on the iPod, in the head.

Did you read between the lines?

A couple of months ago, I shared a song, “Stones,” by Alisha Mann. I linked to the free (and legal) download, the YouTube video—the whole works, but I never explained why I identified so strongly with the song. It was a busy morning when I posted it, but I also didn’t want to explicitly define everything for readers—there’s value in reading between the lines. Afterwards, I left my blog alone for a while, for I felt a sense of fulfillment regarding the driving force behind my ventures into blogging since January 2010.

“Stones” by Alisha Mann: I could have written it.

The song outlines an emotional and spiritual journey, beginning with “try[ing] to last on my own,” and ending with the realization that the “castle walls” are “hiding me from the daylight.” She sings: “I want you to see me, revealed and free. Please touch me; please look on me again. I can’t do this anymore on my own.” At the “shout of one man”—Jesus—her carefully constructed “stones” crumble.

“My imperfection stands revealed…”

In the beginning—of high school, of this blog—I built up my identity, my persona, but I couldn’t let anyone see my imperfections. Not online, not in real life.

Every post was a recipe, results from track meets, or photographs from events that I somewhat cared about. Sometimes I would write with more depth, like for this early post about happiness. I wrote it because I wasn’t happy.

 

My freshman year was a traumatic experience. I internalized every expectation, but I found it impossible to live with my anxiety, my insecurity, and my self-imposed restriction. I thought that my actions and attitudes were the cause of every problem in my life, ranging from confusing emotions about boys to my inability to feel successful at cross-country (whether that meant looking “right” or running fast). But as I said myself, “The problem is all in my head.”

All that came to a head a few months later in 2010, with a messy confession and the beginning of a slow journey to recovery. (This has been a common thread on my blog, but I covered this in June here and in December here.) Praise the Lord for every single wonderful person I knew along the way. However, the ill effects of my neurosis can still be felt, as I struggle to develop vibrant relationships and constantly confront my fears about life.

The song was fulfilling because it is the short version of my years-long endeavor to be revealed and free. This is post #126. I’m getting there.

While I’m at it, I want to share some other really meaningful lyrics:

Almost.

I start school tomorrow. Thursday, August 25. The anxious anticipation is killing me.

My classes for the first semester are as follows:
• AP US History (technically not AP until the second semester)
• Pre-Calculus (Honors)
• AP English III
• AP European History.

So, it’s history, math, English, and more history. I’m afraid it is too many history and AP classes for one semester, so I’m trying to change AP Euro to a different class. I like science more than history, but there’s only one science class left to take (Anatomy and Physiology) and it doesn’t fit my schedule.

Let me back up some. This is what’s been going on in the past three weeks…

Click for full-view images.

August 14-16: JAARS Youth Group Summer Retreat

Mid-Sunday through mid-Tuesday, my brother and I (that’s us bottom-right) went to our youth group’s retreat—both of us our first. We camped at Jellystone Campground in Marion, NC, and on Monday the 15th we went hiking at a place called Linville Falls. The purpose was to meet and assimilate new people: rising freshman and those who just moved to the area. Because of my position in the YG’s service team (ACTS), I was supposed to reach out to people, which was easy because I often found myself the odd one out (some of my closest friends couldn’t make it!)

On our Thursday night meeting, some of us re-enacted our cheers—one example:
“My name is David.”
“YEAH!” (shouted by the crowd)
“I ride a moped.”
“YEAH!”
“If you don’t like it,”
“YEAH!”
“You must be sto-ped.”

(I’ll tell you mine if you don’t laugh: My name’s Alisha / I like to write. / With pen in hand, / I’ll go till midnight.)

August 18: JJ!

The days in between weekends were a blur of twice-a-day cross-country practice and volunteering at JAARS, with a few exceptions. I enjoyed a mid-morning breakfast at Stack’s with my friend, the lovely and completely non-awkward JJ. I had the most delicious walnut banana waffle with butter, syrup, whipped cream, and powdered sugar.

On Friday I went to my high school’s first football game of the year. We lost 6-8 to the county’s “loser” football team. Does that make us the new worst team? Hmm… good thing I don’t care about football. The game, to me, is a purely social event.

