Beyond Backpacking

I was talking with a close friend of mine the other night and she was talking about things that are therapeutic to her and she asked me what things served that purpose in my life. I started off with basketball because in my high school days that was the case; I could work anything out on the court alone. Then it moved to climbing. This past summer I would spend hours at the climbing center here in town just working things out in my mind. Since being in school, I don't think i have really found the therapy that just cleanses my mind of things and the irony is that I feel I'm at a point when I need it the most. She asked what about blogging as being therapy to me and I kind of surprised myself by not thinking of that initially. I have hardly blogged since I have been at school due to the busy schedule and loud dorms and lack of quiet time that I can find for myself. I hate justifying it because that isn't fair, I know I can make time to step away from everything that holds me down, but I don't. I just feel like college is just so heavy and that words seems like it doesn't really apply here but it makes all the sense in the world to me. There is just so much to it that keeps you going and it isn't bad things, just a lot of things. Time management and I have not become friends yet and I plan to fix that when I return for the final three weeks of this first semester.

Thankfully, since I have been home I have been very productive with myself. I have developed a little streak of laziness while being at school, for reasons I think I already acknowledged but no longer! Since I have been home I have been on a 3.5 mile run, a quick mile run, a 4 mile hike, and spent about an hour or so climbing around on Pinnacle Mountain. And it is just Tuesday. I have big plans for myself this week. I will spend a generous amount of time at the climbing center tomorrow and then probably go for a Thanksgiving Day run, just because no one does that and it will definitely take some discipline on my part.

I have come to find that the way I live my life affects every other part of it. When my room is messy, I do worse in school. When it is clean, I find it easier to focus and to just function on a daily basis. When I am lazy and don't workout or push myself physically, I see it in my spiritual life. Trends flow through all regions of what I do and I am coming to find that in an eerie way, they are all connected. The parallels that can be made from me running or climbing to how I am doing with God is so accurate. I don't mean to say that when I don't run, I don't love God or what not but the idea of me being focused and proactive and not lazy or apathetic is evident in all parts of my life. I come in from getting a paper back that I did not do good on to stare into my room that has been dominated by a tornado and I get pissed. I clean and clean, I wash dishes for crying out loud, until everything is organized and without really meaning to, I organize my academics. I find myself very apathetic to God sometimes and I find it hard for me to connect, to make myself vulnerable but then I can go for a run and break my body down physically, while in the process I break myself down spiritually and mentally, allowing me to stop suffocating my mind and give it some air to breathe.

I forget how simple life can be sometimes, if you make it that way. I have all this clutter in my room, in my body, in my life and I find it so easy to do nothing about it all when all it takes is a consistent mindset and focus to take care of one day at a time, in every aspect of life. That may be cliche but as I live out my life at college I realize just how truthful that has come to be. Therapy is needed, yes. Jesus withdrew often to have times of meditation and I know that there will be dire times when I must get away and heal myself, but why do I constantly need that? Why am I trying to live spiritual high to spiritual high? I think because I fix my eyes on them and not the day at hand. There are many reasons to focus on the day at hand and honestly I am a very small reason that will reap benefits if I work day to day. Picking up some clothes here, running and doing some push-ups there, reading a few chapters and reflecting on them...all these things are so simple and crucial and can happen every day while I am at college. It is all so simple and I have made it so confusing, no wonder my mind, my work, and my faith is in shambles. I pray that God will slow me down; that He will guide me through each day, not week or month but each day because I know that I am missing so many opportunities by not slowing things down and living by the basics.

I spent a lot of time talking about how to pack light while backpacking today and it really paralleled with all that I am going through. There are only so many things you need when you hit the trail. You have staple items and then you have so many luxuries that bog you down and that when you break things down, you find them to be unnecessary. There is my life, in backpacking terms. I am fighting a struggle to pack lighter, to hold on the essentials and in doing that I will be more comfortable, more content and my trip will be more enjoyable. So I pray tonight that I learn to pack light and enjoy my trip...