Today was officially my Half Marathon race day. Today was also National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. Two incredibly big things collided in my incredibly small world. Two very significant things in my life, which happen to have already been incredibly linked and woven in and throughout each other on this incredible Journey To Faith that I have been on the last two and a half years.
I know I’ve said this so many times before, but I honestly don’t consider myself a “real” runner. I don’t consider myself a “real” athlete. All my life I’ve battled my weight and I have never excelled or enjoyed any sports or any kind. I was not athletic or popular in school. I didn’t enjoy gym class, and the day we had to run the mile run every year in gym, was probably the worst day of thee entire year. I had perfect attendance from Kindergarten through HS Graduation (yes… I know, I’m a total freak), and that mile run day was honestly a day I always considered skipping school for every single year, which I knew would break my perfect attendance. I obviously never did… but oh I thought about it and wanted to! Four laps around the track at the college football field. Four horrible and long and agonizing laps. Four laps… one mile.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought I would have found the courage, the determination, the desire, the grit, to actually run anything longer than one mile. Let alone thirteen point one miles… all in a row… without stopping once. People, that is fifty two and a half laps around a college football field! I cannot even wrap my mind around that.
I graduated from High School, and I continued to battle my weight and decided to start trying to run slowly every once-in-a-while — merely as a way to burn even more calories at a faster rate. I hated every step, I never made it far, I never ran between early fall and late spring.
And then my feet began to bother me, and my weight began to increase, and my running and exercising all came to a screeching halt. And then my life basically came to a screeching halt the day I found out I was nearly forty and pregnant, after sixteen years of infertility, with a daughter that carried Trisomy 18 and would never come home with us.
I was so sick physically, mentally, and spiritually, and there were many days I wished I had actually died with her… even through deep inside of course I was so grateful my life had been spared during her delivery, and deep inside I knew God was somehow still “good” and that for whatever reason this was somehow part of the "plan" for my life, and I was going to need to figure out how to trust and heal and move on.
I know I’ve said this so many times before, but I honestly don’t consider myself a “real” runner. I don’t consider myself a “real” athlete. All my life I’ve battled my weight and I have never excelled or enjoyed any sports or any kind. I was not athletic or popular in school. I didn’t enjoy gym class, and the day we had to run the mile run every year in gym, was probably the worst day of thee entire year. I had perfect attendance from Kindergarten through HS Graduation (yes… I know, I’m a total freak), and that mile run day was honestly a day I always considered skipping school for every single year, which I knew would break my perfect attendance. I obviously never did… but oh I thought about it and wanted to! Four laps around the track at the college football field. Four horrible and long and agonizing laps. Four laps… one mile.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought I would have found the courage, the determination, the desire, the grit, to actually run anything longer than one mile. Let alone thirteen point one miles… all in a row… without stopping once. People, that is fifty two and a half laps around a college football field! I cannot even wrap my mind around that.
I graduated from High School, and I continued to battle my weight and decided to start trying to run slowly every once-in-a-while — merely as a way to burn even more calories at a faster rate. I hated every step, I never made it far, I never ran between early fall and late spring.
And then my feet began to bother me, and my weight began to increase, and my running and exercising all came to a screeching halt. And then my life basically came to a screeching halt the day I found out I was nearly forty and pregnant, after sixteen years of infertility, with a daughter that carried Trisomy 18 and would never come home with us.
I was so sick physically, mentally, and spiritually, and there were many days I wished I had actually died with her… even through deep inside of course I was so grateful my life had been spared during her delivery, and deep inside I knew God was somehow still “good” and that for whatever reason this was somehow part of the "plan" for my life, and I was going to need to figure out how to trust and heal and move on.
It was an incredibly long and dark season of loss, despair, depression, defeat for me. I struggled with anger and bitterness and I harbored much animosity towards God and the world. I drug myself through season after season after that loss, filled with so much dark and so much ugly. I was not very lovable, I was not very happy, I was not very fun or pleasant to be around.
But God continued to love me, and He continued to hug me tight to Him, even while I disparately tried to push Him far away. My friends and family continued to love me and hug me tight, even while I disparately tried to push them away as well.
