Two weekends ago, I drove all the way down to Lynchburg (about a 3 hour drive) to run a 5k in a track meet.  And instead of ending the meet with a PR time following my name in the results, which was the goal, I ended it with 3 letters that have never followed my name in any results before: DNF.  Did Not Finish.

I am the kind of person who finishes what she starts.  I’m the kind of person who will sit through a crappy movie instead of walking out because I feel like I have to finish it.  I’m the kind of person who will finish a meal even though I’m completely full so I don’t leave that little bit left on my plate.  I’m the kind of person who has never even considered dropping out of a race before.  Until I did.

So I was sitting in my car, driving the 3 long hours back home from Lynchburg, and trying to figure out this one thing: how did I get here?  How did I go from being someone who always finishes what she starts to being someone who drops out of races?  It seems like I was just going along, living my life, and all of a sudden I changed.

But as I thought about it, I started to realize that that is not what happened.  It didn’t happen suddenly at all, but instead so slowly as to be almost imperceptible.  It was small decisions.  Waking up early on a Friday morning and deciding that I would sleep in instead of go to practice, rationalizing that I could do just as good of a tempo run by myself as with my team (but knowing deep down that wasn’t true).  It was deciding not to make time for core work.  It was in the middle of a race when I just gave up – I didn’t drop out, but I stopped pushing, stopped racing because I was too tired.

All these things that didn’t seem like that big of a deal on their own, but when you add them all together…I was changing.  The more times you choose to sleep in instead of get up and run, the easier it becomes to make that decision.  And pretty soon you just get lazy all around.  That is how I got to a point in my life where it was even possible for me to make the decision to drop out of a race.

I realized something else on that long drive back home: this is the same thing that happens with sin.  It starts with a little decision – no big deal, easy enough to justify.  But then it becomes easier to make that same decision again, and then to make bigger, worse decisions.  We get lazy; we stop fighting it.  I’ve learned that self-control is a discipline, and the more you practice it, the easier it becomes.  But once you make a choice to stop practicing it, it becomes harder than it was before.  And one day you wake up and wonder “how did I get here?”  It seems like it happened overnight but in reality it’s been happening for a while, little by little.

So where do we go from that place?  Thankfully, God is forgiving and willing to help.  And you also have to learn to forgive yourself.  After that, it comes back down to decisions.  As one of my favorite lines in a Switchfoot song goes – “Hallelujah, every breath is a second chance.”  Every decision we make is a chance to get back on track.  It’s not easy, once you’ve gotten into that pattern of laziness and sin.  It will be harder at first, to make the harder decision, the right decision.

But there is redemption.  There is redemption from sin through Jesus’ death on the cross.  And for my running, there was redemption in the form of a second chance – another race just 4 days after my DNF.  This one was a road mile, and it was a couple hour drive away.  I didn’t sleep well the night before and I was stressed out from school, so I considered just not even going.  But I made the decision to go and run it.  And I made the decision to push through the whole thing.  And I’m glad I did, because I ended up winning the race and going under 5:00 for just the second time in my life.  Redemption.  Praise God.

About a month ago, I went on an alternative spring break trip to the Arizona/Mexico border to see the impact of immigration issues up-close.  During the trip, we got a large variety of perspectives on things related to immigration-we talked with recently deported immigrants, spent a day with Border Patrol agents, talked with a Mexican factory manager and a Mexican union organizer, and more.  We also got to see the border wall that separates Mexico from the United States.

I was discussing my trip with others and was asked the question “do you think it’s possible for both sides to ever work together?”  And I started thinking about how the (metaphorical) wall that the different “sides” of the issue build between each other is often even stronger and thicker than the physical fence that separates Mexico from the United States.

What I saw on my trip was a lot of different people, working every day to make their lives and the lives of those around them better, doing things they believe are right and important.  But often all they see when they look at each other is “the enemy.”  We talked with immigrants who just want to make a decent living and provide for their families, or reunite with family members, many of whom are United States citizens.  We also talked with Border Patrol agents who wake up every morning determined to protect this country from legitimate threats of terrorists and drug traffickers.  And both of these perspectives are valid and important, but they can’t exist in a vacuum.  If anything is ever going to get done, we need people from both sides to come together and talk and listen!

