I don’t run. I just do not run. I’ve never been a runner, and I’ve always made myself okay with it. When my friends talk about running, I laugh it off and make a joke about how I just don’t do it. I say that until I get older, until I have a life-threatening reason to start being active, I really won’t run. In middle school PE, I just barely made the cut when we had to run a mile in under ten minutes. I joke with my friend Whitney about getting winded just walking up the hill to her house. I’m not in shape, I don’t play sports, and I don’t run. I really just do not run.

I would occasionally go for a jog around the big circle in my neighborhood when I was in my freshman year because I was concerned about what I looked like and what I could do to fix it. Once in a blue moon, I would guilt myself into running. It looked easy in the ads for running shoes, but it was hard, and the results weren’t overnight, so I always quit after a week. The idea of lacing up my pink Nike Frees for any reason other than to go on errands made me dreadful. So I gave up, and I swore off running. I blocked the idea out of my mind. By ruling it out, by not even making it a question, I became comfortable with the idea of not being a runner. I decided that I wouldn’t give it attention, and therefore I wouldn’t be bothered by it.

I have a love (obsession) for an author named Shauna Niequist. She writes amazing books; her voice is powerful and relatable at the same time, which is something that I find outstanding. One day over the summer, I watched a video of her doing a monologue and in it she talks about an idea that her father, who is a pastor, speaks of. It’s this thing called “holy discontent.” She says that holy discontent is “when there’s something that really captures your emotions on a deep level, whether it makes you angry or it makes you sad or it does something in you, it’s really worth paying attention to.” Shauna goes on to describe her emotional responses to average, normal people crossing finish lines of marathons. It strikes her emotionally, and it makes her wonder if she could do it too, if she could run. That’s how she knows that, for her, there is holy discontent in running. As I listened to her words, I realized that I have a holy discontent in running too.

I realized slowly at first, and then all at once, that what I thought I was doing to minimize running in my life was actually backfiring in the best way. I have been brushing running off like an annoying gnat for most of my life, and while I always thought that doing so would make me feel better about not running, it has actually proved to do the opposite. I might tell you all day long that I have no interest whatsoever in being a runner. I might joke and tell you that the only way you’ll see me running is if Kate Middleton or a J.Crew sale is involved. But deep down, when you tell me about how you run, a voice in my heart tugs at me and makes me wonder if one day I could be so brave.

The truth is that running makes me feel like I’m being suffocated, not only because I literally have a hard time breathing, but because by it, all my worst fears are brought to the surface. I am an anxious, dominated, weak girl in my worst and most insecure thoughts, and running embodies those demons for me. But I know there is a fine, glimmering line drawn next to my stark detest of running, and right on the other side of it there is the version of me that is free from the binds that I have blamed on this activity for so long.

This line has been made apparent to me very recently by some of my favorite people. Take my friends Jennifer, Allison, and Danielle for example. Allison’s IT band hurts but she pushes through, and her coach makes her crazy but when cross country season is over, she misses it so much. Jennifer runs even when she has a million other things she needs to do. Danielle has been a runner ever since I’ve known her, and ever since I’ve known her, I’ve looked up to her. I love them, but when they told me about running, it only ever made me push it farther out of my mind because I actually wanted to be big enough to let myself join them in it.

There is a person in my life who I thought I was pretty much the same as in almost every respect: we both love coffee and cupcakes and Anthropologie and journaling. We aren’t competitive, we don’t really care for Sock War, and we love mail. Julia is my kindred spirit, and I thought that we were on the same exact page concerning just about everything. But around two weeks ago, I learned something about her that really surprised me. She ran. Every morning at camp, she ran. When I learned this, I was honestly a little shocked. Nuh uh, I thought. She never told me about her running. I teased her when I saw a pair of purple Asics in her car one day after we ate lunch together at the end of summer because I literally never even saw them on her feet during my session at camp. But they were on her feet every morning when she got up and ran. Wait, I thought we were the same! Julia, a runner? Good for her, but it made me feel that tugging at my heart again, that holy discontent. And now I know why. Because God knows how much I love Julia. He knows that heaven sent Julia to make me feel okay again. He knows she told me that she loves and believes in me. Julia—she is my role model, my person, and she was a runner. He knows that everything about our relationship, from that first day we met and proclaimed our sisterhood over enchiladas and Mexican rice in chow hall to her accident and her return home, has challenged me and made me live bolder than ever. I think that I was supposed to hear about her running later rather than earlier because it makes my running discontent just that more holy.

I would do anything for Julia. Before her accident, surely, but especially in the midst of it, I would have done absolutely anything for her. I would have then, and I would to this day twist time for her, bend iron, walk on air, run across the country in a split second, if it meant she would be okay. Run across the country in a split second if it meant she would be okay. I think of this all the time, but only recently has this dawned on me. It dawns on me like Julia herself is grabbing my hand and yelling it in my face with her megawatt smile and eyes like lights: Katherine. You actuallycould run, you know.

I know that Julia is immeasurably more than okay now—she’s in heaven and she isn’t worried about whether or not I will run. She doesn’t need me to run for her, but I’m going to. I think she was a mirror for me in a really special way. I think I always saw bits of myself in her, and now I know there is that runner bit in her too. But where I am on that miserable side of running, she was on the bold side, the side where I want to be. The side where I think she would want me to be, too. I want to be dedicated, consistent, and strong in my running. I think if I start working and pushing through all the pain and weakness that it unearths for me, I will love it. I think that once I show myself that I can do this thing that I once thought was impossible, life will open itself up to me in a way that I’ve never experienced before. I don’t want to get to the end of my life having not explored the things that scare me. I’ve already been through pain from things that terrify me, Julia’s accident being a prime example. So why would I let the essentially simple act of running limit my life? I want to push myself mentally and physically, and I want to end up closer to life with and in and through God because of it.

I’m going to run, and I do not expect it to be easy. I’m going to run because I look up to Julia and because in every bad part of my life that I shared with her, she would look me in the eyes and tell me I could beat it. I know she’d say the same to me about running. I am going to run because I want to make my life as big and as bold as I can. I’m going to run to honor the big, bold life that ended all too soon for us here on Earth, and the life that is now bigger and bolder than ever now in heaven. I’m going to run because I want to be able to tell God that I took up all his tough offers, the kinds of important offers I believe he leads us to through holy discontent. I’m going to run so that in April 2014, I might be able to prove that life with God is shinier and chock-full of way more potential than we usually give it credit for—something that I think Julia was well aware of.