The temptation of isolation

This year I’ve gotten back into running after many health setbacks in 2025, and I’ve been amazed—and deeply grateful—that I’ve been able to run consistently again.

Since becoming a mom, running has been one of my primary ways of regulating my nervous system. I love the mindful rhythm of it—the time in my day where my mind settles, my breath finds cadence, and I return to something that feels so good, so right, and so natural.

And yet, as a former college athlete, I am also a competitor. So the voice of “run faster” or “you’re not who you used to be” inevitably shows up. When it does, it can easily turn into comparison instead of presence.

As my dad keeps reminding me: “Your ego is not your amigo.”

Running is everywhere right now: run clubs, races, events popping up constantly. And when that comparison voice gets loud, I hear myself think: I can’t go to that event—I’d be embarrassed by my pace. So I run alone.

And don’t get me wrong. There is something deeply peaceful about solo runs. As an overstimulated mom and pastor carrying many people’s needs, sometimes it feels like the only quiet I get.

But if I’m honest, I don’t always choose it for rest. I choose it from embarrassment. From fear. From wanting to be seen a certain way.

So what do I do?

I isolate.

I’ve done this before. In college, I was part of a Christian campus culture where there was this very curated “cool kid” coffee shop scene. I always felt like I was on the outside looking in, trying to figure out what “it” was and how to get in.

Quickly I got tired of and jaded by it. And I opted out. I went to the unimpressive Starbucks down the road and wrote my psychology papers there instead.

On one hand, I wasn’t willing to play the game. But on the other hand, I also removed myself from connection. What felt like resistance slowly became isolation.

It’s interesting how easy it is to do this. Fear, shame, anxiety—they can so quickly convince us that stepping back is safer than being seen. But isolation doesn’t just protect me from comparison. It also protects me from connection.

And I notice this pattern everywhere—the exhausted parent who opts out of community out of fear it will be too much, the disillusioned post-church person who still quietly longs for belonging but no longer knows how to re-enter it. Isolation feels like control, but it slowly narrows imagination. It tells us that what already is is all that could be.

And yet I keep noticing something else.

When I am most connected—to myself, to others, and to God—I find myself loosening that grip and stepping back into the communal work of imagination. One place I see this is in a small tradition I’ve started: gathering a group each year for the Long Beach Pride 5K.

Some walk, some run, some are returning to movement after long seasons away from it. Two people this year are running for the first time as adults. There is no shared pace, no shared performance—just goofy joyful movement, rainbow bandanas, and a lot of laughter.

We bring our bodies—queer, BIPOC, postpartum, differently abled, unathletic, athletic, all of it—and we move together. It feels like a kind of embodied church. Not a performance of belonging, but a practice of it.

This whole running phenomenon I’m in right now reminds me so much of the journey of spiritual formation: to loosen our grip of control, enjoy the divine presence of now, find breath, don’t let isolation win, imagine something different, be the Beloved Community. Learning again that we do not become whole alone.

And so this church blog is not meant to be a “go for a run” send-off, but rather an invitation to reflection. Where are you tempted toward isolation as a form of protection? For some of us it is injustice, social anxiety, trauma, church wounds. For others, singleness, strained relationships, health struggles, or grief. And gently, I wonder: Where might we begin to imagine something different?

What would it look like to loosen the grip of isolation—not by forcing ourselves into spaces that don’t feel safe, but by creatively, courageously re-entering connection in ways that feel life-giving? Because maybe the invitation is not perfection or performance. Maybe it is imagination.

And maybe imagination is how we remember—together—that we were never meant to become whole alone.