Back to Basics

After another long hiatus of silence from me, here I am jumping on to leave a few words and thoughts, and I never quite know where to even start. So much has happened, so much to tell and explain and share between then and now… but for now I guess we skip the majority of the “then” and touch on a little of the “now.”

I’d love to promise I will come back and fill in all the missing stories and moments, but as much as I love writing and long to actually be a writer and write, I’m just too busy right now. Well, I’ve always been too busy, and I know I will always continue to be too busy to be a "real" writer (you know, how I'm always going to be too slow to be a "real" runner)… so you will just continue to get a few random ramblings here and there from me, and that’s all I’ve got to give. 

Even though I would love it to be more.

So, this morning marks day number three in a row that I got myself out of bed to workout. And for years and years and years – I went never ever missing three days in a row of working out.

And yet, here I am. I’m in the heavy shadows of turning fifty, and I’ve found myself in a year of just not caring, not trying, giving up perhaps.

I’ve gained the weight and lost the muscle. I’ve let go of my endurance and let all goals float off into the wind, and perimenopause didn't even knock, she just walked on in and took a seat - and has never left.

I recently had my phone crash and I lost everything on it. All the photos, all the videos, all the apps. Some I was able to restore, most of it all just gone. Starting back over. Reset to factory settings. I lost my runkeeper app, and with that I lost over 13,000 workout entries, which equaled I don’t even know how many miles logged. I gave my son my garmin watch at the beginning of his cross country season this fall. He reset it and started over with his current running journey coursing through it. All of my miles and stats gone.

The same day my phone crashed, my computer also crashed (not related oddly enough) and they had to wipe my entire computer and set it all back to original settings, all data lost. It’s been a bit of a slow painful journey trying to just get back up and working again on my phone and computer. Passwords, work, files, documents, apps… all needing to be reinstalled, resaved, reset up.

Back to the basics.

Recently I also found myself transitioning from working from home for the last three and a half years – to having to work back in the office. Oh and I also transitioned to working a second job again full time as I reopened and launched my full time cake and cupcake side gig business (we need the money, it's just as simple as that). OH and I also changed jobs at my full time job within the last month - and all the stress in which that entails while transitioning back to the office. I’m still working at the same company, but a different job. I am now actually back to working at my very original first full time job in my career as a graphic artist – as a junior designer. I worked in that position for fourteen years, and would unexpectedly not return to work after we adopted our son. His care needs were more than we had expected and childcare ended up needing to be done by me, at home. I transitioned from full time working mom to full time work from home mom with a teenager and an infant and growing a tiny little cake decorating side gig into a full time career, at least for a few years.

Ten years (minus two days) later I would find myself back at full time office work back at the same company. I stepped into an art admin roll after someone retired. Five years later, another wonderful friend and employee retired, and I decided to apply and try return to my original full time artist / designer position.

During all of this transition of back to office and applying for a new job, I also found myself on the other end of a phone call from a distraught husband I needed to pick up on some random gravel road outside of town and rush him to the emergency room where I sat on a hard metal chair watching all the doctors and nurses clamor and poke and administer textbook heart attack procedures on my forty-two year old husband.

As I sat there I was asked if he had his power of attorney paperwork in place, because it wasn’t in their computer. Power of attorney? For my husband? No. No, that had never been discussed or thought about. We are both busy doing all of that exact paperwork things for both of our parents right now, this was supposed to be a call about my dad first – not my husband. Not now, not yet.

Long story short – we’re about a month out from all of that now… He is home and we are grateful all testing came back showing no heart damage. He is back to work, he is eating many more salads, and you know what – we still haven’t had that conversation or done anything about that power of attorney stuff for us yet…

Although, I did finally fill out and turn in all the paperwork to try get a passport. I said I would never get one, mostly because I wanted the excuse to never have to travel somewhere where God would use me and wreck me entirely (this is the honest to God truth). My hubby may have also gone to the travel agent and booked a resort trip for us in Mexico over my birthday and our twentieth anniversary this upcoming March.

Funny story, I got the mail earlier this week – and in it was a letter that my passport application had been rejected. I will leave the rest of this story for another blog post ;-)

I’m working a new job, we’re battling surviving day to day with an angry, hard to love teenager (whom, by the way, we love to the ends of the world and back which is just a hard hard journey for us right now), that is just finishing a long field marching band and cross country season, my hubby is working on stepping forward with his health journey, we have a beautiful granddaughter and my oldest son and his amazing wife – and I've found myself too busy to see them for weeks, which I realized as I stepped into the emergency room waiting room and seeing them for the first time after probably six weeks. My heart aches that I can’t be a better grandma in this season for them, but I praise the Lord daily that they are currently so so blessed with health and happiness and are just getting to love living their lives loving the Lord and others so well right now.

And in all of this… I walked away from my health journey.  Maybe I ran away, maybe I let it slip away.  However it happened... I am very much currently ..."away"....

