I found a feather

I found a feather..... I know what your thinking (either AND? or SO...).

In my devotion book I am reading right now this week was focusing on slowing down and enjoying creation and life.  This book is geared to runners so I am enjoying it.  It concentrated this week on focusing so much on finishing the race faster or better, that you forget to enjoy the actual time running and you lose the joy of the run.  Life can be that way.

Running gives me the chance to see the world from a different point of view.  I enjoy running new places, changing the route, and pounding the pavement.  You see things that you normally wouldn't see while riding in a car.  I run trails, streets, sidewalks, and neighborhoods.  I get to see flowing rivers, trickling streams, woods, city streets, sand, mulch, animals, and people.  I run when its 90 degrees or when its 10 degrees.  I have run in the sun, rain, and snow.  I have run with a partner but most of the time I run alone.  Sometimes I run with tunes and sometimes I don't.  There is so much to take in while on a run.  I gave up a long time ago on speeding up my time,  trying to speed up my time took joy from my run, it made it feel like work.  Now I just jog.  Some days I run 3 miles some days I run 7.  Depends on how I feel.  I feel accomplished when I run because I don't compare myself to other runners.  I run races, but I do it for fun cause I know I won't win and I am perfectly ok with that.

Yesterday on my run I was in the grass beside the road, cause I had run out of sidewalk, I had a visual point ahead that I was determined to get to before I turned around and headed back (the new ingles on Sand Hill Road).  I was so focused on that "turn around point" that I passed by what had seemed to be a large feather in the grass.  It caught my eye but not enough to get it.  The further I went past it, the more I thought "I should have stopped and gotten that, my kids would have loved it".  Ok, lets be honest, I would have loved it, lol.  So I get to my turn around point and begin the jog back.  All the while I am scanning the grass looking for it, my heart sinks because I don't see it.  I began to think, man I missed it.... I cant believe it.  Up ahead I catch a glimpse as a tractor trailer passes me and the wind off of it makes this feather flutter a little.  At last, I found it!  I stopped and picked it up, and admired it in the sunlight.  There was something about this feather that seemed to me the most beautiful one I had ever seen (I didn't initially know what bird it came from, but have since learned it was a turkey).  I carried it with me for the next mile as I finished this run.  Showed it to my kids yesterday afternoon, just as I thought they loved it.  Amazing they said, beautiful they said, awesome dad they said.

Yes, it is still just a turkey feather.  However, that turkey feather is pinned to the sun visor in my car to remind me to slow down and enjoy this journey and the beauty of this life.

Because:

^14 [a]Yet you do not know ^[b]what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. (James 4:14, NASB).

Take some advise from me, enjoy this life you have because you only get little moments once....

Chris