Dear God
Marcia Ratliff
It wasn’t as if anyone had taught Shirley to pray or even expected her to. She was nice enough without being bound to Godgiven morals and hadn’t undergone any crisis to make her reach out for God as a crutch, but there was something about solitude that lent itself to prayer. And she was alone enough to give it a try anyway. It wasn’t as if Shirley was unfriendly in the least, for she had enough friends when she wanted them. It was just that she preferred to run alone. She preferred running in the mornings alone, when the sun was just deciding whether or not to brighten another day. After she took up praying, she always prayed that it would. It wasn’t as if Shirley needed to run to lose weight. She wasn’t obsessed with her appearance and didn’t care much about what people thought of her. She just decided that she had arrived at a time in her life where she should start forming habits. She was starting her junior year of high school, after all, and wanted to adopt a good habit or two since she wasn’t much for hobbies. It wasn’t as if running came easily to Shirley. In fact, most days she wanted to give up or at least cut a few corners. She didn’t think it was quite natural for her heart to beat that loud and fast or for her lungs to feel as desperate for air as they did when she ran. But that was part of the reason Shirley kept at it. The one thing Shirley knew about herself was that she wasn’t a quitter. So that was why Shirley ran. She ran the streets of her neighborhood or through the cemetery across the highway depending on the day. She ran uphill and downhill, past houses and ditches filled with a colorful mix of tall weeds and wildflowers during the summer and white frost or snow during the winter. Sometimes it rained, but mostly it was dry. There were cold days, but they were never cold enough to keep her from warming up after a mile or two of beating the pavement with her purple, hand-me-down Nike shoes. Shirley began to run in autumn when the air turned crisp like the leaves that covered her driveway. She ran with music for the first week, thinking that increasing her musical exposure would be a good use of time. Her little brother let her use his iPod, but only if she promised to put new music on it and return it before he woke
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