I entered January 2022 absolutely exhausted, burned out, done. I was done chasing the miles and the steps and the calories and the macros… I knew I needed to dial back, but didn’t know how. I spent all of 2022 trying to just do less and figure out how to be more (or “enough”) in that “less.” I battled how to do less and not be “less than.” I’m still battling that, and I’m sure I probably always will be.

I entered 2023 training with a RunDisney Princess Weekend event registration, and plane tickets and vacation plans made to check off the biggest bucket list wish off my goals and dreams. Before I crossed the final finish line of that event, I had already registered for one more attempt to cross off yet another bucket list event, the elusive Deadwood SD Half Marathon. The race I had registered for in 2019 (couldn't get off work) and 2020 (covid canceled) and 2021 (oldest got married that weekend) and 2022 (my first grandbaby was born that weekend) – so I had yet to actually run this race.

In an epic adventure with a bestie I actually finally crossed that finish line in June 2023, and I walked away and never ran again.

Ok, that’s maybe a tiny bit exaggerated, but not by much.

I was (am) registered for nothing. I had (have) nothing to train for. I was (am) exhausted mentally, physically, spiritually…. And I rested. I spent the entire summer resting. I didn’t get up early. I didn’t work out. I didn’t really do anything, except rest in this unending state of survival.

My mind tells my I'm lazy. I'm weak. I'm not enough. I'm not worthy.  I try not listen, as I eat the chips and desserts and hit the snooze over and over and over again.

Suddenly it’s another October. The weight is back on. The demons in my head have almost stopped fighting with the other side telling me to get up, show up, shape up…

Why? Why care? Why try? Why eat the vegetables? Why drink the water? Why lift the weights and run the miles? Just be done with it all. Eat the cake, drink the alcohol and just stop caring.

And yet… deep down, I do care. And that little voice holding my “why” in its hand, is still on occasion whispering to me my health is important, and that I do actually still care.

Three days ago my alarm went off and I actually got myself out of bed and went down and struggled through a few slow ridiculously hard miles. It was worse than I remember it was when I started all those years and years ago.

I told myself (for the millionth time) it was another day one. Another starting over. But where do you even start at this point? So, I told myself – I was simply going to just work at getting back to the basics.

A little bit of intentional movement every day. Meditation every day. And back to the very basic of intermittent fasting every day. 16:8 / 7pm-11am. That’s all I can offer to allow myself to start with.

I haven't downloaded any of the tracking apps again (maybe in time I will, I don't know). Do I post sweaty selfies again on social media?  Does anyone care?  Do I actually care if anyone does or doesn't care? I don't know.  I honestly don't know anything right now.

Forget about the half marathons and full marathons I’ve trained for and run. Forget about the weight I have lost. Forget about the run streaks and nutrition logged every single days for years and years and years.

It’s all gone from my phone. It’s all gone, period. Time to turn back around and just take the next best step forward. Slow. Hard. Awkward. Sad. Frustrating. Just simply back to the basics.  Again.

Yesterday my alarm went off, and I got up again. I put on the running gear and I drug myself through some sunrise miles. I can’t even remember the last time I’d done that.

This morning, day three… my alarm went off. I didn’t get up. I went back to sleep. But then I DID get up and I DID get in a few miles and I woke up the grumpy teenager and said we were going to in person church (I faithfully watch church every week, it's just so much easier to watch from home then actually walk in and worship in person).

And we DID arrive, and we DID walk in two minutes late (because of teenager negotiations to get him in the car) and my dad who works at the church was so excited to see us arrive, which made my heart hurt a little – and he told us there was still room by mom in their normal back pew.

We walked in slightly late, while all of the little children were singing their hearts out up front (and in the thirteen steps from the back door to the middle back pew my heart squeezed tight knowing our little Faith was not up there singing with all the kiddos that should have been her classmates) and I sat down right next to my mom. In the same church, and same back row of the same church I attended all through my childhood.  The church I have recently returned back to (two years ago) after attending (and working at) another church in town regularly for most of my adult life.

Oh the things we run from... and the things we return home to...

A little later, my dad snuck in on the end and I found myself sitting between my parents, just like my childhood, only it was my teenage son beside me instead of my teenage brother.

Talk about back to basics.

I listened to my parents sing, my mom handed out mentos candies after the sermon started. I opened the Bible. I sang the Doxology.

It’s as back to the basics as I can get right now. It’s all I can try for, hope for. Another day one. Another start to hopefully another season of health journey for me.

Will I get up when the alarm goes off tomorrow? I don’t know.

I don’t know how to even start over – how to place healthy boundaries between myself and my expectations of myself. How to figure out the inner balance between perfection and self love and acceptance.

I’m not good at this. I should be, after having to start over again and again and again so many times in this damn life of mine. I want to say I’ve failed again, but I haven’t failed.