Instead, what happens is we stand on either side of our “wall” and yell at the other side, never stopping to listen to what the other side is saying, and definitely never looking them in the face.  If you go to the border wall between Mexico and the United States, you can see through to the other side.  But these walls we build between ourselves and our opponents don’t allow for even that.  It becomes easy to dehumanize the other side when we won’t even look at them.  It becomes easy to lump all those “illegal immigrants” or “corrupt border agents” together and disregard any valid concerns they might have.

I think the way forward is to tear down these walls that we create between one another.  We need to see people on the “other side” as human, capable of love & joy, pain & beauty.  We need to listen to them, hear their concerns and their stories, and try to see things from their perspective.  Only then will we be able to come up with a solution that actually works.  So do I think it is possible for both sides to ever work together?  Yes, I do.  But what it will take is taking a good look at the walls we put up to separate ourselves from other people, and then going through the hard work of tearing them down.

 

*To read more about our group’s experiences at the border, check out our group Tumblr page here!

While it is very easy to find road races to run these days, track meets are still mostly limited to athletes running for schools or professionally.  However, some track meets let athletes who are unaffiliated with a school run them “unattached.”

When thinking about signing up to run a track meet recently, I started thinking about how “unattached” is a pretty good word to describe me in ways besides just my lack of a school to run for.  I will graduate from law school in May, at which point I will no longer be affiliated with a school.  I don’t have a job yet.  I am single.  People often ask me where I will go or what I will do after graduation.  And while my goal is to stay in the DC area, there is nothing stopping me from moving somewhere else if the right job came along.  I am unattached to any specific place.  In the past 8 years (since I graduated high school), I have lived in 11 different places and had 31 different roommates.  It is nothing new for me to pack up and go somewhere else.

I was reading the NAIA rules regarding unattached athletes (because that’s what I do in my free time…), and realized that most of them apply pretty well to the rest of my life as well as to my occasional competition in track meets.

1. A coach or representative of the athletics department cannot enter the athlete in the event.  This past summer, the organization I was interning with asked me to go on a trip to Atlanta for a conference they were putting on.  My first instinct was to ask someone permission to leave.  But who?  My parents?  They might want to know, but I don’t need their permission.  My roommates?  Same thing goes for them.  I realized that I could just go to Atlanta for a few days without telling anyone!  I guess this is part of realizing I am an adult, but many other adults I know, who are married or in a serious relationship, would need to tell their significant other if they were taking a trip.  This is freeing, but a little scary at the same time.  There is no one person in my life who always needs to know where I am.

2. The institution or its representative cannot provide transportation to the event, from the event, or at the event.  When I think of providing transportation, I think about money (maybe because my car keeps causing me trouble and Metro keeps upping its prices).  Being unattached, I provide for myself.  So if, upon graduation, I am not able to find a job and can’t pay back my student loans, I have no one but myself to blame.  No one else has a responsibility to take care of me financially.  This is, occasionally, terrifying.  On the other hand, nobody else relies on me to take care of them financially.  I don’t have any other mouths to feed.  If I have no money, it is my fault, but it also only affects me.

3. The institution or its representative cannot provide meals or housing to the athlete with regard to the event.  I remember this time, back in 2007, when I was in my apartment wondering what to eat for dinner, and it hit me…if I wanted to, I could have ice cream for dinner!  Just ice cream, nothing else!  There is no one to stop me!  It was the first time since I’d moved away from home that I wasn’t on a meal plan and didn’t have a cafeteria of food to choose from.  Granted, it wouldn’t be a very good idea to have just ice cream for dinner every night, but every day, I can/have to make my own choices regarding what to eat.  Nobody else is around to cook for me or tell me to “eat my vegetables.”  This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.  On the one hand, if I want to, I can eat ice cream for dinner (if you know me, you probably know by now about my ice cream addiction)!  But, as the saying goes, with that freedom comes responsibility.  I have to cook, and it is completely on my shoulders if my health is terrible because I didn’t eat my vegetables or my [virtual] wallet is empty because I ate out every day.  Sometimes I get tired of making every decision for myself, even if it’s just what to eat every day.  But sometimes it is nice to have the freedom to make all my decisions for myself.

4. The athlete cannot wear an institutional uniform nor use the institution’s name in the event.  Go to an elementary or middle school and you will probably find at least a few girls’ notebooks with names written on them-the girls’ first names together with the last name of whatever boy they have a crush on.  I’ll be honest: when I was in middle school, I didn’t think I would still be a Jelen by the time I was 25 years old.  But, being unattached, I haven’t taken anyone else’s name.  But it turns out I really like my last name, so I am mostly okay with this.  Seriously, how many other people can say they have a beer named after them or an ad campaign based on what sounds like their name?

