Sore

Do you ever have one of those days where you tell yourself you’re going to walk seventeen miles and not train or stretch or do anything to prepare? That would be me yesterday.

First off, no, I didn’t end up walking seventeen miles. I know, shocking, right? About four miles in my right knee started hurting and from there it sent a rather painful sensation up my thigh and down my calf. By seven and a half miles I could barely hobble. Yay! I made another attempt to walk, but ended up needing to ride until the last three mile leg where I somehow managed to push through the pain and lead the ever-growing group into Olympia as part of an interfaith coalition for equal marriage rights. A big part of that was that nobody seemed to want to take our church’s Open and Affirming banner, so I took the front, my husband took the back and the pastor who married us and decided to join the march held up the middle. It was kind of an amazing thing.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. Even though our governor has already signed the bill, it’s only a matter of time before a referendum is put to the floor for voters to decide in November on whether to take away the rights of certain individuals and openly discriminate against them based on their God-given orientation. Hearing that the biggest opposition is from the religious right, my only counterargument is that we were joined by a multitude of clergy and laypersons representing their churches and synagogues for what they view as a social justice issue. Along with the United Church of Christ, our church, were Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, MCCs, Unitarians, Presbyterians and Jewish in support of equality. It was amazing and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.