The ripples in life move us and bind us together

​Later this morning, I will tackle my next running adventure. I'll run as many laps as I can muster on a course known as the murder mile. In one short mile, this course climbs over 350 feet. I could run 100 miles in my little town of Ashland where I do most of my running and not hit a single foot of climb. So I anticipate feeling the full and intimidating embrace of the murder.

The reality is, I wouldn't be here if the course didn't sound intimidating. I wouldn't be here if the adventure didn't imply murder. I wouldn't be here if there wasn't some promise of a challenge begging to make me better.

That hasn't always been the case. For most of my life I was run off by intimidation and challenge.

On the drive over here to Tennessee, I had a phone chat with my friend Pamela Cross. Pam is Meg Cross Menzies' mom. Meg was hit and killed by a motorist while she was running back in 2014. In the aftermath of that run, over a hundred thousand runners from around the world ran virtually in her honor. It was a big and meaningful virtual run before virtual runs became big.

I was one of those runners. For a few decades I'd refused to run much further than a lap around the track. But this day, to honor a woman I'd never met, I ran 8 miles. And I'm still running.

I told Meg's mom I get goosebumps sometimes thinking about reality. The reality that I was driving across Virginia and Tennessee to run a race on a course called the murder mile. That was such an impossibility - a science fiction novel - just 7 years ago. An impossibility until the ripple of Meg Cross Menzies rolled into my life.

Getting to know about Meg's life and getting to know the people her life brought together, that changed my life. It opened my mind to gifts I never knew I had, my heart to connection I never knew I was missing, and my soul to a reality that our world is full of people who are hurting. And oh - it also made me want to be a runner.

After I finished talking to Pam, I had a friend send me a message. It's a friend I hadn't talked to in a very long time - so the name caught me off guard when it popped up. This friend wished me luck tackling the murder mile. And then the friend said something else. She said she'd been on a spiritual journey, and she wanted me to know some of the things I write in the morning have helped her on that journey.

I wasn't expecting that message. Driving along for a bit in the aftermath of my conversation with Pam and the subsequent message from my friend - I felt lost in the middle of a miracle. Dazed by these intersections in life that have no explanation really. I've come to know them as ripples. Ripples I imagine God is stirring.

Meg had no idea when she was living her life the way she was that one day that life would ripple into mine. But it did.

And she had no idea that the ripple she unknowingly drifted into my life would then unknowingly drift away from me into the life of a friend seeking her own journey in life. A journey, really, that as she describes it sounds a lot like the journey Meg was on.

It all sounds so complicated. But not really.

I think the more we acknowledge the ripples that have come into our lives, the more we feel a sense of responsibility to those ripples. We feel a need to honor them. We get more dedicated to and more intentional about the ripples we are sending into the world.

Ripples help us understand the movement of life a little better, they help us see with a little more clarity - and maybe love - just how we are all connected.

And ripples - well they can send us on adventures searching for the next ripple to come into our lives, fully knowing it will be a ripple we can send back into the world.

Ripples can have us one day running on flat ground, and the next running up the side of a mountain on a trail known as the murder mile.