5. Athletes competing “unattached” are not covered by institutional athletic insurance.  May 19th is a big day for me.  It is the day I graduate from law school.  It is also my 26th birthday.  And it is the day I get kicked off my parents’ health insurance.  I don’t have a job (yet) or a husband to provide me with health insurance after this point.

I guess what I’ve come to realize is that there are positives and negatives to being “unattached.”  I’ll admit that I’m often frustrated with this status, but we always think the grass is greener on the other side.  I can see certain benefits of being free from attachments.  It’s certainly better than being attached to the wrong person/place/job/whatever.  And while I don’t have anyone or anything attaching me to a specific place, that does not mean that I am alone.  In fact, I have friends and family all over the country, and even some around the world.  And I may find in the future that this time of being unattached has prepared me for something else in a way that I can’t see right now.

I often get the question from non-runners: what do you love so much about running?  And while there is definitely something to the aphorism “If you have to ask, you’ll never understand,” I am going to try to explain it anyway, at least some of it.

Most people don’t pay that much attention to the basic workings of their bodies.  Muscles move when we want them to.  We breathe, our blood pumps.  But runners pay attention to everything.  A sore hip one day could lead to an injured calf the next. Running shows me the complexity of my body, how everything is interrelated. It makes me pay more attention to what my body is trying to tell me.

Running allows me to notice and marvel at what the human body can do.  I love watching my times get faster as I get more in shape, both in workouts and in races.  I love how my resting heart rate slows as my training picks up, and I can feel my heart pumping more blood with each beat.  I love the feel of pushing my body to its limits, seeing just how fast or far it will go.  I love the feeling at the end of a race when I am completely spent, knowing that I left everything I had on the course.

One of the reasons, I think, why people get addicted to running is because you feel like there is no limit to your ability to improve.  You finish one race, and you are already thinking about how you can run faster in the next one.  When we are kids, our parents tell us that if we work hard, we can accomplish anything, but as we get older, we tend to stop believing that.  We limit ourselves, or the world limits us.  I think running makes us believe again-believe that if we work hard, we can do whatever we set our minds to.

And at the same time running shows me the complexity of the inner workings of the human body that many people take for granted, it is also refreshingly simple in a world where everything else seems so complicated.  Put one foot in front of the other.  Breathe in, breathe out.  I love early morning runs when nobody else is around and there is no other sound except the sounds of my footfalls and my breath.  Those times tend to be when I feel closest to God.  No distractions, no technology.  Just me and the road.  It allows me to process, to work out my emotions, to make decisions.

Or sometimes it allows me to not think, to listen, to shut it all out and just go.  Sometimes I think too much, and it is hard for me to shut my mind off.  But if I can just focus on moving my body forward, it is easier to forget about whatever problems I have been dwelling on.  And after the run is over, those problems just seem smaller.  I can’t really explain that one, but after a run, I just feel like I can handle life better.  I think that God speaks to everyone in different ways, and running is one of the main ways He speaks to me.

And then, of course, there is this:

And who doesn’t want to know what it feels like to fly?!!

I was talking to someone the other day about a movie, and I mentioned my view that a huge part of how I feel about any movie that I see has to do with my expectation going into it.  It’s not always about just how good the movie is, it’s often more about how well it lives up to, or exceeds, my expectations.  For example, the movie Elf.  For whatever reason, I didn’t see that movie until the year after it came out.  And during that year, that movie was talked up so much.  Tons of people told me it was the best Christmas movie ever.  So I went into it thinking it was going to be one of the best movies I’d seen.  And it let me down.  It wasn’t so much that it was a bad movie.  It might have even been a great movie, but since I expected it to be the best ever, when it fell short of that, I couldn’t think about it positively anymore.  It was a disappointment.  (Seriously, though, Home Alone is far and away the best Christmas movie of all time…)

Hope is an interesting thing.  It is defined in the dictionary as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.”  Hope can be a great thing-it can keep you going when things are rough, because if you desire and expect them to get better, than you can push through the hard times.  However, hope can also be a dangerous thing.  People often say “don’t get your hopes up,” because it matters what we “expect and desire” to happen, not just what happens.  As Bane said in TDKR, “There can be no true despair without hope.”

