Faith Week

We have officially again entered Faith Week.

At least I have.

Everyone in our house does this month, this week, this thing a little differently.  Since day one we have all navigated this Journey to Faith differently.  Yes, we're on the journey together, but we are not always standing at the same place on the road together.  Truth be told, we rarely are.  And that's ok.

We all process differently.  We all remember differently.  We all honor differently.  We all grieve differently.  We have all been affected differently.  And that has become a delicate and intricate little dance we've all lived within now for the last seven years.

To be honest, some of us might not even talk about her audibly this week.  Some of us will process quietly, inwardly, silently... while some will celebrate her a little more boldly, outwardly. And I've stopped being hurt, confused, and offended by that.

She was one child, who affected all of us in her own special and unique way.

Six years ago we celebrated her first birth day on Easter morning.  We didn't feel like being with people or extended family.  We didn't feel like celebrating Jesus's amazing resurrection.  We took a little trip and we stayed away.  Not everyone understood this choice, but it was what we felt we needed to do.

Somehow multiple years have continued to pass.  Some years I've had people with me as I visit the cemetery, some years I have gone alone.  The invite has always been open, and I'm never quite sure who will join me and who won't.  Some years I have tears as I stand there, some years I don't.  Some years the tears have hit before, some years the tears haven't come until later.

For myself, I have always gone into this week with a heavy heart.  I truly believe that my body remembers and my body grieves, along with the grieving and memory within my mind and soul. All of me remembers the ache, the pain, the loss, the heartache.  I grieve all that isn't and won't be.  I try to allow myself to feel all that, and I try to also attempt to find something positive within the story as well. Every year I make a little cake of some sort, and almost every year I have run some kind of virtual race in her memory and honor.

To me, running signifies pain, determination, grit, overcoming, wanting to quit over and over but not allowing myself to.  Preparing, training, holding on, hanging on, and enduring the horrible until the end is reached. Living through it, surviving it, and then walking away and being able to talk and share about it after.

And truth be told, I think I also have trained and run something long, hard, and difficult every year as a punishment to the body that I feel has left me disappointed over and over again by what it can't do and hasn't done.  This year I am working on that mindset, so I actually don't even know what distance I'm going to even run yet, but I know it will not be anything long or double digit milage.

Most years I get a pink rose, like the one we had at her funeral. Most years I get a balloon or two, and I will take everything along with my race metal and leave it at the cemetery for the day.  I bring water and a cloth to clean the stone off. Some years there's been snow on the ground, some years not. We can't leave anything there overnight any more since they've changed the cemetery rules in the town where we live (except over Memorial Day, then you get a week I believe).

So I always drive away knowing that I will have to be back later that day to pick it all back up.  Some times this leaves me happy, and sometimes it just leaves me sad and annoyed.

But yes, here we are yet again. And I'm not sure I have anything left, or surely anything new to post about... Is there anything more or different this year than all the years previous? I doubt it.  So this will probably be my only post this year as we inch closer and closer to that infamous date in our lives.

The day we said hello and goodbye all at the same time. It left a hole if all of our hearts, and left all of us clinging to a differently outlook, a different hope, a different view of life and love.  It's brought us together and ripped us apart all at the same time.  It's all the things and none of the things all at the same time.

This week will I will drink from all my Faith themed mugs, wear all my Faith themed shirts, prepare for a remembrance run on Sunday, make a little cake that all of us will look at because I will set it in the middle of the table, but I'm not sure who will all partake in celebrating and eating it.

And that's ok.

I'm doing what I need to do.  Everyone else will also do what they need to do.  And that's ok.  It's simply our Journey to Faith, together and alone.

2016 * 2017 * 2018 * 2019 * 2020 * 2021

Previous Blog Post { I'm Not Quite Sure What I'm Doing } HERE

Not Quite Sure What I'm Doing

I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, but I think I may have started actual in person, outside, half marathon training again this week.

I haven't run outside at home since before covid.  The world just became a little too scary, so I retreated to my basement every morning. I have a treadmill, elliptical, bike, BB membership, and recently added a rowing machine. I mean, why in the world would I venture outside if I didn't have to?!

