"It's been a while" or "I wonder while I run-der"

Can't go wrong with Rocky and Bullwinkle references.  So timely.

So yeah. . . it has been over a year since I have written anything personal, not just on this blog but in any capacity.  I do plenty of writing during classes, and while this past class had a lot of personal application (which was fantastic), still, it makes me a little sad.

Explaining how the marathon's I've run are representative of the year leading up to each race will shed more light, and that is my intention this morning before I return (slowly walking) to work today.

2012 (Marathon 2013)- 5:47:44.  I've always enjoyed running but have never taken it seriously.  So, when I started losing weight and getting healthier in 2012, I decided on a whim that I should set up a long term goal so I would have something to achieve.  I tend to be task oriented rather than goal oriented, but in this case it made sense to me.  I had heard about the Disney race weekend, and when I looked up the information, I found that the cost for the different races were about the same.  So me, in my hyper-intelligence about getting the most out of my money, signed up for the marathon.  I mean, if I'm going to pay close to $200 to run through Disney, I might as well run through the whole thing, right?

Yep.  There was seriously no other motivation.  I didn't have a lifelong desire to run a marathon.  In fact, I never really thought of myself as an endurance runner.  I played tennis in high school, so I got decent at doing quick sprints, but at this point I had never even participated in a 5k.  So you know, normal thought process.

I found a training plan that made sense to me and started training in July.  I was running about a 12 minute mile, and I stayed the course with training, all the way to the final long run before tapering off.  I finished that marathon just a little past my goal (5:30), but still I felt good about it.  I had set my mind to something, I went through the process to make the things happen, and it did!

And for some crazy reason I signed up for the next year's marathon.

2013 (Marathon 2014)- This was my best marathon time.  4:35:22.  I was the smallest I had been, possibly ever as an adult, and running felt so great.  The year leading up was filled with great things- it was the year Cam and I got engaged, I had fallen into a teaching job that I loved, I was doing well socially, spiritually, everything was fluid.

Until November.  Cam's chest pains.  X-rays.  CT scans.  Cancer.  Chemo.

Running was always an escape, and during the last couple months of training, it was helpful to have a place alone to zone out, to pray, to process.  I'm an internal processor anyway, and doing some task that doesn't require lots of thinking (like running) creates the optimum processing power.

2014 (Marathon 2015)- 6:42:28.  We got married, which is one of the great moments of my life, but even that was bittersweet as we had rescheduled it to fit into the treatment plan, finding an empty spot between radiation and chemo.  And then the bone marrow transplant. . . we lived in Tampa for a while because of that.  I forced myself to run around the tiny lake that was there at the apartment complex, and sometimes on USF's campus, but now the running was more fueled by anger than by anything else.  After we moved back home, I stuck with running until sometime in November, where life just started to get to be too much (between work, shows, and figuring out married life).  So, I was still in decent shape, but having given up the training program, the finishing time was less than impressive when compared to the years previous.  If you had been inside my mind, I probably would have said the same thing about where I thought life was headed.  We had began to give up dreams in this year, made compromises and changes that didn't seem fair, and while it certainly wasn't all bad, it was absolutely overwhelming and all happening way too fast.

2015 (Marathon 2016)- 7:13:19.  The big bomb.  Cam's death.  The year I moved away from all of that.  Ran away from it.  As far as training I was actually still running (angrily), but once I took the job at Wal-Mart overnight, any hope of a normal life schedule was shattered, and I gave up training in October.  I just needed to survive the year, I just needed to survive the race. . . and I did both.  Not without set-backs.  Not without pain and chaos and anger and questioning God.  But still. . . I stayed the course.

2016 (Marathon 2017)- 7:14:04.  When I looked up the time from last year, I was surprised because I thought that I did much worse this year than I did last year.  I don't know if I'm happy or not that they are comparable.  I can tell you the race, even though it was only a couple days ago, is a blur.  I know that I had enjoyable moments, I know I faced times of runner's doubt and feared the sweepers, and I tried not to look behind me and keep my eyes forward, but I would be lying to say that I didn't.  I even asked a couple cast members near the end if I was safe yet.

So, in a word: woof.

I look back at 2016, and while plenty of people have made statements about "worst year ever" and whatnot, for me, it's less that and more "non-existent year."  "Blurry previous 18 months."  Not in its entirety, but I know especially in the first few months of 2016, I checked out on a lot of levels.  Dealing with first year anniversaries and trying to comprehend a new work life, a new social life, a new church. . . less about being overwhelmed and more about just not understanding how I got here from there.  A lot of blur.  But there was a mental shift happening underneath that.  An important shift, a recognition that none of this is out of the sovereignty of God's hand.  A wave of truth that I can either let continue to cycle while I stay put and tread water (because that's working out so well for me. . .), or that I can move with so that I can begin to head back to the shore (which means more than just movement- though it may start with outside processes, it requires commitment to an attitude change).

Because it's not all about me.

And further, I am where I am supposed to be.

There is so much to be done.  So many opportunities that have been missed.

So I must engage.  I must engage God.  I must engage myself.

I'm not going to post a list of resolutions, but for the moment, for my own sake, I will post a thematic word:



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