“Forgive me Cindy for I have sinned,” I joked.  “It’s been two and a half months since my last workout.”

I fully expected her to sentence me to ten Hail Mary’s and one hundred push-ups. I got worse than that though: an hour of uncoordinated
flailing, panting and muscle failure in front of a ginormous mirror and twenty women I barely know.  Starting over is hard.  To say the least.

It’s been more than two months since I’ve done a lot of things: hung out with people after a concert until the last one is gone, stayed up late, read scholarly type theology books, attempted to answer unanswerable questions about God from my eight year-old, executed a push-up.  For more than two months now I’ve been solely focussed on surviving depression and bacteria and doubt.  My to-do list has been whittled down to “get through the day.” It’s been humbling and refining in the best ways, in ways I had no clue I needed.

I needed a break that was anything but a break.  Does that make sense?

But now the break is over and it’s time to get back to rest of my life.

I’ve got a blogging trip to coordinate.  I’ve got a new web site to launch.  I’ve got songs to write and record.  I’ve got a book to finish.  I’ve got meetings to reschedule and phone calls to return.  I’ve got a date with Cindy, or someone equally tortuous, to keep a few days a week.

I’m uncoordinated, working through some emotional and physical fatigue, a bit out of practice at, well, everything.  Two and half months away has caused some muscles to weaken and others to atrophy.

At the end of the workout this morning I felt exhaustion but also a real sense of accomplishment.  I mean, I did show up.  I did my best.  I didn’t yack. No one laughed at me.  And I think that’s because everyone else in the room felt just as clumsy and weak as I did.  We showed up for the same reasons, with the same
anxieties, to do the same work on the same muscles.  For all have fallen short.