Picture . . .

When I look at this picture I think a lot of things. I see a lot of things that others don’t seem to see. I see a fat kid who is jiggling in all of the wrong places. I see every flaw on this girls body. I see a girl defeated by the clock as she ran her first half marathon. I see arms that look more like wings and a shirt riding up because her hips are so big. And despite this being the finish line of a 13.1 mile street run with more than enough hills that took her on a tour of the very place where she got a rocky start in life, I do not see a runner. Maybe that is simply because this is my picture and we are our own worst enemies. Maybe it is because when I was in fourth grade I was running through my neighborhood, a car of high school kids who didn’t know me jeered and said “fat kids cant run.” Or maybe it is because I have an over idealized  picture of who runners are and I need to learn to accept that I am a runner, I am an athlete. Those terms are not defined by size or even by success but by a heart who loves to achieve physically and compete and play any sport there is.

About a year prior to this picture I turned 30. I am still single and although outwardly successful with multiple degrees and a good job. My body was a reflection of my inside. I was not someone who deserved to be treated well. And it was not fair to expect more from myself when it came to my body and my mind. I had accepted that the path of my childhood determined who I was now and would always be. I have always loved sports and played them. I worked out at a great fitness studio called ReFit where the instructors loved Jesus and out of that loved me well. But I was still fat. I know you are supposed to use a euphemism there but frankly those are more offensive to me than just calling it what it was.

My weight was one of the many things I have battled for most of my life. And in college I found the way to beat it into submission. I would cut out food and use disordered eating to get my body where I wanted it. I would punish myself until I was happy with my weight. Then I would resume a more natural state. I succeeded. I will never be a small person but I got to the size I wanted. Of course when I went back to “eating normally” I seemed to just blow up.

While I was at Mercy, my relationship with food among other things, was addressed and I saw changes. I graduated from the program with a new hope, one I had never had before and was ready to take on the world. Unfortunately the world was ready to take me on as well. I had a lot of ups and downs, I fell and got back up just to fall again. While this was not just about my body, it was a good reflection of what was going on inside of me. I creeped steadily back towards the 300 lb mark which scared me. I stepped back into dangerous territory, “just to give my weight loss a boost.” FAIL!

Then in March of 2014, I anxiously anticipated my 30^th birthday. It wasn’t so much the number that scared me. It was that I was stepping into that decade with no family. I had to choose to walk away from the family that I was born into because of their unwillingness to have a healthy relationship. And I had heard promise after promise from God that I would have a family of my own. But here I was turning 30 with no husband and no children. And with words of doctors saying I probably wouldn’t be able to have babies anyway but certainly the longer I waited.

I will admit, I am a number person and after a week or so, absolutely dreading my birthday which was hard anyway because I knew I was a “mistake,” the night before my birthday, I heard a small voice my the pit of who I am. This decade can be different. The first decade of my life I was used and abused and treated like trash by others and my life was out of my control. The second and third decades, all I knew what to continue that. But this decade could be different. This decade I could start living life and living it to its fullest. When I turned thirty, I decided I would do things differently.

Sure I changed how I ate and worked on learning that food was not an enemy or a comforter but fuel created to make me strong enough to do the work I have been called to do. I began to run short runs that were mostly walking. I changed some things that I was physically doing. But those are not things that I had not done before. Something had to change internally. I want to be clear that this was not an over night phenomenon or instant change. I had to choose and choose again to say and know that I was worth it. That is was okay to be nice to myself. As I combined these thoughts and chose to believe them even when I didn’t really, I began to see more life in who I was. This manifested in my physical body. But this also manifested in my relationships.

A friend had asked me about training for a half marathon a few months later and I quickly told her no. Sure I was running some but I knew I was not a person who could run a half marathon nor could I keep up with her as this would not be her first rodeo. Over time, however I decided to try. Now I did not just decided to jump into that. In fact my only concession, months later, was “I will run with you one time and if I don’t die, I will consider it.” That was the beginning of November. I kept up with her, and she was patient with me. Through this process I learned I could do more than I had any idea. Especially with her beside me. She pushed me not by saying anything but by being by my side.

As I trained, I had a new focus. Health. And a half marathon. Thirteen-point-one miles that I was now committed to finishing. It took commitment to myself, to my partner and to my goal. Sure I continued to lose weight but I found my obsession with the scale decreasing. I learned to use food as fuel, admittedly the hard way. You need calories for energy and especially when you are running a longer run. But none of this could have happened if I did not have a true shift of heart and mind about who I was and what I was worth.

Race day has come and gone. It was hard to say the least, physically, the hardest thing I have ever done. I wanted to give up. But more than I wanted to give up, I wanted to finish. It wasn’t pretty but I crossed the finish line. But I am far from finished. We are called to run this race and I continue to do my best. I am not defined by my outward appearance or by others but by my heart and those plans God has laid out for me. I never dreamed one of those plans would be a half marathon but Im guessing that will not be my last! Our lives are a lot like this long endurance runs and even when we stop to rest or simply slow down our pace, if we follow the path God has for us, we can succeed more than we ever thought we could.

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