And one day, I finally started listening, started processing, started releasing. It has been a long, slow, and incredibly difficult journey for me. I still have so far yet to go. Every day I wake up and battle the day. Luckily, right now, most days I’m winning a little bit more than I’m losing. Not every day… but most days.
And with this slow change and shift I also started to realize that I need to love and forgive myself. I need to continue to figure out how to process and work through the black and the sticky and the mire of my life and my past, so I am able to more fully step forward into my present and my future.
I decided that to love myself was to perhaps allow myself the time and the patience and courage to change. And not just a little bit of change… a really big drastic type of change, and I began to process and work through many parts of my physical, mental, and spiritual life. I began to give myself the grace I had never allowed myself in the past. The grace of imperfection, the grace of mediocrity, the grace of forgiveness, the grace of lowered expectations.
And here’s the interesting thing that began to happen… the more grace I granted and allowed myself to feel and process through, the more I actually felt myself grow and strengthen. I began to battle my guilt, and my perfectionism issues, and my anger and disappointments in the life God had granted me thus far. I began to look at my journey through a slightly different light… through a lens of reasoning, a lens of acceptance… acceptance of myself, acceptance of God, and acceptance of others around me.
I began to doctor for the pain in my feet. I began to make healthier eating choices. I began to write more, process more, read my Bible more, pray more. And I began to run again. Never fast, never far… always hard, always horrible, always a mental battle of will vs strength.
Months and months went by. My body continued to heal and strengthen after my illness and loss. Friendships and relationships were made and deepened through honestly and vulnerability. I began to honestly share my story of Faith a little more openly, I began to be openly more vulnerable and real, less hiding, less avoiding. I began to be a safe place of connection for many people. And it was always just as much a blessing for me as it was for them.
I continued to run for a few minutes at a time on my treadmill in the basement. I continued to eat healthy. I continued to forgive and fight through lots of internal personal junk that was taking it’s tole on my body and my attitude externally and spiritually.
And then one day my eye had a little twitch. And it was still twitching three weeks later… and well… that annoying little twitch led to some pretty amazing conversations and connections with someone I knew of, but really didn’t know. God used that annoying little eye twitch to become the connecting point to a relationship that would change my life.
I would process an idea, and take on the incredibly insane notion that maybe someday I would like to try run a half marathon. But I was not a runner, and I was not athletic. So I was quite confused as to where this little nudge, this inner whisper, was coming from and why.
And then one Saturday in February, in a moment of weakness, I actually signed up to run the same half marathon my friend had already signed up to run on January 1st. I signed up online to run a Half Marathon on October 15, 2017. I’m quite confident I didn’t actually think I would really run it, but it sounded good at the moment.
My friend sent me the Half Marathon for Beginners training schedule. It was much easier than the one I had attempted to follow four years earlier, when I had given up and quit the day I couldn’t get in an eight mile run. I printed it out. I printed out blank calendar pages from February through October. I filled in the numbers from schedule onto the calendar. I decided to start training the following morning, and I would cycle through the 12 week schedule three times to get me to race day.
And you know what… I did it. I really really did it. I put in the work and the workouts needed every single week from that day until today. We purchased an elliptical. I moved from my treadmill to running outside. My running began to slowly get longer and faster. It was ridiculously hard to find the time and the willpower to actually follow the numbers and days on that training schedule. But I did it. I did it despite the fact I work two jobs, despite the fact I have two kids, despite the fact I am a mom and wife busy with laundry and cooking and cleaning and all those daily things that I’d let stand in my way up until this season in my life.
God gave me the healing, the power, the endurance, the desire, the will power to actually do the training. The weeks continued to tick away. The months continued to flip by. The training continued, and continued, and continued. And it was hard… so hard, physically and emotionally. But for some reason God kept waking me up, kept pushing me out there to push me beyond the limits I thought I would never reach.
But God continued to love me, and He continued to hug me tight to Him, even while I disparately tried to push Him far away. My friends and family continued to love me and hug me tight, even while I disparately tried to push them away as well.
And one day, I finally started listening, started processing, started releasing. It has been a long, slow, and incredibly difficult journey for me. I still have so far yet to go. Every day I wake up and battle the day. Luckily, right now, most days I’m winning a little bit more than I’m losing. Not every day… but most days.
