Most people don’t think of sweating as very spiritual. As someone practically raised in a pew, I never gave it a passing thought. Singing and praying to God came on Sundays; playing hard with my brothers came after the sermon ended. I was having too much fun as a country kid to look for God the rest of the week. 

I never thought he’d care about an ugly cinder track that haphazardly hugged an unkempt football field. I was fourteen and the only girl in my P.E. class, the lone volleyball player in a gym full of tackling dummies. I could play football or run, they told me. 

What an easy decision. The last time I had played football, a defensive lineman sacked me. As in, picked me up like a potato sack, slung me and the ball over his shoulder, and ran the other way for a touchdown. I got kicked off the team that day. 
So there I was, lazily urging my feet to run the oval before me. I was an athlete, I told myself. This should be easy. I hailed from the town where Nike was invented, for goodness’ sake!
Yeah, but you’re not a runner! my other half responded. You only wish you could have their legs. That may have been true, but so what?

Nothing miraculous happened that afternoon. I just ran a mile and hit the showers. But as the semester slid by, I turned into somebody I didn’t know. I actually woke up thinking about running, an unknown force telling me to reach for my cross-trainers in the early morning darkness. 

And I obeyed. My soul was thirsty, craving something only nature or chocolate could provide. I ran on the track, the crunching of the decades-old cinder dust beneath my shoes and the thump-thump of my heart in my chest. I thought of the calories I was burning and how I hated the sweat that clung to me. But I pressed on, most likely for the calories’ sake.
Soon, I started venturing away from the track, toward the water that defined my town. I wasn’t sure why, but I kept running with the river. Often, my mind would leave me. I could feel only my body moving, see the trees watching my progress, and hear the sound of my own huffing.

And suddenly, my thoughts turned to God. I could swear he lived out here, on this exact stretch of road. The trees sheltered me while I slowly told them and their creator of my problems. Sentences scrambled through my mind and made no sense to me, but when my feet stopped, collapsing by an exposed oak root, I felt better.

From then on, I was hooked. Call it a runner’s high if you like. All I know is that running fed my soul. I ran when I was troubled. I wrote my best song lyrics hands down. I sprinted when I was angry with the world and pounded the pavement when it didn’t make sense. I heard the forests and the waters calling to me, becoming my own personal sanctuary. Church had its place in my life, but I had proof that God loved me outside of its walls. He gave me a trail that ran right past heaven’s door; the sweat no longer a nuisance, but an anointing oil. 

And to think I once made fun of flower children and earth mothers!

I ran into adulthood, went away to college, and married my high school sweetheart. He was in the military and stationed in a desert, hundreds of miles away from my beloved mountains, forests and rivers. 

No water and no trees. Just fields of life-choking tumbleweeds and ghastly goat-heads, a sharp weed that quickly became the bane of my podiatric existence. 

I tried running. But it didn’t seem to work anymore. I seethed with bitterness, my jumbled thoughts bouncing around like kernels of corn in an old-fashioned popper, refusing to disappear on my sojourns through the dust fields. 

I didn’t feel like a part of nature anymore. There’s no nature to even BE one with! I raged. My heart felt as dry as the desert surrounding our yard, and God was strangely quiet. Just like the cricket-free nights that now greeted me. 

My running shoes stayed put for nearly a year. I turned to aerobics and treadmills, but they seemed so institutional, so bland and unfriendly. 

Luckily, our hunger for home subsided with a visit to the coast. I eagerly snatched up my athletic attire and one my best friends for a run. She hated running, but she loved me, so off we went for a walker’s jaunt by a coastal lake. We could hear the ocean’s tide rushing in and matched its intensity with our conversational speed. The trees formed an inviting canopy overhead as we wended our way around the water. 

The bushes suddenly rattled to our left, and I immediately thought of the bears. There were several living by this lake, and I had seen them before, but always from a safe distance. This time, the crunching of a creature sent me into an intense panic.
Before I knew what I was doing, I dodged behind my friend and shoved her forward as a human shield, and perhaps as an offering. 

The quavering of the bushes stopped and the danger left us behind. My friend turned her head and glanced at me, still frantically grasping her sides. I knew at that moment I would rather have faced the bear.

“You were going to feed me to the bear, weren’t you?” she glowered. “What a friend!”

And then we both exploded in laughter so raucous, I’m sure the bears heard it. Sprinting for the lake, I tore my runner’s gear off and dove in, happy to feel the water welcoming me as a friend. In that moment, I knew that God had never left me. It was me who had ran from him, unwilling to stretch my mind past my idea of what is and isn’t beautiful and life-giving.

Once we got back to the desert, I dug my shoes out again. I swallowed my pride and I ran, though the dust stung my eyes and the wind nearly knocked me over. I began saying hello to the skinny horses in their corrals, nibbling on nothing, yet content. I closed my eyes and moved my feet, knowing I could run for miles and not smack into anything. It was a strange freedom.

And I heard the earth’s whispers once more, though I had to listen closely. Maybe I wasn’t meant to live here forever, but there’s no reason not to become friends with the desert, I reasoned.

Last week, I ran again. A rare rain plopped down at my feet and then grew to a full downpour. I paused by a tree, the only one for miles, strong and durable from years of wind and sun. And I danced, shamelessly and joyfully, my arms flying out as I spun around and around in the rain. Cliché? Sure. But a way to meet nature and God nonetheless.