I’ve lived. And I've loved.  And I’m one who does all of that with all of my heart. I’m an all in or all out person.

And now... I just need to work on how to get back to being all in after being all out for so long.

Previous Blog Post { Narry a Real Runner }.  HERE

Nary A Real Runner

So. I have officially crossed off two of my top bucket list items in the past few months; Doing a live RunDisney marathon weekend, and the Deadwood SD Mickelson Trail Marathon weekend.

I can’t decide if it’s a good feeling, or more of an odd feeling, to be on this side of them after so long working towards them. At the moment, while my legs are still incredibly sore (my legs are "blown" is the term I always use when they feel this way) and I’m still dragging my tired body along behind me as I attempt to recover and reenter the land of “living” again, I would strongly say it’s an odd feeling.

Slightly good and gratifying, while slightly sad and maybe even a bit … scary.

So what is next?
You know… I actually don’t know. And I guess that is both a little scary and a whole lot freeing.

I do have other things on my bucket list other than running. Witnessing the Northern Lights in person, going to a hot air balloon night showing, photographing eagles in the wild, and writing a book are still on there. I suppose I could start looking into those a little closer now. I don’t know.

Oh, and I know I still owe my oldest a trip to the top of the St Louis Arch, because I was too scared to do it with him that one time we stopped there when he was little and I was a single parent. Ugh, my gut still aches just thinking about that one. Sorry kiddo. So so sorry.

I do feel I need to circle back just a minute to finish processing this latest “accomplishment” – which is something I admit I have a bit of a hard time saying, or giving myself the due credit for… since the initial intent was far from the final outcome. Five years. Five years ago I first registered for this race in Deadwood, SD. On paper, it looked to be the perfect race. Early summer, downhill course, beautiful scenery. (*side note to add now that my feet have run it in person and not just my eyes running it on paper - do not be deceived... this is not a cake walk race by any means... and it is not all downhill, no matter what that elevation map shows.)

(Ok back to five years ago...) Surely I could train hard core all winter and spring and blow a sub 2 PR (aka: I could run the whole race in under two hours time, which would be a new personal record for my best time.). Because, for whatever reason, in my mind if I could achieve a sub 2 – then maybe I could actually consider myself a "real runner."

I didn’t get to run this race five years ago. Or 4 – or 3 – or 2 – or 1 year ago either for that matter (although I was registered for them all...) Five years ago I did get a 2:02 finish at a race in Minnesota in mid June, and that is the best this body would ever be able to give me. So close, but… nary a “real runner” … (so says the demons in my head).

I think what was the most difficult for me with this race… that I knew going in, that the final outcome would be nowhere close to what I had originally hoped/planned for when I had initially registered. I’m older, more tired, ankle and back injuries, covid, anxiety, weight gain (I won’t continue – you get the point…)

At the very first stop we made as we traveled there, I found a mug that said "You are enough." Enough. Just as I already am. I bought that mug as this trip's theme mug... It was just perfect.

I went. I ran. I walked. I finished. I gave it all I had. It was very far from a sub 2. But after five years, it’s officially done and crossed off the list. So there is that.  And that is probably one of the main reasons I didn't tell anyone I was going to do this race weekend. I already knew I was going to disappoint myself (well, disappoint that annoying self inside me that nags on me continuously for perfection), surely I didn't want anyone else to know about it. And I was too scared to hype it up, to yet again have something come up to keep me from even starting it.

It left me with only the pressure of performance within myself, which I also knew, was thee only pressure there was. No one else could care less how I did, and I was more than fully aware of that.  Me against myself ... that thing that makes me both the best me and the worst me, all at the same time.

But, the best thing happened on that trip – which would have never happened any of the five years prior – I got to be there and watch my friend cross the start AND finish lines to both her first 5K and first half marathon! Too amazing and fun for words. Honestly. So proud of her grit and determination and love for all things.  I loved getting to do this adventure with her! I loved getting to climb onto all the school busses with her and stand at the start lines with her. And I loved watching her enter the finishers chute and crossing those finish lines... priceless.

No, this WASN’T the same race in any aspect as it would have been five years ago. Different stages of life, different paces, different goals, different people along, different outlook, different runners registered … and yet – the same race. The same path, the same miles, the same start and finish lines.

I will never have a sub 2 half, but I will always have the memory of her firsts. And the second, I’m sure will forever be far more filling for my soul than the first ever would have been.

And yes, I know... "real runners" aren't classified by the times and paces, they are classified by the blood and grit and determination that move us forward, one foot in front of the other, over and over - until you reach the finish line.  (I'm totally stealing my friends quote here!)

And in full honesty, I am pretty sure this was my last in person half marathon I will do.  I have been cycling through race registrations and race training now for a lot of years.  Today, right now, is the first time I have not been registered to run something... to have to train for something hard that I would do within the next twelve weeks.

