Normally, I’m quite the avid jogger.  The past few days have been a challenge, though, due to a bit of food poisoning I seem to have picked up (thanks salmonella!)  On the upside, despite the complete lack of exercise,  “I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.”   (source)

But seriously though, not fun.

The lack of running seems to have triggered a lack of writing as well, and I came to the not so shocking realization that the two are actually very connected for me.  It’s on those long runs that I start thinking about life and my place in it.  About things that made me laugh.  About conversations I need to have.  (Need to have. Ha.  I’ll have the whole one-sided conversation there in my head while I’m running, and boy howdy is it a good thing no one can really hear me most of the time. Cathartic, to say the least.  Also, I think my inner voice curses too much.)

When I can’t get out for a long run, the other place I do a lot of my “quiet mind” thinking is in the shower.  But David has been traveling the last few days, so my shower time has involved dragging both girls into the bathroom with me.  Despite Evie being contained in her exersaucer,  they manage to turn what used to be quiet time for mommy into an athletic endeavor of Olympic proportions.  Or at least an episode of double dare.   Instead of my usual contemplations, I’m trying to calculate the odds of Alice’s kindle game ending before I can rinse the shampoo from my hair, and debating whether I’d rather condition my hair or shave my legs, because Evie just dropped her pacifier and is starting to cry.  Add in the occasional mad dash out to take the clorox wipes out of someone’s hands or save the dolly from going into the toilet… the only major upside at the end of the ordeal is that I don’t smell like spit up anymore.  For a few minutes, anyway.

But usually when I’m out running (and thinking), I’m also listening to music.  Typically, I pick pretty consistently upbeat music.  I lean towards country.  Mostly female artists.   Narrow, I know.  In fact, it’s narrow enough that I’m constantly looking for new songs that fit this description to add to my playlist because I burn out on the ones I have.  Recently, I added a few new ones almost at random while I was multitasking on a conference call.  In some ways, it was a multitask fail because I got kind of a slow, contemplative one in the mix.  This snafu has happened before, and it’s the worst when you’re just hitting your mid-run stride and a slow sappy song comes on.  Skipping it to the next one doesn’t always restore the wind to your sails, either, so I try to be pretty careful about what makes the list in the first place.

But this one made it through, and when it started to play the other day, I actually let it play and started listening to it instead of skipping.  I don’t really know why — I think I must have been distracted when it started so by the time I realized what song it was, it was already into it.  But I’m glad I did.

It’s a song called “The Middle” by Lauren Alaina, and the chorus goes like this:

Take each day and make it last
Cause you turn around and the future is the past
Here and now is all we have
The beginning and the end mean so little
What matters most is what’s in the middle.

Wow, does that ever resonate with me.  For the last year… ok, years… for the past several YEARS, we have been in planning mode.  Planning to move.  Planning the birth of our first daughter.  Planning to move again.  Planning the arrival of our second daughter.  Planning our jobs.  Planning for schools.  Planning. Planning.  Planning.   And then, of course, carefully orchestrating the execution of those plans amidst chaos.  Mostly happy chaos, but chaos.

If you know me, and chances are good that you do if you’re reading this, planning is in my nature.  I make lists of the lists I need to make.  I don’t really feel the need to fundamentally change that — order makes me happy.  Or more accurately, order makes me sane.  It frees up my mind to experience other things like humor and frivolity.  I have a difficult time being funny and frivolous without first being grounded in order.  That may sound strange, but if you’re also the kind of person who can relax better when the kitchen is clean and the mail is sorted, you get me.

But what this song made me stop and reflect on is really important, and that’s this: right now is the moment we’ve been planning for.  This is it.  This IS life.   And while I’m sure we’ll continue to plan, we can’t do it at the expense of the moment.  There’s no guarantee there will even BE another moment.

In my head, I picture a sunny afternoon planting a flower garden with the girls.  But when that sunny afternoon comes around, I’m grocery shopping and not digging in the dirt.  I should be digging in the dirt.  I picture their faces as we pull them in a wagon to watch a local parade and participate in our community activities.  But when there’s an event, the hassle of parking keeps us from going.  We should be participating.  I picture David and I sitting on a porch swing enjoying the onset of evening and taking a minute to connect.  But on beautiful evenings, I’m frantically trying to get dinner cooked.  I should be swinging.  (sidebar: need to get David on board with the whole porch sitting/swinging thing.  Northerners, I tell ya.)

We are writing our story, whether intentionally or not.  And we’ve been very focused on the ending.  But who cares about how it ends if the journey wasn’t interesting along the way?  And not interesting like “may you live in interesting times” kind of interesting.  But colorful.  Vivid.  Stop-at-the-scenic-overlook-just-because-it’s-there kind of captivating.

That’s something I’m going to work on… I almost said “this year.”  No.  Now.  That’s something I’m going to work on today.  And probably tomorrow and the next day, too.  Because it’s important, and because I don’t want to defer life to the end.

The day you’re born is just a start
Your last breath is a question mark
The story of your life is in the in-between.

Indeed. We are in the middle now, and I don’t want to miss it.