Two years ago I took a serious vow that I was done racing any in person live races. Anywhere. Anytime. Period.  I had been signed up and training for many different things in the spring of 2020 and everything was covid canceled.  I would run a few of them virtually (in my basement) and I have signed up online for a few more virtual races since then, but I have continued to not allow myself to re-enter the streets and crowds and anxiety of in person racing.

I'm not even sure why, it's just something I said in 2020.  I'm getting older (and slower) is my main reason.

But there is this one little caveat. The Mickelson Trail Half Marathon. Ugh.

I eagerly signed up for this for the first time in 2018 (for the 2019 race). I would need one day off work, the day after, to get back home. And while I could have probably gotten it off, there were others in the department that ended up also off over that timeframe, and I knew I could not in good conscience have that day off.  So I didn't run it.

2020 I was signed up for the second time. Covid canceled.  It was decided we could defer it 2021 or 2022.  I deferred to 2021.

2021 would be the wedding weekend of my son and beautiful daughter-in-law. There was no way I could travel six hours away for a race the day after the wedding.  They graciously allowed me to defer one last time to 2022.

2022 is the current due date of our first grand baby. You can't even make this kind of stuff up, and I'm laughing at God's great humor as I type this.

The due date changed from the original date they had thought, and it would be months before I realized that the updated due date was smack dab in the middle of a family vacation half marathon race weekend. My initial reaction was to freak out, ok - not actually freak out, but I was suddenly faced with having to make another decision about this race.

More than anything I wanted to just say I wasn't going to do it, cancel the trip, cancel the hotel reservations, leave the PTO on the work calendar and call it good.  No training. No outdoor running. No traveling. No pre-race anxiety. No live in person race surrounded by hundreds/thousands of other (faster) runners. No new coffee mug to earn.

But... what if... what if the baby was born a week early? What if the baby was born a week late? What if... and we all know the avenues my lossmom mind would immediately go to and I had to just take a breath and walk away for a while. 

I counted 12 weeks out from race day and circled the date on my calendar. I would have to make a decision by then.  Would I start training? Would I cancel the whole thing?

That circled date arrived a week and a half ago.  I went around and around in my head of all the things I didn't want to do, most of which was go outside in the cold and dark and attempt to start training... But, that's exactly what I did.

Outside running is way more difficult for me than inside. Mentally and physically. I've suffered a large back injury a year ago. I had a long go with covid a few months ago. I'm closer now to 50 than I am to 40.  And I was never a strong and fast runner when I first started running in my early 40's.

I have decided to leave the hotel reservations. I have decided to seriously start the training, with all training to be done outside.  We will decide the day before we are scheduled to leave if we will leave, or if we will cancel. We are good with this plan, and excited to see what journey God will lead us on over the next twelve plus weeks.

Will I make it through all twelve weeks of training? I honestly don't know. I am through week one, and I am already dealing with some pretty intense back issues, so I'm just not sure.  Will I race in person and cross the finish line of one last live race? I have no idea.  Will the baby be early and I will be that crazy proud runner grandma talking about it to every person standing next to me in the line up coral?  Hopefully!

So for now, I guess I can only leave you with a "Well, tune in to find out!" promise.

#runlikethewindbullseye #motherrunner #runningnonrunner #halfmarathontraining #dohardthings

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Yet Another March

I am standing in the middle of yet another March.

I still have not lost the weight.
I still have not cleaned the house.
I still have not magically swooped into my own life and Mary Poppins myself into anything great and acceptable.

Every year for as long as I can remember March was that “goal month” … the birthday month, the anniversary month, the crap it’s-almost-shorts-and-swimsuit-season-again month.

Birthdays are just the natural go-to goal date for most I would think, next to New Year’s. Well, for me anyway, it’s always been my birthday. The goal weight, the hopes, the dreams, the long away goals and desires we’ve allowed to settle within us, circled in red on that one special day of “celebration.”

And yet, every year, somehow, the days continue to pass, the weeks, the months, and suddenly February has done its usual “totally-rushed-by” and boom… it’s March.

March. Again. I’m just shaking my head. Again

Oh the state of my life. The state of my house. The state of my health.

