late night musings, mostly about the marathon.

Week three has been the best training week so far and by far. The rest of everything else has been slightly overwhelming, but amazingly enough, after a fabulously long night's sleep last night, and a very chill day off, and a lot of time talking to God, things feel not-so-overwhelming anymore. Until I think about how much homework I have. Ugh. Anyway, other than homework, laundry and sleeping, the only productive thing I did today was run 8 miles. It was the first time I've finished a long run and actually thought "hey, I think I can do this marathon thing". I felt good, despite running straight into the wind for the first half of my run. But I kept thinking about all the places I was running past - all the places I used to stop and turn around, and now I just keep going. So crazy to me. Oh, and I ran into Jean at the end and she made me an awesome sandwich for dinner! That was pretty great.

I have discovered something else through this process - I'm learning a lot about how much I stink at commitment, and I'm fairly sure that I'm one of the people that I often get frustrated with - those who take the easy way out. At least, I seem to do that with everything other than my ministry. I've never had a problem committing to that. So here I am, committing to something other than the church. Yay for me! It's really hard! I'm for sure a commitment-phobe. But, I want to be a woman who is strongly committed to whatever she's involved in. I tend to only make it two years at any given job, I try new things all the time, but never get to the point where I'm more than average at any one thing. I tend to get all distracted and move onto something else. So here I am, attaching myself to something that requires that I finish it. And I want to finish it well. Therefore, commitment to training is a must. And it's hard, it requires a sacrifice of time and effort, and amazingly enough, it's been a heck of a lot of fun. I'm actually getting better at something. How's that for encouraging you to keep going? I mean, it's definitely a growing, stretching experience, but despite the pain and frustration, it's fairly awesome. I've always liked a challenge anyway. But I never would have thought that God would teach me so much through something like training for a marathon. I hope that post-November 30, I'm a more well-rounded, committed person than I was when I started on this journey. And in the process, I'm able to help some kids in Africa. My life is a unique and wonderful thing. I'm so thankful for every bit of it.