2 Victories - a 3 year old and a 5K

I have a couple major victories I would like to share with you.  If you have read my blog, you have probably seen my post, Running – It’s What I Love.  I have been slowly trying to work up to running 5K again.  When I quit running a year ago this month I didn’t know if I would ever get back to that place again.  I started a 10 day cleanse and put my training running/walking 2 days a week on hold.  BUT I had scheduled a Virtual 5K with a mom’s group that I am a part of.  (If you’ve never heard of a virtual 5K, we all ran 3.1 miles in our own cities and posted our times in our online group.)  It had been my goal to run the entire thing.  After the cleanse, I felt great, but hadn’t done any running, just walking and Yin Yoga once a week.  I am currently in a Bible study called Believing God by Beth Moore, and in it we are challenged to believe that God will do big things in our life.  This was a big thing for me.  I set out Saturday morning believing that I could run the whole course.  I prayed that God would give me the strength and that he would let me know when/if I needed to stop and walk.  And boy did God show up!

As a mom's group, we were celebrating our kids all turning 3 this month.  I spent my 48:32 praying for my son, thanking God for him and asking for help to be the mother he needs.  I have struggled to be his mama.  I am not the same parent this time around.  I had very little energy in his early months and that was before I knew I had fibro so I was very confused and felt very guilty.  Not only that but I have held onto bitterness having to care for him being in pain and with so much fatigue, even though I love him with all of my heart.  God has healed me of that bitterness over time but on this particular run I asked him to take it all away, completely heal me from it all.   And do you know how he pried the rest out of me?  As I ran I held up my fist to the sky and recited the 5 statements of faith from our Bible study.

     1.  God is who he says he is.

     2.  God can do what he says he can do.

     3.  I am who God says I am.

     4.  I can do all things through Christ.

     5.  God’s Word is alive and active in me.

And there I was, open hand, clean heart.  Tears streaming.

Before I knew it I was getting close to where I thought my route ended, I couldn’t quite remember from the year before.  By this time my body was giving me clues to stop and walk.  Felt a little dizzy and was thirsty.  So I listened and began to walk the rest of the way home.  I ended up doing the total 3.1 miles, 10 minutes was walking and 38:32 was running.

Those of us in the Bible study use sign language for “I Believe God” when we need to remind ourselves to believe in those 5 truths.  I threw up one for the victory of running a 5K and another for healing my heart of bitterness (something I hadn’t even set out to tackle that day.

A cooling wind blew across my face the last few minutes as I was approaching my finish line, but the leaves in the trees were barely moving above my head.