I've done that on purpose, so I wouldn't (couldn't?) stop pushing myself and making myself continue forward.  When I crossed the finish at runDisney - I was already registered for the Deadwood Half, so I knew I wasn't done, I knew it would be a small week off to recover, and then I would need to get back at it.  Back to the early morning and the long miles.  The weight lifting and the perfection slave driver inside me drilling me over and over on what I should be doing, what I needed to be doing, what I was supposed to be doing...

But this time I went in knowing it would probably be my last.  When I crossed the line this time, there was nothing "next" waiting for me to have to train for.  I don't have a "next" right now.  Except walking, for some reason walking just sounds so amazing to me, so I think I'm just going to rest and walk and wait and see what my "next" is going to end up being.

Don't worry - I'm sure I'll keep you posted!

Previous blog post { Too Tired To Hate Myself Anymore } HERE

Too Tired To Hate Myself Anymore

I’ve had the pieces and parts of this post floating around in my mind for a while now. I just haven’t allowed myself the time to sit and really let myself settle in and explore it all in depth.

I have spent much of my life hating my body. I’m not even sure how or why it started, but I know I was already over-excersing and under eating as a first year teenager. I was not athletic, I have never considered myself an “athlete” and my exercise was driven purely as a punishment for what I ate.

Over the last year and a half I have been trying to slow down, to exercise less and eat more (or actually eat “better” is the more correct statement) and to just start loving myself better. It’s been long, it’s been hard, and while I have made some forward progress, I still have so far to go.

Many times as I’ve sat and thought about it all recently, I have found myself thinking that perhaps I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I am just too tired to keep hating myself on that intense level that drove me for so many years.

It takes a lot of work to hate yourself, to punish yourself, to drive yourself towards an unattainable perfection you know you’ll never reach, and yet refuse to let yourself let go of.

I am forty-eight years old. Things are changing within me. I’m on the runaway freight train of perimenopause. I have battled hormone and fertility issues my whole life, and now inside this body, that I’ve cursed and battled against for two and a half decades, is now in the process of officially shutting down and finishing up the thing that never really worked correctly to begin with. (I take that last statement back, I have the most amazing biological twenty-six year old son whom everything worked correctly for, and I wouldn't realize just how great of a gift he actually was for many many years)

I have always struggled to lose weight, to maintain weight, it’s always been a hot mess rollercoaster for me… but the older I’m getting it’s been even harder. I am fortunate to be surrounded by some amazing similar stated and minded women right now. And I have been doing a lot of reading and research and conversations about this time of life that I’m in. And oddly, like infertility, it’s something that isn’t really talked much about.

So where am I even going with all this, Sara? I’m not even exactly sure. I just know that self love is some incredibly hard shit to do. The flip in mindset and toxic thought patterns is a hard thing to break.

My body is so tired right now. My mind is tired, my soul is exhausted. (But it always is… always…) And I’m entirely the one to blame for all of it. I fed the demon mind games for all those years, telling myself all the misconceptions and untruths over and over again. I fought with a body that naturally couldn’t be or do the things I was wanting it to. I fought with a body who’s ideal weight is nothing close to the ideal weight my mind seems to be stuck believing in. I fought a body that just wasn’t able to create and sustain new life as I so desperately thought I needed and wanted.

And recently in all my tiredness and all my lost weariness, I am just trying to allow myself to be who I am, well - I’ve always allowed myself to be who I am in my personality, but this time I'm trying to allow myself to physically be who I am. The miles and miles of running just cannot physically be done any more. The strict protocol of restricted eating just cannot be done any more. The weight is creaping back on. The running and the pace has slowed to a point of basically not even happening. (Though both probably not as horrible in reality compared to my minds reality.)

But does it matter? Does any of it really matter? Obviously it does because I’m still fretting and stewing and writing about it… but I think right now I’m just lost in the unsettledness of it all. How do you love a body that you’ve hated for so long? How do you embrace a physical form you have tried to change your whole life and be ok with it, as is? How do you forgive the living mass that carries you daily and has robbed you of the life of the child you so disparately wanted?

Going back and re-reading this I’m stuck again with an age long wonder over why I can’t just enjoy the blessing of what God created me to be? Why do I have all this guilt over not fully loving myself the way I was created, in God’s image, as a child of God… a daughter of the King… Why is this just not enough for me?

I don’t wish this thinking on anyone. I would never want a friend or family member to ever say the words I’ve said or think the things I’ve thought about their bodies and their selves. And yet, for over thirty-five years I have found justification in saying and thinking them of myself, and not giving it a second thought.

I’m currently trying to rewrite this narrative in my head. And in some ways it’s really simple, and in others it’s so unbelievably hard. I’m pretty sure it’s the simple that is making it hard. It’s the voices in my head at constant war over what is good enough and what isn’t.