August 20: Whitewater Center with XC Team

This past Saturday eight people from our cross-country team went to the US National Whitewater Center. We went whitewater rafting, climbed a rock wall (for like 15 minutes), and rode a 1000-something-foot zip-line. We spent a lot of time waiting in line, but it was a fun bonding time with the team! (Friends, forgive me if you don’t like the pictures. I love them because I love you.)

Keep reading for borderline-oversharing  >>

Lessons Learned: Discipline

In the past weeks, especially as I have started my sophomore year at Parkwood, I’ve been thinking a lot about discipline.

dis·ci·pline v. to bring to a state of order and obedience through training and control

You may be aware of my recent trip to China, from which I returned exactly three weeks ago. Within the sponsoring organization, Teen Missions, discipline is centrally embraced. Everyone must learn discipline in order to accomplish tasks safely and efficiently. There’s no doubt it works—I know of no other organization whereby hundreds of teens raise support, train for two weeks, travel around the world, and live in a foreign country for a month so successfully.

The schedule I lived by this summer taught me that it is very worthwhile to keep daily habits and times. Once home, I was inspired to apply disciplines learned from Teen Missions to my regular life. I’ve found that if I don’t keep the following disciplines, I am much more slothful, unproductive, and lacking both as a student and as a human.

Daily time with God: A habit encouraged by many, this half-hour every morning is a rule at Teen Missions. I’ve found it absolutely essential to my spiritual development and nourishment. I enjoy reading the Bible; I find it very applicable to current situations in my life. However, at home it has not always been 30 minutes, or when I am fully awake, or even at all. I must discipline myself to spend this time growing in my relationship with God every day.

Sleep: I must wake up early enough to fit this in before school, and an early-morning awakening calls for a reasonable bedtime. Therefore, I am challenged to go to bed by 10 o’clock at the latest—in China we were in bed by 8:30. This involves doing my homework first, not turning on the computer to visit Facebook or work on pictures, and closing my book. In the past the largest drain on my time has been the computer. Now, Chemistry, Algebra, and art take care of that problem.

Cross-country: Also helping me get to bed on time is cross-country practice. In my daily life, this is the most difficult discipline. I must push myself to run through pain, fatigue, unwillingness of mind and body. I must make time to run even on weekends and holidays. But like I mentioned, running helps me regulate other parts of my life, like eating at the right time, sleeping well, and just being more aware of time. For the sake of performance, I also try to consume less chocolate and sweets than I am inclined to eat—I confess that I usually fail when it comes to that!

I believe this is one of the reasons God wanted me to do cross-country again this year—to teach me discipline. It follows the principles of Do Hard Things.

What do you do to challenge and discipline yourself?
What do you do that stretches you personally and makes you grow?

A lesson learned in China.

There is another definition of discipline, usually a definition intended when speaking about children: correction.

“It’s Mental”

My coach has been telling me this since cross-country in the fall of 2009: It’s mental. I understood the concept, and I thought it was wonderful in theory, but I could never apply it as well as I hoped to. Near the end of cross-country I became better at tolerating the pain that came with actually racing my 5Ks—my PR (personal record) for the 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) was 25:43, and I was proud of myself at the end of the season. However, I hadn’t yet won the battle of the mind.

It is so hard to make my body use everything it can when all my involuntary and subconscious (and perhaps rational) signals fight back. In some ways it is better not to know about the way brains work, because it gives an opportunity to avert blame. When I try to run hard for a long time, I am going against not only a lack of oxygen and sore muscles, but also my own mind.

I usually consider track and cross-country practices as “good days” or  “bad days.” If I my muscles became tired quickly or were tight, I would just accept the slowness—I would call it a bad day and blame it on a lack of sleep or proper nutrition, or being out of shape after a holiday or long weekend. Some days this is actually a hindrance, but I let it control my performance too much.

Sometimes when I’m running too slowly, I’ll think—It’s OK that I’m slower than usual because I had a hard day at school, or, I had a really tough run on my own yesterday, and I will slow down even more. Perhaps I use this as a shield against guilt—guilt because I know I do, in fact, have more to give.

