after God's own heart, then there is still some hope for me. 


These past 4 years or more I feel like I've been plodding through life on auto-pilot. Now, I am seeing that, as unintentionally as it may be, I have neglected people in my life, I've neglected God, I've neglected things that I said were important to me. I want to be...I don't know the right word to plug in here. I know and have stated in the past that I don't change well. Today, I want to do 'it' differently...one step at a time.