Run that race!

I have lots to post about such as, ranch day, first soccer game, and others but today something happened that may have given me an inspiration for the first time in several weeks.

As we were finishing up school, I asked Princess to please get the clothes out of the dryer, lay them flat on my bed and put the clothes from the washer into the dryer while I took a quick shower. When I got out, she was not only laying them out, but folding the ones that needed it neatly and stacking them in different piles just like I do. "Wow!" I said, "You're doing really well!" "Well, I really wanted to quit," she says, "but you asked me to do it, so..." While deep inside me I wanted to grab her up, kiss her all over, and tell her she's the light of this mommy's world, I knew it would freak her out so I just smiled and said, "Well I really appreciate you doing it even though you wanted to quit."

Isn't that how we are in our daily Christian walk sometimes? I know I am. When life has handed you blow after blow after blow, it would be really easy to give up, lay down and hibernate, but that is not what God has called us to do. He wants us to trust him and obey anyway. Just like Princess not realizing now that doing mundane chores is teaching her responsibility for years down the line, we don't always know what God is up to when bad things are going on but we have to trust him and do it anyways. If we knew what was coming during the race, we probably wouldn't want to even start; but knowing that God will take care of us during the race and that spending eternity with Him is the finish line; can keep us going. It reminds me of when I ran the marathon last year. I had trained for months and months and knew that at the end, I'd receive a medal and the complete mixture of accomplishment and exhaustion. What I didn't know was what was going to happen in the middle.

Around the 6 mile mark, my eyes started to get foggy. Like I had something in my contacts that needed to be cleaned off. Well, you can't really stop and clean your contacts during a race, so I just kept going. By mile 16, I could barely see my mom and kids when they we cheering me on and by mile 20, I was so foggy, I couldn't see anything but a blur of colors. I just so happened to realize that there was a girl in front of me with the same color shirt on as me and I asked if I could finish the race out with her. I had no idea that by mile 26, I would be so blind that I couldn't see the numbers on my cell phone to call Hubby to tell him I was done. This was something that I could have never imagined would have happened during the race. If I had known that it was going to, I very likely would not have ever started. Running on the streets of an unknown city among complete strangers not knowing if I was going to step in a pothole or run into the curb, is not my idea of fun. I was so scared with every realization that my sight was getting worse, I knew that I had to completely rely on God to keep me safe and unharmed. He had called me to run that race and I knew he would take me through it. I knew he wanted me to finish what I had trained so hard for and I couldn't give up...I just had to fully and completely rely on Him.

While that is a very literal example of what I'm talking about, I'm sure everyone has experienced some sort of race in their life that you knew God had called you to. It probably wasn't easy, may not have been very fun at times, or the race looked completely scary, but I bet if you stuck to it and trusted Him, you saw what awesome things He can do through trials and tribulations. Whether it's starting a teaching job he called you to and it turning out to be a horrific experience, or calling you to move your entire life only to face a new trial almost daily, if you trust in Him and obey, he will get you through it. I pray that whatever you may be facing today that God is giving you the strength, courage and peace to "finish it just because he asked you to...even though you wanted to quit."


Oh and by the way, I had nothing in my contacts. The mixture of cold wind, sleeping my in contacts, and prolonged exertion caused the vessels in my eyes to swell thus causing my sight to go blurry. About 3 hours after the race my eyesight returned and everything was back to normal. Just in case you were wondering. :)