I started dating this guy once who called me every day for a week and a half, and then I heard nothing at all from him the following week, and I was really bummed out.  We had basically just met and it wasn’t super serious, so why did it make me so upset when he didn’t call?  It was because he got my hopes up.  It wasn’t just that I wanted him to call.  I’ve been through plenty of times when I wanted a guy to call and he didn’t, and it didn’t upset me.  It was that I wanted and expected him to call: I hoped.  After the week and a half of him calling every day, I came to expect it.  I wasn’t upset just because he didn’t call, I was upset because reality didn’t comport with my expectations.  If he had never called, or if he’d only called once a week the whole time, then I wouldn’t have expected it.  Without expectation, there is no hope.  And without hope, there is no disappointment.

Same thing applies to racing.  If I take a few months off of training and jump in a track meet not even expecting to break 5:30 and end up running a 5:24 mile, I’ll be pretty satisfied.  But if I train really hard and expect to run sub-5:00 and instead run a 5:04, I won’t be too happy, even though clearly the ultimate result is better than the 5:24.  The way I feel about the race depends almost entirely on my expectations.

An easy solution would be to “not get your hopes up.”  Just don’t have any expectations and you won’t ever be disappointed.  There are three problems with that solution.  One is that expectations are something you can’t always control.  You can try your best not to expect something, but if circumstances and other people give you a reason, you might come to hope for something even when you are trying not to.  You can say, “I’m not really expecting to run under 5:30 for a mile,” but if you’ve trained really hard and your results in practice show you that you probably have the ability to run faster than that, then you will come to expect it, as much as you try not to.

The second problem is that, as I said before, hope can be important and necessary.  If you are going through a really hard time and you have absolutely no expectation that it will get any better, you will be pretty miserable.  If there is nothing better to move forward toward, then why keep moving?  Hope (expectation & desire) that things will improve allows you to move forward, through the hard times, so you can get past them.  In a race, if you don’t expect that you can run faster, you probably won’t push through the pain and realize your full potential.  Expectation allows you to set goals that you are able to accomplish, but that may require some discomfort to achieve.

And finally, hope actually feels pretty good for a while.  When something you desire isn’t happening and then something happens that causes you to have hope that it might, you want to cling to that hope.  The last thing you want to do is let go of the hope, even if you know it might cause you disappointment later.  As Anne of Green Gables once said, “I can’t help flying up on the wings of anticipation.  It’s as glorious as soaring through a sunset…almost pays for the thud.”  So we not only cling to the hope, but we stoke the fire and let the hope grow.

So what do we do?  I can’t say I have a great solution to this problem of hope and potential disappointment.  I personally get my hopes up altogether too much, leading to a lot of disappointment.  But hope has also gotten me through hard times and hard workouts that ended up leading to great things happening.  So I’m not going to be one to tell you “don’t get your hopes up,” because I know it’s not that easy.  I think it does help, though, to recognize how the way we feel about something is influenced by our expectations about it.  It helps to put it in perspective to try and think about the thing that happened on its own, rather than just in the context of your expectations regarding it.  Just something to think about.

Recently, I had someone tell me, as “constructive criticism,” that I need to be better about sharing more about myself to others, particularly in a work setting.  I had only known this person for a short time, and I felt that I did not know him well enough to share more unsolicited information about myself before we had any sort of authentic relationship.  What bothered him wasn’t that I didn’t answer questions about myself when asked; it was that I didn’t just talk about myself without being asked.

This person believed that my inability to spontaneously share personal information could hamper my future career.  As is often assumed by people in the extroverted majority, he believed that being extroverted was the right way to do things, and that I should strive to change to be more like an extrovert.  Of course, he didn’t say it in that many words, or probably even realize that was what he was saying.  He simply had so little experience with or knowledge of how introverts conduct relationships that he didn’t realize that a person could be successful doing things another way than what he knew, or how extremely uncomfortable & unnatural it would be for me to try to do things his way.

As an introvert, I do open up to people and I have very good relationships.  However, it tends to take me longer to open up and share personal information with others than it takes for most extroverts.  The person who told me this was used to dealing with law students, the majority of whom, as in the general public, are extroverts.  This person felt that I should have voluntarily given more information about my life, and it baffled him that I didn’t like to talk about myself to anyone who would listen.