For the past year and a half I’ve been working on slowing down, changing my overworked mindset, surrounding myself with likeminded people who support and encourage in this similar stage I’m in. I stopped following the ultra trainers and the lean fit twenty somethings doing all the amazing things in their utterly amazing bodies. For the past nine months I have been intermittent fasting 16:8 and not tracking anything I eat. What a freedom to be free from the slavery over logging every little thing.

It’s quite a bit easier to love yourself through grace and gentle acceptance than to hate yourself through punishment and strict and rigid guidelines and rules. But there is this whisper in there still calling out the carbs and the calories and the guilt over the glass of occasional wine all the time.

And it’s that where it’s all so tricky.

“Healthy” isn’t only the state of your physical body. Your weight, your BMI, your muscle defination. Health is so much more, the state of peace and contentment in your heart and your mind and your soul. And somehow all those signals get so easily jumbled up and messy. We want to be healthy, inside and out, and we wrestle with what society and tv and social media all loudly shout at us vs what our mind and hearts are silently pleading within us. I’ve spent my lifetime chasing physical health, leaving my mental health in wreckage.

So here I am, a year and a half in of attempting to work on loving myself and loving and honoring and respecting my body better, and I’m nine months in to changing my eating to IF 16:8 and not tracking anything in my eight hour eating window. And it's been an absolute love hate relationship of change.

And it’s hard. It’s hard to do all the things well. It’s hard to allow yourself the grace to live within increased happiness. It’s hard to allow yourself to step back from the perfection profile tattooed within the mind, an image that is never anything close to what I see looking back at me in the mirror every morning.

As I said earlier, part of it has just been so easy. So easy to not track, not log, not exercise all the hours and run all the miles every single day. So easy to just eat the food and enjoy the conversations and memories and moments, rather than obsess over the food details.  I don't even want to know how many pieces of pie and cake and ice cream I have not allowed myself to enjoy.  Not that eating pie and cake and ice cream is the end all be all for self love, but there is definitely a long lost loving correlation there somewhere.  I said no as form of punishment.

The other morning I looked at myself, after skipping yet another workout because I just could not get myself out of bed to do it… and as I looked in the mirror I wondered how I’d let myself get to this point (the extra weight, the loss of muscle, the added inches around my waist, the added cellulite on my legs) and I just took a slow breath in and sighed…

I must just be too tired to hate myself like that anymore. I’ve been married almost twenty years to the same person, who bless his heart doesn’t see my physical flaws. I’m established in my careers and learning how to be a good grandma and mother in law. I’m still a struggling mom to a hot mess teenager, but that just is what it is, that is my current season with him.

Apparently it was my endless drive of imperfection, the inner plea to fix and punish a broken body that got me up every morning, that got me through the workouts and the miles and the rigid diet requirements. Such a daily battlefield. Such endless exhaustion.

It’s not that it’s not currently still a battlefield and I’m not currently still exhausted - because it is and I am, but the battle is possibly raging just a little less within me, and the exhaustion is possibly coming more from outside stressors of work and teenagers and finances, and less of that personal perfectionism and I'm seeming to slowly allow to fall through my fingers, disappearing behind me in a quiet trail of lost sparkles.

I have a very very long way to go, but I’m restless, and I’m aware, and I’m continuing to figure out what self love for myself actually is. I’m trying to model to my granddaughter and niece and others watching that it’s about fighting for the love and not the perfection about ourselves.

Oddly, while the perfection level I hold (held?) within me,  is (was?) only about myself. I have never thought or viewed others through that same skewed lens for some reason. In fact, so many times I am envious of all those who clearly are happier and so confident in their minds and bodies, because I know it, feel it, see it in them… while so tightly holding back on to the love reins on myself.

My love was so provisional. It had to be validated. It had to be explained. It had to be earned. God doesn’t require any of that with His love to us, so why is it so hard to grant myself that same grace?

This isn’t a start and finish piece. This is just another chapter in review along my long journey to faith, within the steps and beats of my own heart every day. It’s my season of working on self love, and it’s super easy and super hard all at the same time. It’s something I will never fully overcome or master, it will forever be my work in progress.

And for today, I’m ok with that. I’m simply too tired not to be.

 

Previous Blog Post {  Mother's Day, It's A Tricky One } HERE

Mother's Day. It's a Tricky One.

Mother’s Day
It’s a tricky one.

I personally am in circles of moms that have angel babies, and moms who have buried their children, of various ages and reasons. Hard.

I’m in circles of women praying earnistly for God to grant them with a live, healthy baby. Hard. 

I’m in circles of adoptive moms who are largely caught between the grief of a biological mom grieving the child she placed, and the joy and gratefulness in being the mom that was chosen for that job. Hard. 

I’m in circles of moms who are in the depths of raising those hard-to-raise kiddos, the ones rejoicing at God’s slightest hint of hope and deliverance, right alongside those who grieve and mourn and ache over those cut and broken relationships while they continue to weave through the mess of it all. Hard. 