If it so happens that I can run with less effort than it normally would take, I stay within my comfort zone and just enjoy it. I would thus love sleep, healthy food, and workouts all the more because I consider them my foundation for a “good day’.”

These things are essential, but a deficiency in them is not the real issue for me on an overall scale. The problem is all in my head.

I have no bad attitudes or stumbling blocks about school—you can bet that I want that A++ or college scholarship or special recognition, for whatever reason, and I will do what I can to achieve it. But I have trouble applying this to running, probably because it involves immediate physical pain.

However, I feel like I finally overcame my mental block about running—a self-preservation instinct, perhaps, that I don’t need (no matter how hard I push myself, I am not going to die during track practice).

On Thursday of this week (yesterday), I knew it would be a workout day at track practice. Earlier that day, in P.E. class, we ran a timed mile, just 4 laps around the track (I jogged it in 8 minutes and beat all the girls in my class – discouraging my hope for the USA’s collective health!) and played several intense games of  Knock-Out/Gotcha (basketball) in the gym afterward. I didn’t feel tired by it.

However, when I started running the warm-up for track practice (also a mile) I felt really fatigued. We stretched and did drills, and then went to the black box. What in the world that thing is even for I don’t know, but it to us it is the black box of death when we are commanded to go there at the beginning of the workout, and alternatively the black box of life when we sprawl over it in between sets/laps. Mostly it just marks out half a lap.

Another factor painfully prominent that day—I had a sore throat. I attribute it to running in cold, dry weather, and I knew it would get worse the longer I laboriously breathed.

Our workout was to run 200/400/400/200 sets: you run half a lap, almost sprinting, then jog across the football field, and then rest a little bit and get some water, then run a lap, and rest more than before, and then another lap, and rest, and finish with a final half-lap and jog. It’s two laps around the track altogether. And the hardest part of all—repeat. We rest for longer in between sets, to catch our breath and revive slightly.

I knew it would be mental that day. Ironically put, I knew that I could not rely on my body to get me through the workout. My breathing was more painful than ever, and my legs were tired from P.E. I knew it, so from the first 200 I tried to keep up with Ruthie, the fastest girl on the team. I know that I can, in theory, keep up with her, so I make that my goal. I did pretty well on the first set, but after that it kept getting worse and worse. Sidney would catch up with me, and encouraged me with her presence or her words to push through the pain and get to the finish line. The last 50 meters of the 400’s were the hardest—the setting sun glaring into my eyes, Coach Stout with her timer and the finish line so close—I just wanted it all to be over.

At some point,  Ruthie said she was running on E for Empty or [No] Energy or something. I said I was running on M for Mentalness (I don’t speak complexly or eloquently after running), but it was running out. Before starting the first 400 of the second or third set, I remember wiping tears off my face. After that lap, I lost it for a minute. I dumped out the last inch of water in my water bottle, saw the water spreading out over the metal surface of the black box, and started laughing, and then sobbing. I wanted to cry—I pitied my own pain—but I was laughing hysterically, and as I was trying to take control of myself, everyone was looking at me worriedly. We started the next lap, and I was still laughing… but once I finished it I felt a surprising clarity.

I finished the workout well, but it was never a solely physical problem. It was me struggling to make my body run as hard as it could, with no limitations—breaking past the mental wall.  The breaking point brought me as close to insanity as I’ve ever been, but after that climax I felt like I could do anything.

I really needed that. I asked God to help me with the willpower part of track, and He did. I needed yesterday’s workout to tear and build up my tolerance and will, not just my muscles. On Monday we have our third and final indoor track meet. Marvin Ridge, after school—and if I can keep on top of my mental game, I can do my part in our 4×800 relay team to help us qualify for the state meet.

I prayed all week that it would not be cancelled tomorrow; it was postponed to Monday, which is better because right now I have half a voice. I am not sick—my throat is just sore from running, just like the muscles in my arms and legs. Praise the Lord. I run because I want to show off what God’s creation can do. I run because I can.

(written Friday night)