And this isn’t an entirely strange reaction to this part of my personality.  There have been many books written about how American culture is geared toward extroverts.  And knowing many extroverts myself, I find that they don’t quite understand me sometimes.  This is nothing against them, because usually they don’t know any better, but I find I often confuse them.  A friend of mine who is an extrovert recently told me that it took her a little while to realize that when we were together and I wasn’t talking, it didn’t mean that I was upset about something, but that I didn’t have anything to say at that moment.  And this revelation, after knowing me for just a few months, was way ahead of the curve in terms of figuring that out.

It makes no sense to most extroverts why an introvert would want to stay at home on a Saturday night and watch a movie or read a book when there is a perfectly good party or other large social gathering to attend.  Or why we would want to leave said social gathering before it has ended.  When they ask me what I’m doing some nights and I respond with “just chilling at home,” they suggest that I tag along with them at whatever event they are going to, because “chilling at home” does not sound like an enjoyable choice for how to spend a night, but rather a default when you have nothing better to do.  But for me, and other introverts, it really is what we want to do many nights, hard to believe as that may be to all the extroverts out there.

And for a while, it made me feel lame knowing that sometimes I had the desire to skip parties & stay home by myself.  And society reinforces the idea that staying at home alone in lieu of going to social gatherings is not a legitimate choice.  Think about it: kids are regularly punished by being grounded, which is “forcing” them to stay at home by themselves and miss out on social gatherings.  It makes you feel pretty weird as a kid when you want to do the thing that is seen as punishment by most.  But I started learning more about introversion and realized that it is part of who I am, not something to be changed.  Introverts are definitely in the minority, and many people will not understand us, but it is not wrong or bad to be an introvert.  Introverts bring different strengths to the table, and the world needs those strengths just as much as it needs the strengths that extroverts bring.

So to all you extroverts out there, a few tips.  First, know that I really do love other people and spending time with them, just not all the time and with lots of people at once.  Second, I appreciate being invited to hang out with you, but if I choose instead to stay home & watch a movie by myself, just know that it is not because I’m lonely or depressed, or because I don’t have anything better to do, or because I don’t want to spend time with you.  It is a choice that I have made and I will likely enjoy myself.  And finally, if I’m hanging out with you and I’m not talking, it is probably not because I’m mad at you or upset about something else (although this is occasionally the case, so learn to read my nonverbals! ;D).  It is probably just because I am deep in thought, or I just don’t have anything in particular to say right then.

*If you want to learn more about introverts & understand us better (or if you are an introvert & want to read something that will constantly make you say “oh my gosh, that’s exactly how I feel!”), I would recommend this blog, which always seems to have posts that I relate to really well.

**Also, shout out to my lovely roommate, sometimes blog post editor, and often inspiration behind my posts, Laura!  You should all check out her website here!

 

Everyone wants to feel like they are special.  We all want to have a way to stand out from the crowd.  But what happens when that thing that used to make you stand out from the crowd is overtaken by that crowd and no longer makes you different, but rather makes you seem just like everyone else?

In college, I was part of what I thought of as a unique, special group of people: runners.  We who were on the cross country team ran in snow, cold, rain, and heat.  We ran to push the limits of our bodies.  We ran to see just how far and how fast we could go.  We competed.  Sometimes, after a particularly cold, snowy run, we would come into the dining center in our spandex pants with our hair frozen and people would look at us like we were crazy.  And we liked it.  It made us stand out.  We were proud to be called runners.

And then, the masses descended.  Suddenly, everyone was a “runner.”  The local 5k road race filled to capacity with people who wanted to claim the label we had worked so hard to have.  I could no longer say I was a runner in casual conversation without half the room telling me that they were runners, too.  It bothered me.  They were encroaching on my territory.  And in the process, they were changing the meaning of the very word I used to use to describe myself.  Now, a runner is someone who finishes a 5k road race, whether they trained or not, no matter how slow they jogged or how many walk breaks they took.

Then something even worse happened: finishing a marathon became a fad.  Now everyone runs marathons, because it’s the cool thing to do.  And now, people who have finished a marathon think that they are more of a “real runner” than I, who haven’t finished a marathon, am.  It doesn’t matter to them that I’ve broken 5 minutes in a mile, or could run a 10 miler in the time it takes them to run a 10k.  I haven’t run a marathon, so I’m not a “real runner.”

