Running and Reorientation

"Ok, downhill coming up. Lean back, shorten your stride."

"Yikes, your breathing is getting short, inhale in the nose for four beats, exhale for two."

"Your shoulders are tense. Losen up. Arms at your hips and hands holding potato chips."

"You can do this. A hill. Lean forward and lengthen your stride."

It has been a rough lately.

No, nothing catastrophic has happened. There has been no life-altering event or earth shifting change in my life. But it often doesn't take a catastrophe for us to experience disorientation.

As someone who is conflict-avoidant (shout out to all my enneagram nine folks!), any sort of confrontation makes me feel absolutely drained. I typically handle conflict pretty well on the surface (shout out to my Conflict Resolution degree!) but it isn't an environment I thrive in. I've had conflict in my hemisphere lately. Nothing that can't be worked through, but enough that I've had to rethink goals, strategies, and approaches that have really knocked me for a loop.

I've been experiencing mild disorientation.

Disorientation can happen in a different number of ways. For me though, disorientation happens when the world around you seems to be shifting. Your normal orienting points have shifted, changed. and/or disappeared altogether. Couple that with tragedy, conflict, hardship, or just the normal "wear and tear" of life, disorientation can have some nasty side effects.

I admit to being in a cranky mood lately. I admit to being a little less motivated to do much of anything. I admit to being short with folks. I admit to letting my disorientation affect me.

So how do you overcome it?

It isn't easy. I'll admit that I had very little motivation to actually enter a reorientation stage. For the most part, if we feel the need to sit in our disorientation so we can start to process it, that's ok. Disorientation sometimes can't and shouldn't be overcome overnight. But for my most recent disorienting phase, it wasn't worth sitting in for long. I knew that, but it was hard for me to pull myself out of it.

Luckily I've got Teresa.

About a week or so ago, Teresa suggested that we try to start-up running. We actually had set a goal of running a 5k this year, and I'll admit to letting that goal slip by me. I didn't really feel like running, but Teresa was insistent, so we started.

When I was in high school, I ran cross country. I learned all about form, pacing, and the skill to keep going even when every muscle in your legs are on fire. So when Teresa and I started, even though I hadn't run long distances in almost a decade, it came pouring back to me instantly. Every pound of the pavement underfoot marched out a cadence to a song that felt like coming home. All the stress, the fear, and the disorientation of the last few weeks melted away. The familiarity in the simple act of running made me feel whole. No, the conflict has not gone away. Me running around the world won't solve it. But I feel more like myself. I feel more ready to face what's ahead, and to me, that is true reorientation.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that running can drag you out of all disorientation. The bigger the disorientation, the bigger your source of reorientation needs to be. That is why when the rubber hits the road hard in life, I believe, as a Christian, leaning on God as our reorienting center can enable us to feel whole again. After all, God sits with us in our disorientation, and Christ provides the example for the orientation of our lives.

But for me, and this relatively small amount of disorientation, it was nice to be reoriented with the sound of the pavement and the aching of leg muscles.

Sometimes that is all we need.