Thaw.

I stood in the shower and tried to thaw the almost-six-foot-iceberg otherwise known as Kay Miller (well technically 5'10").  I'd just run an 11-miler and not more than 10 minutes into it, the sun dropped from the sky and the orchestra of the winter wind and a real-feel temp of 19 degrees began to play the ballad, "You Never Saw Us Coming".  Sunday was flippn COLD.  


As I stood there letting the hot water work it's magic on my aches, I replayed the last two hours and I couldn't help but smile, because Sunday my best friend and I laced up and ran all the roads we grew up on together and my best friend would run these roads with me for the next 15 days.  


My twin sister, Mary Miller, lovingly nicknamed "Moo" is home for the holidays and this holiday is so different for me in many ways for which I am grateful.  The best way being that I am not spending it working 70 hour weeks up until Christmas Eve.  I am right where I always wished I was during those grueling nights; home, for weeks before the holiday:)  So I can spend as much time with my best friend as possible.  


And this run was no exception.    


Oh it was a typical Miller run in that we alternately picked up pace, slowed it down, challenged a hill, encouraged the other, etc.  But it was intimately a sister run.  The kind where you can unwind your heart and show it to your Same-but-Different-Person and they can tell you what they see or offer a perspective you haven't thought of before.  It's so special to run with Moo because we get each other's lives so easily and therefore there is little need for explanation and a lot more time for gut-checking and heart celebration in the areas of our lives that we put on "hold" or forget to think about or are afraid to look at alone.  Fears.  Insecurities.  The "Am I Capable of This?" and the "Look What I've Overcome!" revelations.  More or less, these are the deep pockets of our daily lives that are "frozen" and we shockingly realize how frozen they've become once we start to actively pick them up and play with them.  We use our words to thaw them.  And then we place them in our pockets and by Grace we learn from them and move on.  This is reason #194 that I love runs. They start off stripped of everything but breath and legs churning and evolve into so much more.


Stepping out of the shower, I could finally feel my legs and my toes.  My cheeks were red and my nose had the sensation of being ben-gay'd or tiger-balm'd.  A warm ball of breath settled in deep.  It felt good to feel.  It's been a day since the epic run and I'm amused at how intrinsically our bodies and our minds receive lessons that are the same but so very different; how when we thaw, we feel.  And when we feel, we have the opportunity to give thanks for what we have and are given the grace to move forward.


x-to-the-o,
kay