when you're tired of running

Our tennis-shoe soles were thumping against the moving black belt of a treadmill, last week, when I mentioned always being the new girl. My family's constant moving (every year or several months), meant the locals wanted to meet us, talk with us, get to know us.

Over time, this became a way of life: going, leaving, changing, uprooting, running.

Nobody really ever knows the new girl too long, before she's gone again.

And so, the last couple of years being part of a small group of people, long term, means dropping the "new" girl. I realized I didn't know how not to be that girl.

Living in temporary relationships means living a shallowed eternal perspective. I can't do "church" by myself like I thought after leaving it behind as a teenage-bride.

So on the cusp of changing that, of growing deeper roots, I determined to stay with a group of folks, long-suffering eachother, loving over differences, giving Grace to mistakes and flaws, forgiving myself as much as others, learning to be who I really am without a label to hide behind.

But in my heart, I doubted.

"What if the 'new' girl is really dull and boring? What am I beyond the 'get-to-know-ya' stage? What's behind the plain me, once 'new' has rubbed itself worn? I fear my polished arrival will become lackluster once their interest wanes from familiarity."

This week, a lost calve wandered on to our farm. His mother-less state drove him to a small herd grazing on our front pastures, but none with milk he needed.

It was by accident we noticed him at all, his brown coat blending inbetween a couple of brown Jerseys.
He tried to nurse, but these were motherless heifers. His long and knobby legs revealing his weak state of infancy. With a bottle of milk in hand, we tried to coax, chase, corner, entice, soothe, capture, all to no avail, not even within arms reach. He ran, always running from helping hands, always driven by fear and panic to go further from the thing he needed for life. Staying two steps ahead, leaping across obstacles, or struggling against barbed wire, he ran.

I've ran, hard.

Alone, my infant spirit tried to survive, tried to escape Helping Hands, leaped away at my own peril, cornered myself by driven fears, hid behind labels (good or bad) as way to be something other than me.

Yesterday, we called a neighbor friend who was able to reunite the calve to his mother so he'll receive nourishment needed to grow and mature.

And I've been nourished by spiritual milk, and we must go on, mature full-grown, to connect with this herd, called the Body and learn this way of communion.

Being humble means we are weak. And that we know it.

But even more, being humble means, we let others know it too.

"The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings; and you shall go out and grow fat like stall-fed calves." Malachi 4:2

with Ann....