Satan and Sore Knees

I went for slow run / walk interval workout this morning at dawn. It was a beautiful morning with no wind and a warm haze already hanging over the cornfields, and my body was feeling pretty good. My muscles weren’t overly sore, my mind seemed to have recovered from the brutal trauma induced from a 5 hour battle of will over ability, mind over matter… It’s the first run I’ve done since my 26.2 marathon distance run on Friday.

As I finished up, I slowly walked into the campground and had this tiny thought…

Hmmmmm, my knee hurts a little…

In the next 100 steps that it took for me to to get to the deck of my camper, I had already convinced myself that I surely must have seriously injured myself running that stupid marathon distance two days ago. I’d pulled something, I’d torn something, I’d surely completely wrecked something… What was I thinking attempting such a crazy thing at my age… in my non-athletic condition?!? Totally serves me right… Now I’m going to end up not being able to run, or walk, or elliptical ever again… I’m not going to be able to hike Harney Peak with my dad next week (and he’s going to be SO disappointed, and he distinctly told me to never think about running a marathon because it did horrible things to your body. ugh.), I’m going to end up needing my knee scoped, I’m going to end up needing physical therapy, I’m going to end up needing surgery, I’m going to end up in a brace and crutches for months and months on end as I slowly recover, and I will never ever reach full recovery. I will have a limp and chronic knee pain for the rest of my life due to this one crazy, foolish, 26.2 distance. I will never get the joy of sunrise runs again, I will never get to push myself, my body, my mind to try accomplish great things again… I will gain back all the weight I have worked so hard on losing… and I’m somehow going to have to figure out how to tell my friend that I won’t be able to run in the DesMoines Half Marathon with her in October, maybe I can cheer her on from the sidelines on my crutches… I will never ever again be at the personal mountaintop of achievement that I was just on yesterday.  My mind took me from strong and accomplished to weak and defeated in the blink of an eye.

Yes, seriously - that all went through my mind in a matter of about 53 seconds. My marathon mental “success” lasted one idiotic small day before instant failure set in and started taking over. What the what??!?!

I took a shower, I took some aleve, I looked for my bio-freeze, I ate two bananas, and made a cup of coffee. As I sat on the couch, my knee cold and tingling with the aftereffects of a heavy massage of bio-freeze, I sipped my hot coffee and closed my eyes.

Granted, I don’t know that I for sure haven’t seriously injured myself, but… the likelihood of this current crazed mind game going on is surly an attack from satan… trying to squeeze his way back into the control seat of my mind and life. He used to be a master controller at the control board of my life, but has been shoved aside over and over again over the last several months as I’m finding more and more confidence and truth to continually kick him to the curb. It’s a tiring task, warring with him day in and day out, he’s persistent, I’ll give him that… but as I’ve been told my whole entire life, my stubbornness and tenacity and determination is also a rather strong force to be reckoned with.

Hopefully today he picked the wrong force to reckon with, the wrong knee to try settle in and call home. Hopefully this twinge of pain in my knee, which instantly caused a crazed sensation of utter defeat to explode within me, is merely a little prick in this current journey I’m on. I pray that it’s only a blink, a moment, a quick fading reminder to simply remain aware of my runaway thoughts, reign in my over-imaginative mind, hold back my immediate desire to respond in fight or flight worst case scenario. All in, all hype, all obsessed is how I’m wired. I zone in, I zero in, I immediately manifest molehills into mountains in my mind. I allow the little to snowball into the immense, the insignificant to explode into the extreme, the tiny to fester into the tremendous.

I immediately stopped and took ownership back of those runaway satan-filled lies rapidly breeding in my mind. I sent a message to my friend, my encourager, my glass-half-empty better half, and openly admitted my thoughts. I turned to my husband and also admitted my thoughts. I allowed all those crazy thoughts to leave my lips, so they hopefully wouldn’t continue to fester and grow and infect my mind with every single step I took, with every little twinge of pain that is going to come with every single step I take for the next little while…

I’m not good at resting, I’m not good at patience, I’m not good at backing off, slowing down, backtracking. I have come to openly admit and know this about myself. I don’t want my knee to hurt, I don’t want to have to be careful, I don’t want to possibly have to allow my body a little extra time for this unidentified inflammation to settle back down… but I know that if I don’t, I run the risk of an even more serious injury and pain. My bend is to just keep going, just push through the pain, irregardless of the damage that may ensue.

I don’t want to allow satan the upper hand in my mind through the little nagging zings going on in my knee right now. I don’t want to allow satan the ability to convince myself to keep pushing it, over-do it, over-analyze it, over-freakout about it. My body ran 26.2 miles exactly 48 hours ago… it is my fervent prayer that this discomfort in my knee is merely a short lived reminder of what I accomplished, rather than a long lived badge I will somehow label as failure.

May the Almighty Healer, the one who healed and strengthened my body, mind, and soul to the level it was at just a mere two days ago, also kiss this precious little knee and grant it the miracle of returned whole health and function.

And if this is in fact an injury, and Friday was in fact my last day of running, and I do in fact have another long season of healing in front of me… I can only imagine what lessons God has in store for me, what moments of trust and faith and grace I’m going to have to, yet again, lay upon His feet and allow Him to show me and reveal to me. And, unfortunately, that would completely not surprise me. Will it disappoint me, oh you have no idea, I will honestly be crushed… but no, it won’t be something that surprises me in the least.

This is exactly how God has come to work in my life. And He has proven over and over again that He is, in fact, still so very very good despite what I might initial label as so very very bad. I will hope and pray this isn’t a major life injury, and that the pain and discomfort will soon be gone… I will continue to try just trust this journey I am on and attempt to faithfully continue to just obediently listen and obey, with eyes and heart open to hear and receive the love and the lessons intended for me.

Who knew that perhaps the miles after the 26.2 might possibly be an even harder challenge than the marathon moment itself...

{ Previous Blog Post "26.2 ... Who Knew" HERE }