I've been feeling a little depressed this week. Tomorrow I was supposed to run my very first half marathon. 13.1 miles through the city of Philadelphia. My family was going to come and cheer me on as I accomplished something I absolutely never thought was possible.
But I won't be running tomorrow. In fact, I haven't gone running in over two months. A few months into my training, I started to get some intense pain in my right knee. After a few disastrous runs, and getting picked up by my husband on the side of the road after my knee gave out, I went to see an orthopedic specialist.
Long story short, I had some torn cartilage behind my kneecap. When the doctor went in to fix it, he found a lot of cartilage deterioration and some arthritis. During my follow-up visit he told me that distance running would be a bad choice for me, and that if I continued with long mileage runs, I could be looking at a total knee replacement before I'm 50.
In some ways, that news was devastating to me.
Those of you who don't run might think that sounds crazy. Is it really the end of the world to be told you can't run more than 3-4 miles at a time? A year ago, I would have said no, but not anymore.
See, for me, running has become so much more than running. It's given me back a part of myself that I had forgotten about.
Sometime in April, around my son's first birthday, a few ladies in my church started talking about running the Philly Half. Somehow I got included on the list of people in the email that was circulating, asking who would be interested in running together.
I remember reading the email and thinking, "Did they send this to the wrong person? They can't possibly think I could run with them." I told my mom about it a couple of weeks later, laughing, and saying "Run a half? A half of what? I'll run halfway to the fridge you meet me halfway."
But a half- MARATHON? Impossible.
I'd run a couple of 5ks since having my kids. By a couple I mean two. Two 5ks. That's it. And those 5ks felt like pretty incredible accomplishments for me. As a mom of two who rarely, if ever, sleeps a full night through and usually eats half eaten chicken nuggets for lunch, it takes an incredible amount of energy to make time for running.
A half-marathon? There's no way.
But... what if?
See, there's this thing about motherhood. It's kind of like a big black hole that can completely swallow you up if you're not careful. These wonderful, sticky, sweet-smelling, exasperating, and totally helpless tiny humans can literally take every single ounce of soul out of you.
For a long time now I've been living in this state of ambivalence.
Ambivalence is defined as the coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings toward the same person, object, or action, simultaneously drawing him or her in opposite directions.
If ever the dictionary were to sum up the state of my life in one single word that would be it.
The love I have for my children and husband is deeper and wider and more intense than I could have ever imagined it to be.
And yet the daily task of wiping snotty noses, cooking meals morning, noon, and night, and doing laundry that, for the love of God, NEVER ends is enough to drive me completely insane.
And it's enough to make me forget that I am more.
I am more than a mom. I am more than a wife.
I am me. I am JUST me. The person who was created and existed before I ever took on the roles I have right now.
I'm not just a mom. I'm competitive. I'm creative. I'm adventurous. I'm sarcastic. I'm infuriating (ask my husband).
For some reason, a lot of the "mommy encouragement" out there focuses on the fact that we as moms are doing some of the most important work that there is to be done. Raising children, loving them, nurturing them, teaching them. The encouragement focuses on reminding us moms that the work we do day in and day out matters.
And it does. But I already know that.
I know that what I am doing matters.
What I want to hear is, YOU ARE MORE THAN MOMMY. And your importance and impact on this world reaches farther than the mothering you do, even if in this season most of you is given to your children. You are not just a mom. You are YOU.
I lost part of myself somewhere along the way. And along with that I lost some of my confidence.
Mothering? I can do that. It's hard and I question myself plenty, but deep deep down in my soul I know I'm giving my kids the best of me.
But what about the rest? Do I have anything else to offer? Do I have talents and abilities that are really worth something?
That's where I found myself as my son turned a year old. And that's when I got that email, asking if I would be interested in running with a group for 13.1 miles on a cold day in November.
Turns out, the email was meant for me.
I sat on it for a good three weeks. I went back and forth. I couldn't imagine actually having the time and energy to put into training.
Someone started a Facebook group for people who were interested in running the half. I messaged them all and told them my dilemma. How would I possibly have enough time and energy to do this?
Translation: I am afraid to fail.
A fellow mom wrote back, whose life in some ways is way more stressful than mine, and she said this. "If you want to do this, you will make the time."
Her words hit me hard. If you want to do this, you WILL. You will do what you have to do.
I signed up for the race that night.
I told everyone I knew that I signed up so that they would all know about it and so that I would be way too embarrassed to quit and have to tell them all that I was a quitter if I didn't follow through.
