Hard Things

We are funny creatures. We wake up at the crack of dawn when the moon and the backs of our eyelids tell us we should still be slumbering. We strap on our shoes and our iPods and our Garmins and hit the asphalt. We run up and down stadium bleachers countless times until our legs feel like jello. We circle the tracks, traverse the canal banks, scale the mountains. We go and go until our lungs feel like they might run out of air or until our feet beg us to stop. We make our hearts beat twice as fast as normal and we thrive in the sweat. We push our physical abilities to the limits, drive ourselves to push on and stretch to reach further than we thought we could or at least further than we've been before. We crave new experiences. We yearn for hard things - experiences that will help refine us and push us to become more than we presently are.

We do hard things. On purpose.

In one of the conference addresses Saturday (I can't remember which speaker it was), I heard a similar message about how we inherently derive satisfaction from the accomplishment of that which is hard. It's in our nature. Nothing worth having comes easy. I smiled as those words were spoken. He was talking to me. I had run my 7 miles earlier that morning, with legs still mildly tired from the 4 on Friday, and still somewhat un-recovered from the grand canyon the week before. I was rubbing my shin bruise and considering why my blisters hadn't healed yet. I was thinking about Bishop Uncle Jim and my cousin, Jimmy, who had probably just finished their marathon in St. George an hour or two earlier - just a little over a month after running the Park City marathon in August and only months after battling cancer. I was thinking about my next big race with Ryan in just six weeks and the Turkey Trot the week after that and racing again with my SIL at London's Run and the next big Rim 2 Rim hike in 2011 and getting excited about all of it. All these things, hard things...and yet I crave them.

I know that we are all at different places in our lives, and truly - just a few years ago- I couldn't have been further away from where I am now. Then, if I would have attempted a short jog around my block, I'm quite sure my lungs would have given out. I was ten years into motherhood and too many years into sleepless nights and 2:00am work sessions followed by 6:00 am risings. I hadn't made fitness a priority in a decade and the fruits of that neglect manifested themselves in every aspect of my well-being. The best thing that ever happened to me was my dad coming to work for us at RMB and lifting so much of that crazy late-night work burden from my plate. Suddenly, I realized that I really did need sleep. And exercise. And that I could feel good again - really good.

There is a season for everything, a time and a place. I know that. And somehow I justified for so many years that being fit wasn't part of my season. That doesn't even make any sense in retrospect. Being fit should be part of who we are are - always. I think I put fitness on the back burner partly because I thought I couldn't fit one more thing in my crazy life - and maybe I couldn't, I don't know, but mostly because I thought it was too hard. And it is so dang hard when you're not consistent. Every time you try to recommit, you pay the price of sore muscles and aching limbs and burning lungs and then you fizzle and fail. Now I'm afraid to not run. Afraid that if I give myself too many days off that my lungs will shrink and my heart will forget that it's OK to beat at 160 and that my legs will rebel against me. Afraid that I'll have to start over.

I'm excited about the milestones I'm striving for, excited that Ryan is on the same track and that we are doing hard things - together. I'm excited that my brother and SIL are hiking with us next year and that living strong is a priority in our family. I'm excited that I have a brood of inspiring running cousins and crazy hikers and that we all thrive on the quest for the hard things. I'm an advocate for consistency and a believer that we can be more that we presently are.