Enough

Last night at book club, a friend commented positively about my Runkeeper status updates on Facebook.  Since I started training in earnest for our upcoming Women's 4 Miler, I have been using the app to keep track of my time/distances throughout the week.  It's also a good way for me to get some much needed encouragement when friends like the update or leave me positive comments...especially since that is apparently too hard for me to do myself:

I replied to her, "Yeah, I'm doing the 4 Miler in a couple weeks."  And then, inexplicably, I added what I ALWAYS seem to add:  the disclaimer, "But I'm walking, you know, not running."

Ahem.

I am off the couch.  I am moving my body on a regular basis.  I'm working on my word for the year.  I am hitting new goals and achieving things I never before had interest in.

Yet I minimize this to others.

My response echoed other responses to similar comments in recent months.  I immediately qualify my comments whenever I tell someone I'm doing the 4 Miler or even when they comment on the Runkeeper updates, like I am less because I'm not running.  I don't THINK I think I'm less but my need to explain, to clarify, points differently.

This seems to be the theme of the week, actually.  A few gals from church and I are working through Ann Voskamp's 1000 Gifts right now;  this week's take away for me was specific to giving ourselves a break - extending ourselves grace as easily as we might to another.  If a friend responded to me as I did to mine last night, I would have been quick to encourage her, to tell her that it is awesome that she is walking and remind her how many folks are sitting at home watching tv while she is out there training.  But yet it is exceedingly hard for me to do that for myself.

I know I'm not unique in this;  so many women in my life would never speak to a friend the way they speak to themselves.  They'd never be as discouraging or as hard on a beloved friend as they are to themselves.  So why are we to ourselves?  If we move forward and try our best every day, to be a little bit better, stronger, kinder, more joyful than the day before, shouldn't that be enough? Admitting when we fail, fall back or struggle but not letting that define us, shouldn't that be enough?

Shouldn't we, each of us individually, strong, unique, beautiful and wow, be enough?

Yes.

You Spin Me Right Round

I feel like my head is constantly spinning.  Not in a vertigo sort of way, thankfully, but in a constantly thinking, planning, plotting sort of way.  Before moving, I would come up with an idea, bat it back and forth, decide upon it and become singularly focused on making it happen - borderline obsessively, really.  Here I just keep coming up with ideas:  how to meet people, how to make friend, how to not scare away potential friends, how to make ends meet (at all), how to make ends meet better, what I might want to do with my life, what I might not want to do with my life, where I am in my life, where I want to be in my life, where I could have been in my life, who should be part of my life; the list goes on and on.

Most of the time, I think this is great.  It's part of change, really, isn't it?  Starting over?  Starting "fresh"?  Having a proverbial "clean slate" to work with?

Other times, I wish I could just quiet my mind and focus.  It feels like there is too much going on in there to make any good decisions...about anything.  Kudos to my nearest and dearest for all the seemingly random posts, texts and messages they have been subject to over the past ten months as I vacillate wildly from this to that and back again..then over there....I wish I could tell you that the end of that is near and that I'm soon going to be back to normal.

But the one thing I've learned through this journey so far is that there is no such thing as normal or, perhaps, more accurately, my old normal is no more.