And with this slow change and shift I also started to realize that I need to love and forgive myself. I need to continue to figure out how to process and work through the black and the sticky and the mire of my life and my past, so I am able to more fully step forward into my present and my future.
I decided that to love myself was to perhaps allow myself the time and the patience and courage to change. And not just a little bit of change… a really big drastic type of change, and I began to process and work through many parts of my physical, mental, and spiritual life. I began to give myself the grace I had never allowed myself in the past. The grace of imperfection, the grace of mediocrity, the grace of forgiveness, the grace of lowered expectations.
And here’s the interesting thing that began to happen… the more grace I granted and allowed myself to feel and process through, the more I actually felt myself grow and strengthen. I began to battle my guilt, and my perfectionism issues, and my anger and disappointments in the life God had granted me thus far. I began to look at my journey through a slightly different light… through a lens of reasoning, a lens of acceptance… acceptance of myself, acceptance of God, and acceptance of others around me.
I began to doctor for the pain in my feet. I began to make healthier eating choices. I began to write more, process more, read my Bible more, pray more. And I began to run again. Never fast, never far… always hard, always horrible, always a mental battle of will vs strength.
Months and months went by. My body continued to heal and strengthen after my illness and loss. Friendships and relationships were made and deepened through honestly and vulnerability. I began to honestly share my story of Faith a little more openly, I began to be openly more vulnerable and real, less hiding, less avoiding. I began to be a safe place of connection for many people. And it was always just as much a blessing for me as it was for them.
I continued to run for a few minutes at a time on my treadmill in the basement. I continued to eat healthy. I continued to forgive and fight through lots of internal personal junk that was taking it’s tole on my body and my attitude externally and spiritually.
And then one day my eye had a little twitch. And it was still twitching three weeks later… and well… that annoying little twitch led to some pretty amazing conversations and connections with someone I knew of, but really didn’t know. God used that annoying little eye twitch to become the connecting point to a relationship that would change my life.
I would process an idea, and take on the incredibly insane notion that maybe someday I would like to try run a half marathon. But I was not a runner, and I was not athletic. So I was quite confused as to where this little nudge, this inner whisper, was coming from and why.
And then one Saturday in February, in a moment of weakness, I actually signed up to run the same half marathon my friend had already signed up to run on January 1st. I signed up online to run a Half Marathon on October 15, 2017. I’m quite confident I didn’t actually think I would really run it, but it sounded good at the moment.
My friend sent me the Half Marathon for Beginners training schedule. It was much easier than the one I had attempted to follow four years earlier, when I had given up and quit the day I couldn’t get in an eight mile run. I printed it out. I printed out blank calendar pages from February through October. I filled in the numbers from schedule onto the calendar. I decided to start training the following morning, and I would cycle through the 12 week schedule three times to get me to race day.
And you know what… I did it. I really really did it. I put in the work and the workouts needed every single week from that day until today. We purchased an elliptical. I moved from my treadmill to running outside. My running began to slowly get longer and faster. It was ridiculously hard to find the time and the willpower to actually follow the numbers and days on that training schedule. But I did it. I did it despite the fact I work two jobs, despite the fact I have two kids, despite the fact I am a mom and wife busy with laundry and cooking and cleaning and all those daily things that I’d let stand in my way up until this season in my life.
God gave me the healing, the power, the endurance, the desire, the will power to actually do the training. The weeks continued to tick away. The months continued to flip by. The training continued, and continued, and continued. And it was hard… so hard, physically and emotionally. But for some reason God kept waking me up, kept pushing me out there to push me beyond the limits I thought I would never reach.
September turned into October. October 1 became October 5, and suddenly race day was in my ten day forecast on my weather app. For some reason that really struck home for me. It was going to happen, and it was going to happen soon. And suddenly I was filled with doubt and dread. Suddenly I wanted to quit in the worst way… Suddenly I was battling my worth and fearing my lack of endurance and strength. Suddenly I was questions God true intent for me in this current season in my life.
This week was a hard week for me to process through… but like it had all spring and summer long… the days continued to slip on by, and before I knew it I was packing for the weekend, I was getting picked up for the weekend, I was arriving at the hotel for the weekend.
