Meeting your goals [even when your face is so numb from the cold that you drool on yourself and don’t even notice]

So, needless to say, setting a goal to run [jog] 5 miles by the middle of November in Upstate New York may not have been the most temperature conscious decision I’ve ever made. And I’m usually pretty temperature conscious… [Or, if you’d rather, extremely weather intolerant]

Running in the high 20’s and mid 30’s wasn’t exactly part of my plan when I decided to do this thang. But alas—I set a goal, told all you good people about it via the interweb, and by golly I was really [mostly…] determined to do it!

Every time I went out for a run I thought to myself, [in kind of a loud, shouting voice…] “TODAY IS THE DAY I AM GOING TO RUN 5 MILES BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING COLD THAT I JUST WANT TO BE DONE SO I CAN NEVER COME BACK!”

[Side note: If I have in-the-moment feelings about anything—they’re generally strong ones. I often feel hyperbole is one of the most fun flavors of life and language. Occasionally James respectfully disagrees—but usually he’s making a lot of sense when he does, so that seems pretty fair!]

Okay, but back to the running and the cold and the goals and such…

Well, sometimes you just can’t go run 5 miles if you’ve never done it before—no matter how much you want to be done with it. So week after week, I kept going back.

That is, until yesterday.

(!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I went out to the state park around noon—it was a little cloudy and temps were in the mid 30’s. I was preeetty bundled. Runnin’ in a jacket. Because that sounds fun, right!?

Anyway, below is the account of how “Goal #1” officially met his [or her…probably a her] ultimate demise:

First, I started running. Simple enough. For the first 8 minutes I thought about how I should have gone to the bathroom before I left the apartment. After that I spent time thinking about how parts of my face were getting numb from the cold and wind.

If you weren’t aware, when you have the luxury of a partially numb face you could—potentially—drool on yourself a little. Then you might think, “Wow, that was awkward. I’m glad no one was here to see it. Hm, I wonder if I’ll include that in my blog post. Probably not, because that’s kind of gross. There’s no need to be gross…”

So I thought about things like the weather, my numb face, dinner, skin care, vitamins [why they gotta be so big!?], Christmas with family, my future genius border collie, how long I might last in a zombie apocalypse [and how I’d have to raid abandoned drug stores for contact solution…] along with my daily internal debate on long hair vs. short hair [the struggle is real.]

…and when I came up on 3 miles, I was kind of over it all. I was tired & cold, but more than that—I just wanted to be done with this dang goal. In that moment I prayed kind of a pathetic little prayer [void of any specifics, as my brain was busy wondering why I was still running in the cold…] it went as follows:

“Oh Lord, just help me out with my runnin’. this is the worst. P.S. – thanks for all the things. You’re the best. Amen.”

About a minute later I came upon two middle-aged men taking a stroll in my direction. They were heavyset, dark haired, and very much from Upstate New York. They were also bundled up for the blustery day, because even the New Yorkers thought it was cold. [Which means it must have been true!]

Right as I was about to jog past, this grown man [and complete stranger] holds out his clenched, gloved hand in my direction.

I didn’t even have to think about it.

…Fist bump.

It could have been my heavy breathing that motivated him to offer some encouragement—or maybe the guy just pounds it with everybody he walks by. I’ll never know! Doesn’t really matter either way.

But what does matter is that I kept going. I jogged those last two miles and met my goal!

And then I did a little victory lap just for funzies…

KIDDING. Only kidding.

I hobbled the quarter of a mile back to the car, wheezing and coughing most of the way. But in victory! Both happy with myself and thankful for the unexpected encouragement the Lord sent my way.

People are great, God is both faithful and hilarious—and now I can move on with my life.

…my fitness goal life, that is.

Upward and onward to INDOOR activities!

His Grace is Sufficient Always.

– E

P.S. – here’s the proof! 😉

Movement, Repose & All Things New

I once was a pretty big fan of a band called mewithoutYou. I mean, I kind of still am, but my fervor for them has [as with most things I loved in my teens…] somewhat waned over the years. All you really need to know is that they have some really insane [the incredible kind, not actually mentally loopy…] lyrics. One source — and by “one source” I totally mean Wikipedia — describes their music as “dominated by dramatic spoken-word vocals” …a lot cooler than it sounds. Promise!

They once wrote / sang / dramatically sang-spoke the following:

If they ask you for the sign of the Father in you
tell them, it’s movement, movement, movement (and repose).

I’ve always loved those lyrics. They just popped back into my head recently, perhaps for somewhat different reasons, when I sat down to do some writing. God, movement and rest…it’s all pretty relevant.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that the last 80 days haven’t at all been the whirlwind [movement x a million!] that was the preceding 6 months.

Don’t get me wrong – the blur of activities that made up my engagement to James Golden was nothing short of remarkable. It can’t be denied that there were a tremendous number of moving pieces that, if spoken of all at once, would wind me up tightly into a ball of excitement, joy, anxiety, discomfort, happiness, hopefulness and even a hint of sadness here and there. Needless to say, that particular ball of emotions was kind of an exhausting one.

In those 6 months [with the help of some truly amazing people] a heck of a lot got done. We moved our things, moved our cars & eventually moved our selves. I kept doing my job, trained someone new to take over my job, and eventually left my job. We said goodbye to my totally ancient dog [and good friend], Clover. It felt significant and overwhelming, as a huge symbol of my childhood passed away while a great mark of adulthood approached.

We went to showers and parties and celebrated with family and friends while we anxiously awaited the big day. And then we had [what we perceived to be] the most awesome wedding of all time. I mean – there were fireworks, people. Fireworks!

We honeymooned, honeymoved, and finally arrived at our new home in Saratoga Springs, New York on July 13^th.

…And then came the repose.

I welcomed it joyfully and wholeheartedly for about – oh, let’s say – 6 whole days. The reality quickly set in that it is much [immensely & tremendously] more fun to plan on quitting your job than it is to actually no longer have a job. Crazy, right!? Right. Well, kind of…

In such a situation you might, for example, end up watching all the episodes of How I Met Your Mother that are currently available on Netflix. 

You might do a thing like that…until you realize that a season of resting isn’t actually meant to last for 6 months. And that maybe the goals you set of “update your resume” and “cook something for dinner,” aren’t hardly ambitious or challenging enough to be satisfying, even if only for a short time. [Also, watching that much TV in such a small amount of time unfortunately won’t ever be any sort of “LEGEN …wait for it… DARY.” …probably. I mean definitely.]

So I’ve made some new goals [coming soon to this blog! woohoo], plan on forcing a few of my new friends to hold me accountable to them [shout out to Lindsay & Michelle!!], and started this blog to serve as some sort of writing // creative // idea outlet while I’m currently not seeking full time employment during our stay in Saratoga Springs. So many new things have happened, keep happening, and will continue to happen that it’d be a shame to not document them anywhere. The pieces of our now shared life keep changing & moving around and I’m very interested in monitoring their patterns, existence, and God’s ultimate faithfulness in our lives.

His Grace is Sufficient Always.

– E

p.s. — 

Q: how cute are my parents in this photo!?? A: TOO CUTE. Can’t hardly stand it.

photo credit: Katherine Birkbeck Photography.