I’m in circles of new moms, old moms, moms who are grandmas, moms who have moms, moms who have lost their moms, moms caring for sick family members, moms who have had to place firm boundaries up again their moms. Hard. 

I’m in circles of fur moms (which totally still counts as being a “real” mom!) moms who are single, moms who are married, moms who are divorced, moms who are remarried, moms being moms in blended families, moms letting their kiddos have another mom in a blended family that isn't her own.  Moms who work outside the home, and moms who don’t. Sports moms, music moms, star student moms, and moms getting calls from the principal's office and the police station. Hard. 

I'm in circles of moms who mentor and listen and hug and walk alongside, and moms in the thick of needing and receiving all the mentoring and support and prayers.  Hard

I’m in circles of moms with littles, and moms who are empty nesters, both seasons incredibly hard. 

I’m in circles with organized Pinterest pinning moms and hot mess express moms. Moms who stay up late and moms who go to bed early. Moms who workout and moms who don’t. Moms who make all their own meals and moms who praise the Lord for drive through and pizza delivery.

I could go on and on about all the amazing women and moms out there- all caught in the cross fire of emotions on this social media highlight reel, boasting “reality” in such a way we’re all left feeling unsatisfied and less than, and entirely not enough, especially to ourselves.

I want to celebrate the moms in my life and the greatness they are. I want to celebrate my daughter-in-law who is now an amazing mom herself. I want to be celebrated as a mom for all the little and big things I do every day 24/7/365. I want to grieve the child not in my earthly arms today. I want to celebrate our birthmom and grieve with her sad heart as well. I want to honor all those amazing women in my family who came before me leading the way for me and my footsteps...

How do you celebrate and grieve and honor and rejoice and stay humble?  How in the world does one begin to know how to do all that well, and all that at the same time at that?

I have zero answers for any of those questions… I just know that this week, and this coming weekend, is going to be hard for a lot of women, for a lot of different reasons. 

So let’s hold hands together and embrace the hard of it all and look up. Look up into the eyes of all those around you, and look up into the eyes of yourself looking back at you in the mirror. Be kind to them, but also, be kind to that one looking at you in your own mirror, and don't forget to also love her well.

Give yourself and everyone around, the love and grace and acceptance they need… that you need. We don’t know the depths of pain, and reality, and the stories within every person around us, and sometimes we aren’t even strong or honest enough to fully grasp or know this about what we carry deep within our own selves. 

 
Blessings to those celebrating this dear but damned holiday. And also bless those who are mourning. And angry. And confused. And hurt. And lost. And hopeful. And doubtful. And cheerful. And joy filled, and every possible feeling in between. 

From the keyboard from one very weary mom out there, to all of you… please know you ARE loved.  You ARE greater than you can ever imagine. You ARE enough. You ARE worthy. You ARE valued. 

YOU ARE EVERYTHING, and more… and you are NOT alone…

Previous Blog post { Donald Half Reimagined Round Two } HERE

The Donald Half... Reimagined... Round Two

I woke up Sunday feeling off.
This is nothing new… every day lately I have been feeling off, for months now.

I have some depression and just finished traveling through a very long Midwest winter, through the month of March and the season of Lent and Easter. Hard months and milestones for me. It’s made me what to stay hidden in bed and it’s taken away my desire to pursue my health as I have so passionately done in the past.

But I have been sitting (laying) in this uncomfortable place of hiding and hurting for just long enough that I’m starting to get antsy again. It’s time to do something again… except I’m not actually pinpoint sure what that “something” is.

Sunday morning, after somehow getting myself through pushing play and doing a weighted workout, I found myself laying on the floor looking at my race medal rack that I have hanging on the wall next to my treadmill.

I was specifically looking at the jumble of runDisney Donald Half Marathon metals that I had worked to collect throughout 2020, and then went on to earn virtually throughout 2021 in my basement, before I ever allowed myself to actually think, hope, dream of doing an actual live in person runDisney event (thank you 2023!) In the past I have mentioned this little challenge I did to only a few people in passing. But regardless of who I told and who I didn’t, in 2021 I set a goal to do a half marathon every month, and then after having completed that every month, I would then have officially earned an hour massage for myself – usually all on the same day if I was able to schedule that all. And… I actually did it. It was often on a Monday, “quick-a-minute” before I would have to log on to work.

Recently in a previous blog I spoke briefly of this and mentioned perhaps “next year” I will have to try redo that challenge again, only this time actually go through with what I had originally planned to do.

See, originally, I had decided to start the hunt for used runDisney Donald Half Marathon medals that people were selling after they, or someone they knew, had physically completed the live in person race through the streets of Disneyworld. I was wanting to do a blog each month featuring a different year’s race medal – and then researching all the details from that year’s race. The number of participants, the winner, the temperature, how long it took the race to sell out after registration opened… things like that. And I really wanted to also feature the original runner holding that same medal at the finish line and including a little story about the their experience and memories. I also of course set a top price limit in which I would bid on or purchase each medal for (#disneyonadime here folks!). The whole thing was quite a fun thing actually, from start to finish. Although, I never did publish even one blog post about it, because I was unable to contact any of the sellers directly due to privacy issues.

