I will follow you ten thousand miles

​After my run yesterday, I can say "I have run ten thousand miles."

My friend Solomon texted me the other day and said, I see you're closing in on ten thousand miles. He'd been looking at my Garmin statistics - statistics I didn't know existed before that text - and he saw the milestone approaching.

So yesterday, before I took off on my run, my running odometer said 9,999.9.

To be clear, this milestone is very unofficial. It factors in some walking. For the first couple of years I ran, I didn't track my miles at all. But to also be clear, the milestone was significant to me.

Those ten thousand miles represent a lot. I have to tell you, though, what they represent least to me is mileage.

During my run yesterday, I thought a lot about where those miles have taken me.

They've taken me to Honduras to distribute shoes for Soles4Souls. They've taken me to the Richmond Soles4Souls operations center more times than I can count to drop off thousands of pairs of donated shoes.

They've taken me to Pontiac, Illinois to Run for Respect - to help some of the most special students I know. Kids I've grown to love.

They've taken me to places to raise money for and awareness around way too many cancers and illnesses.

They've taken me to Houston, Texas to raise money for hurricane Harvey Victims.

They've taken me to Cincinnati, Ohio to run for one of the 22 too many veterans who take their lives each day by suicide.

These miles have taken me to the Georgia Jewel, where I've had to face my greatest failures and hurts in life, and where I've also crossed the finish line of one of my proudest moments.

Sanjay Rawal says, "I would suggest to people who look at running as painful - who look at running as something that causes injury - to approach running in a totally different way. Instead of looking at running for performance, running for miles, running for body shape, running for calories - instead of looking at running for those reasons, look at running as a pathway to transformation. If you want any of those things above you'll be able to get them, but if you want to get closer to God, running will do that for you."

Yesterday, in those earliest steps of my run, when the numbers rolled over to 10,000 - nothing about me felt physically accomplished - even though I feel better and stronger than I've felt since being a high school athlete.

No, far more than that, what I felt yesterday was closer to God than I've ever felt in my life.

What started as a simple run to honor a mom who'd been hit and killed by a motorist while running, put me on a pathway to transformation. I didn't have a particular form of transformation in mind, I just kept taking one step. Then one more.

A friend told me yesterday, "the millimeters are progress."

She's right. Sometimes transformation isn't a plan, it's just progress. We keep tackling the millimeters, and one day we look down and we're at 10,000 miles. And if we look back on those miles as a pathway to transformation, the miles themselves will feel insignificant, but each of those millimeters will represent a fire in our hearts.

And it's that fire that will keep us chasing more.

Maybe even 10,000 more....