Rest.

I did something to my right foot. It's maybe a pulled muscle or a bruise or something, but my heel is all swollen and lovely and my ankle is stiff. I blame my 6yo running shoes. They're utterly destroyed, but I don't want to replace them until I can get good shoes and I certainly can't afford that now, so I deal. It's uncomfortable most of the time. Seriously, each morning I two-foot each stair down. It takes me a couple minutes because my feet are so stiff and need to warm up. And that's just on a normal day. This stupid injury has me gimping around. I've been running anyway because it brings me emotional sanity and I have this rule that I can't eat anything more substantial than fruit or veggies unless I exercise, but it's really painful.

I'm sure I should take a break from running and allow it to heal. I mean, logically, this is the right course of action. But I'm not always entirely logical. I can't even imagine taking a break. Well, I can imagine it but it involves anxiety and guilt and stress, and that seems more painful to me than the physicality of my injury.

This was the last week of my church's "Stumbling On Happiness" series. Today our pastor, Dave Ferguson, spoke about self-care. The idea that we aren't able to serve others, serve the Lord, without being in good physical and spiritual shape. He asked us to think of how we take care of our bodies. Do we eat well? Exercise? And what about our spirit? Are we taking time to pray and read the Bible? Do we meditate and journal? Do we maybe have a list of the things we could be doing better? Well, of course. Everyone does. And at this point I was totally expecting him to discuss our lists and what we need to be doing.

Then Dave surprised me by saying he wouldn't be talking about that all. And he brought up the idea of rest. It wasn't the entire focus of his talk today, but it struck a chord. Because I don't allow myself to rest. Not emotionally, not physically. It's funny, because I think I'm taking such good care of myself by exercising and eating well and never sitting down, that I'm helping my emotional state by keeping myself working and busy. And maybe that's not the case at all. A friend told me earlier this week that an injury might do me well, because it would force me to slow down. I rolled my eyes at him, but now I think there was some merit to what he said.

Sometimes taking care of yourself is allowing your body and mind a chance to rest. To recoup.

It's not in my nature to be still, but I think I need to do that. At least I need to try. I'm going to skip my run today. Not gonna lie, I'll probably do the elliptical instead, but it's a start. And I'm putting myself to bed early. I won't sleep, but I'm going to try to read. Try to slow my brain, allow myself to be immersed in a story and stop fretting about my life for a few minutes.

Listening to: The Civil Wars

xo. kb.