Sickies and the ickies

I imagine that God and I have this playful relationship.... I'll be like "its cool. I got this week under control God. You go worry about oh... africa or something. I'll just keep sailing on my successful week from last week and go on repeat." and then he goes "haha.... ok, silly girl... um no." Its not that I don't believe I need God in my life or anything. I do. I totally do. But sometimes the lines are really really blurred between what I make happen and... what HE makes happen that I give myself credit for. Constantly learning my lesson. I am forever His student.

And then silly me, says out loud a fear of mine or something that I'm stressing about. In this post  about things I've learned about running, last week I said that I was terrified of missing a workout because I didn't want to quit. I didn't want to take the chance that I'd get out of routine and excuse after excuse would come up and then inevitably the guilt and regret that I failed would come back. I've been there before with some other failed attempt at exercise and I just.... can't go back there. So you can guess where this is going.... Learning opportunity! Its time for another assignment/lesson for me to learn to let go and give God control again. Let go of things I can't control.

I've been fighting little bits of allergies for a few weeks. The whole city has pretty much, I think. I've been upping my vitamins and eating well and doing what I can to not go down with a full on cold. Hand sanitizer anyone? I always have some within 15 feet of me at any given time. Come Wednesday night, I was pouting. It happened finally.... I was sick. And in no condition to get out and run. My brain said YES! go! don't miss!... my body said no. just no. I was already just fighting to make it until I could put my kids in bed. Exhaustion to the max. I skipped Tuesday, I skipped Wednesday (which I was going to make up for my missed time on Tuesday) and I skipped Thursday. Friday is family night so I did a long walk Friday morning with my little guy in the stroller.  Saturday, all day long I knew I was going to go run that evening. I was looking forward to it.... WHO AM I?? I felt happy. Back to routine. Back to my goals.

I just conquered one of my biggest fears... a hiccup in life that gives me a complete legit reason to skip running. And I am not afraid anymore. I conquered it. I took care of myself when I needed to and even more importantly, I realized that this is what I am now. This weird running thing, while I'm still new and learning and figuring it out, it is now a part of me. I feel pretty empowered today, people.

Side note: Next thing to work on is learning to run on a treadmill. I don't like it currently, but by the time my little ones are in bed now its already dark outside and.... I'm kind of a chicken. Thank you, God, for little lessons that allow me to keep growing and getting stronger.