Anyway, Sunday morning I was laying on my yoga mat looking at those medals and thought -yeah, maybe next year I’ll try that all over again, only this time with the blog posts.

And then I had the thought, but why wait until the beginning of the new year? Why couldn’t I just start it … like now… this month? I mean, what is stopping me from that? Nothing except myself.

So oddly enough, the idea had been planted (or do I need to say – re-planted?) and it was starting to fester and grow a little in my mind once again.

One little problem… my back is bothering me, I’m even older and more out of shape than I was two years ago (“runners” have to actual “run”), I’m hardly ever writing anything on my blog anymore (“writers” have to actually “write"), and I still have no way of contacting any of those original sellers to get their stories to share (excuses, always the excuses).

Minor details. (ha)

But, I just keep thinking about it. It keeps poking at me, and I think that I’m going to just start by… starting. I’m going to write this little update and hit publish and then see where it’s going to take me.

Pop back periodically and see where I actually end up running with it ;-)


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My Season of Ugly ... Year Eight

Last night as I was asked why I was so crabby lately, by my then cranky hubby… I was reminded again that yes… I am full sprint into my season of ugly as I call it. Well, full sprint in at a very slow sloth’s pace.

Eight years ago on the Friday of this exact weekend, we were hours into the nightmare that lay ahead of us after hearing those dreaded words… “I am so sorry… but there is no heartbeat.”

We knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when. I was convinced I was going to die during childbirth, while birthing a child that had already died. I had been rushed into an emergency c-section after 48 hours of labor with my first child, and had hemorrhaged after my first miscarriage (both nearly two decades earlier in my life) so I had no hope or faith in my body, and frankly, there were multiple times if I’m honest, I just wished it would happen already and just be done and over with. The living while waiting on the dying is … I don’t even know, I don’t have any words for it.

On that Friday afternoon eight years ago… we were arriving at the specialty hospital an hour and a half away, to be induced, to deliver a baby we had diligently and desperately prayed for for years and years. That prayer just wasn’t exactly answered in the way we had hoped for, or quite in the time frame we had imagined.

But, God did answer our prayer for a child, He just waited until I was turning forty, and then He decided that He would rather have her with Him in heaven, than with us down here. And honestly deep inside I know that this a blessing, a gift… but it just doesn’t always quite feel that way in my heart, while I'm still the one standing here on earth. Yes, she was spared the sin and anguish of this earth, but oh the anguish that has left on us some days is overwhelming.

I’m currently reading a book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk. That’s a lie. I have the book and I have been looking at it and telling myself to read it since this summer. I took it from the amazon box and placed it on my nightstand in the reading room. And not long ago I did pick it up and move it to the nightstand in my bedroom. I believe I looked at the first paragraph on the first page, but I remember nothing of what it said.

However, I know the premises of the book. Our bodies hold on to our traumas, our hurts, our past moments of sin, shame, and anguish. And deep within us, even when we are not aware, it is affecting us, all parts of us from inside out. It silently hums and yearns and turns and pokes and prods at us from inside, causing us angst with ourselves, which then leaks onto those around us.

The My Season of Ugly – neatly written and published and packaged in a book written by someone else, quietly sitting on my nightstand, just waiting for me.

Yes, I am traveling through my parallel timeline of hurt and remembrance. I was sick at Thanksgiving and Christmas and didn’t know I was pregnant. I would find out days before Valentine’s Day. I would travel through Lent, my 40th birthday, our anniversary knowing and silently dealing. It was the Friday of Palm Sunday weekend the year she was born, and the waving of palm branches will never be the same again. A year later it was Easter Sunday on the day of her first birth day.

It's here, I’m there… right here and right now. It’s real, it’s raw, it’s hard, it hurts.

Part of me knows that it merely is what it is, while another part of me fights inside wanting to know why… why I can’t just be over all this… why even when I think I’m doing really well… that out of the blue it will strike me down again, every year.

Here's something funny... just a few weeks ago, as I was coming home from my Run Disney princess half marathon trip - I actually found myself saying the words... "This year it has been really good. I have been busy training and thinking about the disney trip, and then we were away together and actually doing the trip and the races, and I found I just wasn't thinking about everything as I parallel traveled the timeline this year...  Perhaps this race has even brought me healing over it all."

I now sit back and chuckle at myself.  If only.

It quickly returned, pulling me back into bed every day, all day long. I drag myself out – only to either climb back in, or fight myself all day long to not to. The dishes and the laundry are absolutely killing me. Killing me. Church, public, people... so hard. I’m irritable and irrational, and I'm sure the people I live and work with are beyond ready for me to dig myself back out of this hole yet again.