Now I feel the need to change the terms somehow.  I still want to stand out from the crowd, but calling myself a “runner” is no longer a good way to do that.  So sometimes when I talk to people, and they ask me what I like to do in my spare time, I tell them I like to race, rather than just run.  Sometimes it works and they understand the distinction.  Many times it doesn’t.  And it’s not just me who wants to differentiate themselves from the “casual runners.”  Around the time when all those “Sh*t _____ Say” videos came out, there were plenty of runner ones, but I really related to this one that I found: Sh!t Serious Runners Say.  The creator of the video added the “serious” part to set himself (and those like him) apart from all the casual runners out there.

But regardless of the terms I now have to use to accurately describe myself and the thing I spend so much time doing, I just want to state right here for the record: I was a RUNNER before it was cool.

This past September marked the 10-year anniversary of when I started logging my running.  When I started, I was a 15-year-old high school sophomore in South Dakota.  I am now a 25-year-old 3rd year law student in Washington, DC.  Running has been my constant throughout these past 10 years.  Below are some interesting statistics about my past decade of running.

Number of races run: 234

Number of races won: 21

Number of miles run: 15,186.91

Average miles per day: 4.16

Longest single run: 14 miles (2/26/12)

Highest mileage day: July 16, 2008 (15.68 miles between 2 runs)

Highest mileage week: Week of August 21, 2006 (71.61 miles)

Highest mileage month: August 2006 (293.68 miles)

Highest mileage year: 2009 (1,897.10 miles)

Percentage of races I set PRs in: 82/234=35%

Number of states raced in: 12 (+ DC)  (California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Virginia, Wisconsin)

Lowest temperature run: -21 degrees, -40 windchill (1/15/09, Arden Hills, MN)

Highest temperature run: 98 degrees (7/4/12, Falls Church, VA)

Pairs of shoes: 32 (4 pairs of spikes, 2 pairs of racing flats, 24 pairs of Saucony Hurricane trainers, 2 pairs of other trainers)

Race distance that I’ve run the most: 1500/1600/mile (72 races)

PRs:

*800m: 2:13.76 (5/14/09)

*1000m: 3:00.43 (2/23/08)

*1500m: 4:31.35 (5/23/09)

*Mile: 4:58.37 (3/6/09)

*3000m: 10:45.44 (2/6/10)

*3000m steeplechase: 11:50.00 (4/4/09)

*4k: 15:39 (10/8/05)

*5k: 18:47 (11/24/11)

*6k: 22:13.43 (10/17/09)

*10k: 39:36 (11/13/11)

*10 miles: 1:05:43 (10/9/11)

*Half-marathon: 1:33:31 (3/17/12)

Unforgettable memories that running has brought me: innumerable

Throughout this election cycle, and more specifically since the results started pouring in yesterday, I’ve seen two disappointing things from people, especially from Christians: judgment and fear.

Facebook is interesting during an election season.  It is an easy way for a person to share their views on issues and candidates, but views are shared through sound bites, which don’t tell the whole story.  A person might say that they voted for a certain candidate, but what is harder to convey via a Facebook status or comment is why, exactly, they voted for that person.  In my experience, it is often more complicated than people assume.  While it’s true that some people vote for a candidate because they agree with all of that person’s views, instead, it frequently involves a precarious balancing act of which issues are most important and which candidate’s imperfect plan might yield the best results.

But what I’ve seen in the past few days has been people making assumptions and jumping to judgment.  I know of someone being chastised for giving up her values after the person made an assumption (which happened to be wrong) about whom she voted for.  I’ve seen sore winners, who attacked the character of those on the losing side and boasted in being better.  I’ve seen sore losers, who accused those supporting the winner of simply following the crowd and having no morals.  It’s interesting how so many people say they are frustrated with politicians for all of the name-calling, and then they do the same thing to those who disagree with them.

As a Christian, I am called to love others, including my enemies.  While I don’t think of those who disagree with me politically as “enemies,” many people do.  And I am not seeing much love.  Paul tells us “to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people” (Titus 3:2).  We need to stop rushing to judge others based solely upon whom they voted for in an election.  I would encourage you to have a real conversation with someone who voted differently than you.  Ask them to explain why they voted the way they did.  It is easier to love others and avoid judgment when we get away from the computer screen and engage other people face-to-face.  Having a civil discussion with someone who disagrees with you politically might not change anyone’s mind on the issues, but I guarantee it will make it harder for you to judge and name-call.

