The Story Isn't Always The Story

​At dinner the other night, Solomon and I reflected back on the Summer of 2020. That Covid summer. That summer we did a virtual race across Tennessee. And back.

1,240 miles over the course of 4 months. (An average of over ten miles a day - as in if you skipped a day you had a 20-miler like the one below on tap the next day to jump back on track).

I told him I recorded 60 total miles last month, the most I'd completed in almost a year. But that summer of the GVRAT, 60 miles was a routine five days.

Every five days.

For 4 months.

How, I asked him. How was that even possible? How is it that only five years later I can't begin to fathom such an undertaking?

The thing is, I look back now and know the miles weren't the story. A memory like the one below pops up that when posted five years ago was about a race, was about miles, when today I know that wasn't the story at all.

That summer was the darkest period of my life. Without question. Which is a pretty dark label given I've experienced a few pretty dark periods in my life.

I look back and know that summer was all about running. Not a race, but literally, running. Running every day from the dark into the dark.

There was no escaping it.

It was the summer of Covid. The summer a marriage was rapidly approaching THE END. The summer my bad back gave out, never to fully return. The summer of losing the most meaningful friendship of my life. The summer of trying to do a work life from home that I'd become passionate about doing out on the road. The summer of watching my two boys hole up in their bedrooms, me wondering if they were ever coming back out.

Were any of us ever coming back out?

I didn't run that race across Tennessee and back to distract myself; many runners know you don't escape your thoughts out on the road. Running simply quiets the world such that many of those thoughts show up louder than they do anywhere else.

I didn't run that race across Tennessee and back to save my life, but I honestly believe it did. Because when dark thoughts get their loudest they are always begging you to make a choice - quit or keep going.

Many runners know that running is one of the best ways to live out the choice to keep going. Running is often the greatest reminder that you CAN.

And it was also the summer I started writing. Every day. I'd been writing for years, but this was the summer I REALLY started writing. The summer I started REALLY exploring the meaning of life. The summer I stopped pretending darkness didn't exist and started wrestling with it out loud.

Or at least on paper.

My life.

My journey.

Not the one I'd spent my whole life running from, but the journey I was actually running. Fiction turns non-fiction.

In many ways, that is the race I am still running. I had no idea that summer, in the midst of running from the dark to the dark, that my story was about light on the horizon.

I had no idea that horizon was in me - it had been living in me all along - simply waiting for me to discover it.

I think of that often as I read your posts on here. I find myself wondering, is this post your light, or is this post your search for it?

I think about that because as my daily memories pop up about my Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee story, I know now that was never actually the story at all. Not even close.

People around us are living out stories here and there every day.

It's always helpful to consider - with compassion - that might not be the real story.

It's possible they are simply running (or writing) their way to it.