And I will. I will. And I know it’s ok to not be ok in the interim. I do. It’s just… these are the days of my hard, my ugly and I’m aware. And yes, I’m on meds and I see a therapist. I meditate and do devotions, and all the things… I'm not looking for or wanting suggestions or quick fixes. Just grant me a little more grace to get me through.

Right now, the world is full of hard, and ugly. The weather and wars and shootings and sickness and violence and death… It’s everywhere, all the time. Surrounding, suffocating, saddening with it’s venom and snake-like squish of every day life squeezing the life out of us. Out of all of us.

I think we are all stumbling along in our states of inner ugly right now. We are all dealing with hard things and we are all needing heaping doses of grace – both to ourselves and to everyone around us.

Grace.
One step. One day. One smile. One hug. One act of strength and kindness.
Grace to ourselves. Grace to everyone.

Grace.

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The Geese Flying Overhead

I have been hearing the geese fly overhead again the past few days/weeks (time is all a blur right now, so I’m not exactly sure the specific time frame) … Every time I hear them honk and flutter above, I am instantly reminded of our first trip to the Round Lake campground.

March of 2015.

I was sick. I was pregnant. We knew it was a girl. We knew she had Trisomy 18. We knew she would not come home with us. We knew we needed to be within ten miles of a hospital.

And the thought of having to hide at home all summer was absolutely killing us.

We had been trying to find an option for a permanent weekend place on a lake. A lake. Any lake. As long as there was a hospital nearby. The first place we looked at we knew was just not going to work for us, with our always running away then seven year old, with water directly surrounding us on basically all four sides. The concept was great, the location however was not.

A few weeks later we found a campground with a few open permanent sights still available for the coming summer. We decided to drive down after work one Monday and check it out. We left the running away seven year old home with my parents and took along the teenager. We drove the sixty minutes north, and as I sat in silence looking out the window – my mind in its accustomed near lunacy amid our current reality… there were geese flying overhead, and there was much talk and excitement about the coming water foul hunting season.

It was cold and windy that afternoon and early evening. There was still some snow on the ground and some ice on the lake. We met the campground owners and got a tour, asked all our questions, and in the end, we chose a spot, and stepped into their house to fill out a contract and leave our deposit.

We drove away having met two new friends that day, and we also had somewhat of a plan for the summer – with a hospital within ten miles, if needed.

And now eight years have passed. Eight summers we have lived and loved and thrived at that campground. The running away seven year old is now a teenager that can even drive us there every weekend, and the then teenager is now married and visiting with his own family. In all those years between then and now, the runner has continued to do a lot of running, but has also been able to grow immensely and enjoy an amazing amount of grace and love and freedom and friendships while doing all his running.

This lake is a place we have found some healing from our pain and loss of Faith. It’s a place we have found love and grace all over new in our marriage and family. It’s a place of so many new friendships and memories and laughter.

There really aren’t words to describe it all. There are photos of sunsets and sunrises, there are garmin trackers of miles and miles I have put on training and running there. There are record size fish caught there that now hang on the walls. There are scrapbooks filled with a million photographs of our time spent there.

And it is again another March, and the geese are again honking above. The memories of that first afternoon there, again playing in my mind. The baby that was still alive within, the reality we knew we were inevitably and blindly moving (or should I more accurately say “catapulting”) towards, with a timeframe all so unknown and unwelcome and unwanted.

She was born, and she was buried, and we continued on… and have continued on… and are continuing on every day… every week… every month… every season. And it’s just hard to believe we are almost at the start of yet another season at the lake. Soon we will be on that route that will take us from our house driveway in Iowa to our camper driveway in Minnesota. We will open up the camper and we will start a new season of adventure at the lake.

And while I write this… I can’t help but think of some of the loss that has come, and will be coming, to some of the campground families as well this past year. We said goodbye to a long time friend this January. I’m not even sure how many years he and his family have been a part of the campground family – but it’s been a lot. From pop up, to 5th wheels, to the cabin… He was the one I give sole credit to for getting us there. His daily stops in the office where I was working – always talking about the lake… and would later give my hubby the name and contact info of the campground owners, who we would contact and soon meet, and would also become our new friends as well.

We said goodbye to Gene this winter… and now we are getting ready to have to say goodbye to one of those dear friends he shared with us when he gave us the campground contact info. Mike’s health has been hard over the last few years, and now we recently learned they are trying to get him back from their Arizona winter house to the lake for his final days.

Our loss brought us to that same lake so many years ago. It gave us time to rest, time to mourn, time to heal, time to grow, time to create a whole new family of friends. It’s given us so much in our journey, when so much has been also taken. And I can’t help but smile a little smile through my tears every time I hear those honking geese flap and fly overhead, as they too are on their way back to their same lakes for another season.

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