Actually, no… wait a second! My fingers just automatically typed the words that my brain was whispering (hollering!) into my ears… but really… really is the state of my life, my house, my health THAT bad?

Or am I just currently in a full season of “living”?

Perhaps we are just currently in the season of “living” in our house with all the people and pets, with all our things (special and non-special) scattered throughout the rooms and surfaces as we go about “living” our lives during this time of work, school, parenting our kids, parenting our parents, appointments, adulting (this is the word I have coined for you know… ALL THE THINGS that have to get done… bills, laundry, essentials shopping, cleaning, cooking, friendshipping (yeah, not a word, I see that, but oh well, welcome to my vocabulary)). And getting gas for crying out loud. I hate getting gas and I don’t even know why. #adultingishard

So, how do we embrace these busy, chaotic, hectic, unsettled seasons in our lives? How do we allow ourselves to slow down and to give ourselves, our families, our homes, our bodies the grace they surely need and deserve?

It is such an unbelievably hard concept to hold isn’t it? Slow. Grace. And why? Why and how did we all end up chasing this unattainable state of perfection and contentment?! I know it can’t just be me that feels this way.

Although… I do wonder if not everyone has grouped together “perfection” and “contentment” in the same way as I have. For some reason in my mind I have this belief that I won’t achieve contentment until I have achieved perfection. And really, contentment and perfection probably aren’t even anything anyone can actually ever “achieve” this side of Heaven.

So we are (or at least I am) always always always feeling three days and ten steps behind (and that's on the good days)… all.the.time.

And then we find ourselves thinking… There’s never enough help. There’s never enough gratitude. There’s never enough recognition. But you know, those are all outward expectations we are putting on the world and people around us, while turning it internally and telling ourselves that surely we aren’t receiving these things because we just simply aren’t good enough.

But all of it really is just the narratives we are allowing to play in our minds. Every one of us have grown up being influenced by so many different factors. Parents, friends, environments, social status, economic status, school systems, jobs, marriages, children… Every single little thing has helped mold us and meld us into these individual people that we all are.

And we really are all just wonderful individuals. We are! No matter who has told us differently, or what has affected us to make us believe it about ourselves differently.

We are created in the image of God, to love and create, to be given gifts and talents, to be influencers to the world around us. And yet somehow, in all of that creativity and influencing of others, we also allow others to influence us… what we think, what we feel, what we want, what we don’t want…

And somehow that perfect person that God intricately created gets a little blurred and a little bruised, by both true reality and by the perceived reality within ourselves. And it’s just so hard to keep the world in front of us, and the world within us in focus, in balance, in harmony.

We get tired, we get sick, we get weary, we get discouraged, and suddenly the lines all begin to blur and the truth and the un-truth get a little mixed within each other. And the older we get, the more tightly interwoven that can all become if we don’t stop and try to take the step back to try see it, try unravel it, even just a little.

I am enough. You are enough. We are, even though we don’t feel it and don’t allow ourselves to fully recognize or embrace it. It’s just easier to live thinking we are “less than” than to try wade through the mess of finding our own path to enough-ness.

I am not there, but I am aware of it… And while we cannot control our first thoughts that pop into our minds – about anything; those first thoughts about ourselves, those first thoughts about others, those first thought about situations within the moment…

No, we can’t control them. But we can control the next thought, and the ones after that.

We can stop ourselves and try flip it, change it, stop it, redirect it. All things so much easier said than done, this I know. But it’s one of the things I’m trying to consciously work on in this full season of "living" that I'm in right now.

Do you have a goal, a red circle around a certain date on the calendar? Or if not on the calendar on your wall, or in your phone, I’m betting you have one somewhere inside you. And I want to tell you YES – Yes you can. You can! You can do it, meet it, crush whatever goal or dream you have. I believe in you and I want to be your biggest cheerleader.

But you know what, you also don’t have to. You don’t. Or you don’t have to do it by that big red circled date, as long as you are choosing to just try move forward. And forward is forward, no matter the speed.

You are enough just as you are, and you are capable of achieving and doing anything you put your heart and soul into. We all are. We all are a both / and.

We are enough, even when we aren’t all the way there… yet.

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