LJI Week 1: When you pray, move your feet
The sun was beginning to rise as Reyna slowed down to a stop from her morning run. She lifted her leg to rest her ankle on the top of a park bench, and leaned over and began to stretch, feeling the relief in her muscles. She stayed in that position for a full thirty seconds, and straightened up to find a man next to her. He looked to be finishing his morning run too.
Reyna was startled; she was surprised that she didn’t hear him come up next to her, especially given that she had left her headphones at home that day. As one might have expected, her initial instinct was to run from the strange man, but she reasoned that she was still in the middle of stretching and that she could take off if she truly needed to.
The man looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, with salt and pepper hair, even if there was more salt than pepper. He gave a wide smile as Reyna said hello and switched her legs on the park bench. The man seemed friendly enough, so she stayed in her spot and continued to stretch her legs.
“You’re looking pretty good out here,” the man said.
“Thanks,” Reyna replied, still bent over the bench.
“How long have you been running?”
After a few seconds, Reyna stood up straight and took her leg off of the bench. “Not long,” she said. “Maybe a few months so far. What about you?”
“Oh,” the man chuckled. “I’ve been at this for some time. What’s your name, sweetheart?” He asked in a soothing voice.
Reyna looked up, slightly surprised. While she recognized most of the runners on her daily route, they almost never took the time to stop and ask her her name. Generally, they smiled, waved at each other, and kept running. But today, here was this man that she had never seen before, and she had already exchanged more words with him than with any other runner that she had met before.
“My name is Reyna,” she said, trying not to reveal her nervousness. She then reasoned that maybe he was new to the area, maybe one of those overly friendly Midwesterners or something, trying to make small talk. Didn’t the man realize that this was the city, that nobody actually talked to one another?
“Ah, Reyna,” the man continued. “What a beautiful name.”
“Thanks,” Reyna said quietly, trying to walk back in the direction of her apartment.
“So, tell me, Reyna, why do you run?”
“Well, hmm,” she started, trying to come up with a good answer to his rather abrupt question. “Running is an easy and cheap way to keep healthy, I guess,” she eventually mustered out.
The man shook his head. “No, no, no. Everybody gives me that stock answer, about health and fitness. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s a good reason to run, but you can do any number of things to keep fit and healthy. You can play football or, or jump rope or get on the elliptical at the gym or anything.” He began to walk with her. “Tell you what, Reyna? Let me buy you a cup of coffee, and you can tell me the real reason why you run. Do you have time for that before work?”
Reyna let out a laugh before she could stop herself. “Work,” she said to herself, still chuckling. “Yes, sir, I do have time for a cup of coffee.”
And out of nowhere, she no longer felt the need to run away from the man. Granted, for all Reyna knew, he may have been a dirty old man trying to do anything to get into her pants, but the velvet sound of his voice relaxed her, and somehow she felt safe around him.
Reyna and the man walked silently to the coffee shop just outside of the park. He ordered her a coffee, and she looked on skeptically when she realized that he ordered it black with two sugars -- exactly how she liked it. Still, she chose not to question it.
The man handed Reyna the cup of coffee, and they sat down at a table by the window, looking out at the people on the busy street.
“Reyna, what time do you need to be at work this morning?” The man asked, looking at this watch. “It’s already going on 7:30.”
She smiled. “Ah, see, that’s the thing. I’m currently unemployed, but I am looking for a new job.”
“Oh no, how long have you been without work?”
“About five and a half months now.”
“I see. So, Reyna, tell me the real reason why you go running,” the man said, cutting right to the chase.
“When I lost my job, I was frantic. I had no idea how I was going to pay my bills, and I began applying to jobs left and right. I’m pretty sure that I half-assed a few of those applications, but I was just hoping that somebody would give me a call, and that I’d be able to continue with my life as normal.”
The man nodded, and Reyna took that as her cue to continue speaking. “After about three months, I started losing my mind with the stress and the boredom. Unemployment barely covers my rent and bills, and there was this one day when I was absolutely beside myself. I couldn’t do anything. I felt powerless to change anything, quite honestly. And on that day, I put on a pair of old running shoes I had and just began to run. I ran and ran and ran until I felt better... like my head was clear. It was the first time I felt that calm in months. And then I got up the next morning and ran again, and then rinse and repeat, and here we are now.”
“Well, I know that you don’t run all day everyday, so what else do you do each day?”
“I keep job-hunting. But now, since I can manage to keep relatively calm despite my yucky financial situation, I apply to one job a day, and I spend a good amount of time on each application and each cover letter. I want to make every effort count, and I just hope that something will pan out soon. Unemployment is gonna run out soon enough.” Reyna laughed, even though they both knew that her situation wasn’t funny.
“Do you pray at all, Reyna?” the man asked abruptly. His question caught her off guard, and she hoped that he wouldn’t try to invite her to church or push a bible at her. However, she took an extra second to mull his question over. After all, he bought her a cup of coffee unexpectedly, and it was exactly how she liked it. The least that she could do in this case was be honest with him.
“See,” she started slowly, “I don’t think of it as prayer, per se. I don’t go to church or anything, and I’m not terribly religious. But sometimes, I like to think of it as sharing my thoughts with God or something, and my deepest thoughts usually come out when I run. I think about what frustrates me, what bothers me, and I think about what I need and what I’m thankful for, and when I do share with God and talk to Him, I talk to Him like... like I would talk to a very important friend, if that makes sense.”
The man nodded. “It makes perfect sense.”
Reyna paused for a moment, having reached her own revelation. “I guess you could say that I pray when I run,” she said. “When I feel like I need to pray, I go for a run. I suppose that that is why I run, sir.”
“Very well,” the man said, nodding his head approvingly. He looked at his watch, and although only a few minutes had passed, he got up from the table, and reached out to shake Reyna’s hand. “I must get going, Reyna, but I wish you well in your job search.”
Reyna shook his hand, and said, “Thank you again for the coffee, sir. Will I see you out there tomorrow morning?”
He smiled in response, and walked away and out of the coffee shop before answering her question.
She looked on, puzzled, still holding the piping hot coffee in her hand. She began to walk back to her apartment, sipping at her coffee little by little, thankful for the free pick-me-up. As she walked to her apartment, she realized that she never asked the man what his name was.
When Reyna arrived back at her apartment, she sat down at her computer, and began to draft a cover letter for a job posting she had seen the day before. She took a break soon after writing her first draft and opened up her email. There were three new messages waiting for her, and all three were from companies that she had applied to the week before, looking to set up interviews with her.
“Thank you, Lord,” she whispered, near tears.