training

A year from today, I will run the Chicago Marathon.

My initial plan was to run it today, but the Lord changed my plans.

Let me start at the beginning...

This is me. both of them. The girl on the left was about to celebrate her 30th birthday and the one on the right was a year later after I finished my first 5k run. Running a 5k was something I never thought I could do. I was the girl in high school who almost died running the timed mile. 

I have been overweight almost my entire life and never really recognized that I had the power to change that. It wasn't until I began to look at my struggle with my weight, exercise and eating as an issue of the heart that things slowly began to change.

As you can see from the picture above, I have changed a LOT, but I am still a huge work in progress. I still have a long way to go. I get tripped up and complacent, but the Lord keeps beckoning me to journey on.

When I started running, it was not because I wanted to. I started running because I was in a place DESPERATE to hear from the Lord and all I could here Him say was, "Run." So I "ran," sort of. I laced my shoes, put on a sports bra, popped in my earbuds and attempted to do what the little voice on the Couch to 5K app told me to do.

I almost died.

But as I ran, the Lord began to speak. He always seems close when I am running. Once before I had even attempted a single run He had impressed on my heart that He would use my struggle with my weight to bring Him glory. That day of my first run, as I GASPED out one minute runs at a time counting every second until they were over, Jesus told me, "Linda, I am a finisher. Be a finisher.'

I had a moment of horror when I realized that what I had just started was a program to train to run a 5k. Could the Lord possibly be asking me to finish that?

6 weeks later I ran my first 5k.

Since then I have done a back and forth dance with obedience to being a "runner." The enemy tries VERY hard to remind me that I will never be a "real" runner. My very first run, with every step I had to rebuke Him. He said things like:

"Do you know how stupid you look?"

"You are so uncoordinated, you're going to fall."

"You're too fat to run. you'll never be able to do it."

With every step I took, I had to remind myself and my enemy that I was more than a conquerer, that the Lord was with me had created me in His image. I had to cling to the fact that I am fearfully and wonderfully made and that nothing is impossible when God is involved. It was hard to believe it. It IS STILL hard to believe it. But God said it, so its true.

So back to the marathon. This year I felt the Lord quicken my heart that there was a bigger challenge. I have a list of things I want to accomplish, races to run etc. and I felt the Lord saying its time to stop dreaming and start doing. So I put my name in the lottery for the Chicago Marathon, the scariest thing on my list. I left it in the hands of the Lord and my name was selected.

There were things besides running that I felt the Lord was asking me to do as part of my training, and I'll be frank, I was afraid and intimidated and I didn't do them. One of those things is exactly what I am doing right now, writing this journey.

As the deadline to defer my entry to next approached I felt unsettled in my spirit. I had been running. I had been running long distances. I actually believe with the right last push in my training I probably could have run that race today, but it wouldn't have accomplished what the Lord set out to accomplish in my heart. I would have stumbled across the finish line (maybe) without the joy of knowing I had spent my time in training fully surrendered to the Lords plan for this.

Before I chose to defer the entry I set aside 2 days to pray about that decision. Within hours of beginning to pray the Lord had given me 2 things, peace and a vision. Peace that deferring was the right thing to do and a vision of a year filled with obedient surrender to Him. By the end of those two days He had given me 7 goals, and that is why we are here today.

So here I sit, in a hotel in Chicago, taking a break and celebrating my birthday with friends as others lace up their shoes and prepare to run. I thought my heart would be heavy but I have peace and even joy. I am excited about the journey the Lord has me on. In the last 13 days the Lord has worked in my heart in amazing ways. I cannot even fathom who I will be a year from today, but I know a few things.

I will be a woman who has learned to never quit and never give up.

I will be a woman who is victorious and strong.

I will be a woman who knows that there is NOTHING that cannot be accomplished when we surrender our lives, even the little details, to the Lord.

I will be a woman who crosses the finish line of the Chicago Marathon and in doing so brings glory to her Savior.

I will not quit. I wont give up. I want to be made, step by step, mile by mile, into the woman that God is calling me to be.