Running with the fuel from a carefree heart.

Put some heart into it.  My heart's not into it. You've heard the lingo. 

Growth. It's inevitably in front of each of us every day and we choose if we are going to activate it. Spiritual, mental, intellectual, psychological, social, professional, recreational and physical. Yada yada yada...  We activate a growth area by putting and setting our heart into a focus.  An area we want to grow.   Can we put our heart into all these areas at once? Is it literally possible? Or must we choose a couple areas and then switch focus to when we have achieved a level we wish to bring the others up to?

Over the past almost 2 years, I have been entirely focused on development of my career.  My heart has literally been here nonstop.  It has been very hard and rewarding! But since then,  I realized now, I have not been developing the carefree, go with the flow side of me that I love so much about myself.  It's been left way behind! And I don't know how to pull it up to where I am at now in the other areas I have grown.

I have great plans for my day: to go on a nice run and just be free outside.  This will get my carefree side back! So I try.  It's been so long since I have been given this outlet in the place I love so much: my Colorado. Yes, there's been many excuses to not do it in the past couple years.  I'll admit that. But it was also an environment not conducive to the things I love to do most:  Running being one of them, and in the way I like to run! So I must admit, I have forgotten how to run from the heart.  Forgotten how to let my heart be carefree.  Is it a lost cause? Is it gone forever? No, I don't think so, but I sure don't know how to get back to it.

This is the truth about running.  When it's fueled from the heart, it is so much more than a workout.  My runner friends can relate.  With the heart behind it, it's a joy! It's stress relief.  It's an outlet for laughs, tears, basically anything.  It's my quiet place.  It's my reflection time. My time with God. The times where my feet feel free and that they are flying! I go and go and then realize I've run over 8 miles.  This is what I desire and this is what I've not kept developing through the past couple years.  My heart has been elsewhere.

Alternatively, When the heart skips out on participating on a run, it's a workout.  A hard, un-enjoyable workout.  It's when you are just looking at the watch and wishing for the couch. Every long second of that dang 3 miler.  You get the benefit of a workout, but the quality is not there.  You don't get that emotional flush; the stress relief. 

How do you run with the fuel from a carefree heart, when it's been on pause mode for so long? I am finding when you try pushing the unpause button, it feels stuck. Like a rusty button that you don't know works anymore.  Add the fact that studying and moving and adjusting has caused some excess weight, and it just isn't fun right now.  It feels like a constant, daily struggle of remembering when the body worked so well and felt so good, but it's a memory.  What you find today is someone who doesn't feel great and has put health on the back burner so the focus could be on intellectual, mental and professional achievements.

So I ask again....this balance of growth. Is it every possible to have it simultaneously activated in all areas of growth? Can you bring the others up to par with where you are in other growing?  Is this the work/life balance so many people talk about? How do you get there? How do you get the heart there?

I suppose it's simple. Like get back out there! Get after it again and just jump into the things you used to do that got you where you wanted to be.  But it is so much more complex than this.  Is it just simply believing you will be back to where your heart remembers you were at so long ago? How do get the heart involved and behind your actions again, after you are just SO done mentally from a past season of intensity?

For you, it may be something else than running.  What is the thing you wish you could put your heart behind again?  What area do you feel you need to bring up to par with other areas you've recently grown in?

For now, the only thing I can do is get back out there and hope the heart clicks in again.  I found this verse and I am praying God would change my heart to where it needs to be to experience a fullness again from the things I love!

Ezekiel 36:26