There is no better accountability than embarrassment.
And then I started running. At first, I could barely make it a mile without walking. For weeks, I would go out after Ben got home in the evenings, before the kids had to be bathed and put to bed, huffing and puffing, putting one foot in front of the other, working my way up to three miles.
Can I just tell you, it totally sucked. I was so out of shape. I was sweaty, smelly, breathing hard, convinced I was going to have an asthmatic attack, and my muscles burned.
But I wasn't going to quit.
There were days that I made up excuses. I was too tired. The kids hadn't slept well. I felt a cold coming on. Ben didn't let me get away with it. Gently, he'd remind me that harder runs were ahead, and I needed to keep going if I wanted to make it. So I'd lace up, tell him how much I loathed him, and head out the door.
Suddenly, weeks turned into a month, then two months.
I was still running.
Then, I don't know when, but one day three miles wasn't so bad. And I realized that instead of dreading my runs, I was looking forward to them. I began to embrace the burning lungs, aching legs, and total freedom that I felt out on the road.
As a mom of two little ones, I don't get much, if any, time to myself. But out on the road, running into the sunset, there were often times I didn't even listen to music. I simply enjoyed hearing the sound of my own lungs taking in air. Inhale. Exhale. Deeply breathing in the moments alone.
I've always been a competitive person. I don't get much opportunity to exercise that during the day. But running, I found myself coming up with new challenges with every run. Could I sprint to that next tree? Could I push myself a mile further that night?
I remember the first time I ran 8 miles. I was euphoric. 8 miles?! It felt like I was on top of the world. I literally almost cried.
And that's when I realized. I could do this. I could run 13.1 miles.
Suddenly, it felt like the world opened up to me. I'd been hiding for a few years behind the shield of motherhood, afraid that I had nothing else to offer.
But here I was, running 8 miles at a time, and feeling great. It gave me a confidence that I hadn't had in a long time.
What does running have to do with real life?
Nothing.
And everything.
The week after I ran those 8 miles I saw an ad in the newspaper that I had seen every month for a few months in a row. It was an ad for a newspaper reporter. They were just looking for someone to cover monthly municipal meetings. I'd looked at it many times, thinking I could do that.
But always the doubts would creep in. Do I have time? Are my writing skills too rusty? Could I really do it?
I was afraid to fail.
The week after the 8 mile run, I applied to the paper. I sent in my writing samples, crossed my fingers, and didn't tell anyone for fear I would be turned down.
Almost immediately I heard back from the editor. Not only did she want me on the team, she was offering me one of the biggest features in the paper: Hometown Living, a full page of the newspaper every month. I get creative license to come up with topics and take pictures to go along with it.
Really? She doesn't even know me. She's giving me this feature on the spot? I cannot explain how mind boggling that was for me. Do I really have that much to offer the paper? Were my writing samples really good enough?
The answer is yes. I do have something to offer. Something of myself that has nothing to do with being a mom to my kids.
I have always, always wanted to be a writer. But I have never felt confident enough in myself to put my words out there. To take a risk and ask someone to give me a chance.
But this time I did. I am so excited for this new opportunity. It is a small, hometown newspaper. It isn't the book I dream of writing one day, but it's a step closer. It's an opportunity to write, to have people read what I have to say. Because I do have something to say.
Shortly after the 8 mile run, my knee began acting up. By early October, I was having knee surgery. I thought the surgery would fix the problem, and allow me to continue with my dream of running a half marathon. Instead, it revealed a chronic condition that isn't going away. In the doctor's words, "Running might not be the best choice" for me.
Not the best choice...
The doctor doesn't know it, but running was one of the best choices I ever made in my entire life. It gave me back a confidence that I had lost in the business of mothering.
It might sound trite and corny, but running is just like life. It isn't about the destination, it is about the journey. There are ups and downs, setbacks, and euphoric victories.
I'm not walking away with a finisher medal this weekend. I'm sad about that. I wanted it so badly.
But I've come to realize I am walking away with something so much more valuable.
I am walking away with the confidence that I am more than mommy. I have something to offer the world that has nothing to do with my mothering abilities.
I'm walking away with the knowledge that taking risks and setting goals that seem impossible often comes with incredible rewards that you would not see had you not taken the risk.
I'm walking away knowing that sometimes failure teaches you more than success.
And I am walking away knowing that, though I love being a mom more than anything in the world, being a mother isn't the sum total of who I am.