The second thing I’ve been saddened to see from so many Christians since the election ended is fear.  People are truly afraid that this country is going to be destroyed because Obama won re-election.  I have two responses to this fear.  First, I think many people are believing a lie that the President of the United States is more powerful than he actually is.  While it is true that the President can do a lot, there is so much that he cannot do.  He cannot unilaterally enact legislation.  He cannot overturn Supreme Court cases.  He cannot amend the Constitution.  While he may be able to influence some of these things, people need to realize that in four or eight years, there is a good chance that not much will change.  And while people seem to lament this fact when “their guy” gets elected and isn’t getting anything done, they often seem to forget it when “the other guy” gets elected, thinking that he is going to change everything for the worse.

My second response to this fear is that, if you believe that an almighty God created the universe and everything in it, and if you believe that the Bible is true, then why are you so afraid of one person getting elected President of one country for four years?  The Bible says “Do not fear” many, many times (see, e.g. Isaiah 41:10).  It also says “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.  The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8).  So I would encourage you to remember that God is the all-powerful, omnipotent, infinite creator of the universe, and that Barack Obama (along with every other politician) is a man.  And as it says in Psalm 118:6, “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.  What can man do to me?”

Let’s face it: Metro drives us all crazy most of the time.  But in a spirit of looking on the bright side, I’m going to focus on things that I’ve been able to practice in the copious amount of time I spend on the Metro every day.

1. Good balance. At 5’2”, I’m not really able to reach the top bars on the Metro trains.  And heels are clearly a bad idea (see #9). So in those times when I’m shuffled to a place where there is not a bar within reach of me, I’m forced to “Metro surf,” which really helps me perfect my balance.

2. Patience!  This pretty much goes without explaining, but Metro has a tendency to make you wait…for the bus, for the train, for the train to start moving again when it has stopped, for the construction to be done (it’ll never happen).  All this waiting has given me a chance to develop a ton of patience.

3. Avoiding eye contact with strangers who are right in my sight line.  I am always amazed at how so many people can be packed into such a small space, and nobody is looking at anyone else (but see #4).  You would think I would have completely memorized the Metro map because of how many times I’ve intently studied it, just to avoid looking at any person standing or sitting around me.

4. People watching without getting caught.  There are lots of crazy characters on the Metro, so sometimes it’s hard to help looking at some of them.  You just have to know how to do it without them noticing.  Sunglasses are helpful for this.

5. Taking up as little space as possible.  I’m a pretty small person to begin with, but when riding in a packed Metro car, I still always feel like I’m in everybody’s way.  I’ve been practicing blending into the glass separator things.

6. Keeping a steady hand on a moving train.  I spend a lot of time on the Metro, and in law school, time is of the essence.  So doing some reading on the train is sometimes necessary.  But of course, in law school you can’t just read the book, you have to highlight.  After some very squiggly lines early on, I’ve gotten pretty good at highlighting a straight line while the train is moving.  The same goes for doing crossword puzzles.

7. Being courteous to people even when they are driving me crazy.  You have no idea how many times I have wanted to shove tourists out of the way for standing on the left side of the escalator.  But in my effort to show Christ’s love to everyone I encounter, I have had plenty of practice resisting the urge to be rude to people, even when I think they are being rude to me.

8. My Spanish. I personally love the incredible linguistic diversity I encounter on the Metro every day.  And while some may call it eavesdropping, I find that trying to see how much of someone’s conversation I can understand in Spanish is great practice.

9. Always remembering to bring flats.  I love heels.  But I once wore a really tall pair of them on the Metro and had to stand on my way to school, and I learned my lesson.  My legs were honestly more sore the next day than after a track workout.  So now I will always remember to bring a pair of flats for my travels.

10. Overcoming my claustrophobia.  Getting stuck in a tunnel in an enclosed train is a great time to practice not hyperventilating.  Bonus points if the AC isn’t working in the car.

11. Being comfortable having no personal space.  Touching other people is inevitable during rush hour, so you just have to get used to it.

12. Catching up on sleep at random times, while not missing my stop.  Yep, I’m one of those people who sleep on the Metro on a semi-regular basis.  There’s just something about the way the train rocks back and forth that can lull a sleep-deprived law student into dreamland.  For me, the trick to not missing my stop is not allowing myself to sleep on the train when I’m really tired, because then I know I probably wouldn’t wake up for my stop.  I have yet to sleep through my stop, so it’s worked so far!