momentum

This week was not a huge success by numbers only: weigh-in revealed I had not lost, not maintained, but had somehow managed to gain half a pound, even after running four days last week. Of course I was pissed off: all that hard work seemed to be for nothing. I wanted to boast another great week and inch ever closer to that pie-in-the-sky goal of mine. Not this week, apparently.

Mike talked to the congregation this morning about momentum, and how to maintain that spiritual momentum: trust, obey, and humble yourself. Simple words, but so difficult to do sometimes, especially if you've been conditioned to buck at the word "obey" like I have. Spiritually and physically, it's really hard to maintain momentum when things are not going your way. Why did I gain this week? Why did work have to be so hard? Why did we have to lose two babies in a row while everyone else seems to be growing them in droves? I don't know the answers, but I know how I slow down and want to quit moving when those things happen.

Being healthy is so much more than the running I do or the foods I eat. It is becoming a spiritual discipline, an act of trusting God to run the show when I've tried to do this by myself so many times before. I cannot expect to move forward if I do not, well, actually move forward. No one will move my legs for me. On those days when it is overcast and I am really feeling tired, I don't want to move. On those days when I have not planned well, I don't want to take the extra 5-10 minutes to pack a healthy meal for myself. I do not want to make the small steps to move forward. But I hear Him calling to me, giving me everything I need to do what I need to do: the energy, the skill, the basic coordination of one foot in front of the other, the abundance of healthy options.

A lot of people have expressed their admiration to me that I run; I usually get a comment like "I could never do that". I spent so many years thinking that exact same sentiment: I was weak, I was disinclined to anything athletic. I was the one who got picked last for teams, who went terrified to every P.E. class. I never joined a team or athletic club. Of all the many sports that remained foreign and undoable, running was pretty much at the top of the list of Things I Cannot Do. I told myself that I wasn't able to do anything more than the occasional fast walk or lap in the pool, and I certainly wasn't disciplined enough to do any of that on a regular basis, I thought. I completely and utterly believed myself.

So to find myself doing the very thing I thought most impossible - running on a regular, disciplined basis, and doing well at it and enjoying it - is no small miracle. I can hardly believe that I can call myself a runner, but I can. The little girl inside of me - the one who was always picked last - is crying with delight when I think about what I can do. I do not run fast and I do not run far, but I always, always keep going. I hear God telling me that I am so much more than I believed myself to be, and that creates my momentum.

I'll leave you with a movie clip that Mike shared with us and that struck a chord in my heart: God, I won't give up on you. I'll run until I finish this great race, and you are there right next to me the whole way.