This week was a hard week for me to process through… but like it had all spring and summer long… the days continued to slip on by, and before I knew it I was packing for the weekend, I was getting picked up for the weekend, I was arriving at the hotel for the weekend.
And then I went to bed and I woke up and it was October 15.
It was time to get dressed, it was time to pin on the bib with the numbers 5920 onto the front of my shirt, it was time to lace up the shoes that had already carried me for miles and miles this summer. And then it was time to leave the hotel and walk to the race route. And then it was time to get lost in the sea of people and get lined up.
And then it was time to start the music app, start the running app, start the race watch, and start to actually run the race. The moment I had been working for had finally arrived.
I was terrified, I was nervous, I was excited, I was filled with dread, I was anxious.
But oddly enough, I was rather calm, and was also ready.
I was ready for the race to just start. I was ready to take on the challenge of running that fateful 13.1 distance. I was also just ready for it to be finished and behind me, whatever the results, however it might go. I tried to hold as little expectation as I could, and I tried to assure myself it wasn’t actually about how today went, it was about how the journey to today has gone. It’s about what I’ve learned, what I’ve overcome, what I’ve battled through, what I’ve lost, what I’ve gained, what I’ve accomplished through the time and training that got me to the actual race day today.
Today I remembered the loss and life and love of our dear little Faith MaryJo - and in her memory and honor I trained and I ran the race set before me with perseverance and with my eyes fixed on Jesus. I ran 13.1 miles surrounded by thousands and thousands of other runners and spectators, up hills, down hills, around corners, over rivers, besides skyscrapers. I ran 13.1 miles without stopping and I actually crossed the finish line.
Yes, I started and finished a real half marathon today. I did it, I really did it.
I did something I once thought was completely impossible. But as it says in Matthew 19:26 “With God all things are possible.” I accomplished, and persevered, and overcame, and I did not do it alone, and I cannot take any of the credit. God granted me healing and drive… my friends and family granted me time and support and encouragement to train. They believed in me and encouraged me to believe in myself.
On March 27, 2015 I may have lost a child and thought I’d lost the world, but in that loss I would also come to gain more than I could have ever imagined… and would actually come to gain back not only my life, but the entire world as well.
It was time to get dressed, it was time to pin on the bib with the numbers 5920 onto the front of my shirt, it was time to lace up the shoes that had already carried me for miles and miles this summer. And then it was time to leave the hotel and walk to the race route. And then it was time to get lost in the sea of people and get lined up.
And then it was time to start the music app, start the running app, start the race watch, and start to actually run the race. The moment I had been working for had finally arrived.
I was terrified, I was nervous, I was excited, I was filled with dread, I was anxious.
But oddly enough, I was rather calm, and was also ready.
I was ready for the race to just start. I was ready to take on the challenge of running that fateful 13.1 distance. I was also just ready for it to be finished and behind me, whatever the results, however it might go. I tried to hold as little expectation as I could, and I tried to assure myself it wasn’t actually about how today went, it was about how the journey to today has gone. It’s about what I’ve learned, what I’ve overcome, what I’ve battled through, what I’ve lost, what I’ve gained, what I’ve accomplished through the time and training that got me to the actual race day today.
Today I remembered the loss and life and love of our dear little Faith MaryJo - and in her memory and honor I trained and I ran the race set before me with perseverance and with my eyes fixed on Jesus. I ran 13.1 miles surrounded by thousands and thousands of other runners and spectators, up hills, down hills, around corners, over rivers, besides skyscrapers. I ran 13.1 miles without stopping and I actually crossed the finish line.
Yes, I started and finished a real half marathon today. I did it, I really did it.
I did something I once thought was completely impossible. But as it says in Matthew 19:26 “With God all things are possible.” I accomplished, and persevered, and overcame, and I did not do it alone, and I cannot take any of the credit. God granted me healing and drive… my friends and family granted me time and support and encouragement to train. They believed in me and encouraged me to believe in myself.
On March 27, 2015 I may have lost a child and thought I’d lost the world, but in that loss I would also come to gain more than I could have ever imagined… and would actually come to gain back not only my life, but the entire world as well.
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