Dare You to Move

I have my 10K (6.2 mile) road race on Saturday. Tomorrow. Yikes stripes. And I've never run more than 5 miles before. Yet, I know I can.

I can do this.
My body can do this.
My mind can do this.
My spirit is yearning to do this.

Which begs the question... who the heck am I? For almost my entire life I was a sedentary person. And proud of it. My exercise of choice was walking or sunbathing (I'm sure laying in the sun burns lots of calories because it sure makes me sweat). While I still enjoy both, I now have a new love. Did I say love? Yes.

I have always always loathed physical exercise and avoided it with a passion. Even starting with awkward stupid gym class in middle school. I was voted off my 8th grade field day team because I was that bad. In high school my gym teacher was so lamespice that I luckily had a choice of playing whatever sport was happening (in our gym slash basement that had lots of poles going thru the middle to hold up the rest of the school) or walking (check) or lying on the floor (check check). Woops, I mean doing Richard Simmons Sweating to the Oldies videos or random old ab workout videos and sometimes lying on the floor instead of participating. Obvi.

Clearly I've always had a rock hard body. That is a lie. I always despised exercise while carrying on a juicy love affair with food. I've never embraced my flab or anything like that, but I guess I just hated working out hated slash gained weight with diets never wanted to do all that hard work to get rid of the flabby parts. I mean, have you tasted ice cream? I love ice cream more than I hate flab.

Anywho. When I started running last year I never expected it to become something I'd actually enjoy. I do. I enjoy it, look forward to it, and I schedule running into my week.

I do my best thinking while running, showering, or lying in bed. Now mainly while running.
Some people may figuratively run away from stuff and try to escape their problems in life. I used to do this in mind and spirit as much as humanly possible - deny or avoid problems. Until I didn't. As I realized that denying and avoiding problems didn't make them disappear (more like they come back to bite one's ass) I was forced to start facing my real life stuff and dealing with issues. That is a story for another post, but let's just say I became a girl with gumption.

It is that gumption that led me to tie the running shoes and start running. Running in turn has helped me more than I can say. Ok, I can say how much: this much (picture me openning my arms real wide). Running has become an extension of my therapy. A place where I think about and face all my problems from work to family to grey hair. I now face all the crap that comes my way in body, mind, and spirit when I run.


Where can you run to escape from yourself?


Yeah, that's the best line in "Dare You to Move" by Switchfoot. It speaks to me today. I'm not running away from life these days. Nope. I'm running towards something. Towards myself. Towards freedom. Towards something greater than me- towards my Creator who made my body so able to move and to run. [Thanks for the book about spiritual running Mom!]

Today is Good Friday. A big day for Christians everywhere. So, fitting with the day and also the theme of my post I'll share this sweet quote from Hebrews 12:1...

Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.


And with that, I dare you to move.

Dare You To Move - Switchfoot