Silver Lining

Silver Lining

Once I got injured my running partner, pacer, and friend Tom told me there is always a silver lining to things like this.  It might take a while to figure it out, but it's always there!  So I started to try and figure out what my silver lining was.  

So whether this is the silver lining or not here it goes...

Personal Relationship with Christ

At the beginning of the year I decided that I was going to change who I was as a person.  I wanted to be a happier person, as well as, a better Christian and stronger in my relationship with God.  I got tired to being treated like crap by men, and was tired to searching for someone to love me.  I finally realized that I was only going to find that love when God was ready for me to and I needed to realize how much he loved me first.

At the beginning of the year Hickory Grove Baptist, the church I attend, started a sermon series called Year of the Bible.  Throughout the year we would working our way through each book of the Bible. There is a daily reading plan to read each day, starting with Genesis and working your way all the way to the end.  I was going to go to church every Sunday unless I wasn't able to(being out of town), and decided to start going to a Sunday School class.  Being that the Sunday School class started at 9:30am and I didn't want to get home past 11 I had to start going to the 8am main service.  Yes, it meant I  had to get up earlier but I didn't mind because it also gives me a chance to see my Grandma Pope once a week.  

I started on my daily readings, but the Bible I had was aggravating because it was done it chronological order.  As nice as I thought that would be it just made things difficult for me when I finally had to jump around to Chronicles to read bits and pieces there.  I had a friend I met through CrossFit that wasn't afraid to confess his love for the Lord and just wanted to be in a stronger relationship with God as well.  When I told him about my Bible he said it sounded really neat but understood my frustration.  I told him I was going to get another Bible and he told me that he had an extra one he could let me use.  I was so grateful for this.  

Slowly but surely I had things come up that I felt kept me busy and I didn't take the time to do the daily reading, and I had missed a couple days at church or I would go to main service and then head back home from being exhausted.  So needless to say my relationship with the Lord was growing weaker.  When it was stronger I could feel the joy in my life, and now that it was slowly growing weaker I could tell some things were changing.  I was so into my training I didn't take the time like I needed to go spend my time with God.  Needless to say because this injury has knocked me out of a lot of my training I am able to at least sit down and get through one day of the reading, which I'm so far behind is crazy - 20 days to be exact, as of now! Because of my inability to train I have been able to catch up.  I also got two journals, one in which I take notes during services(main and Sunday school), and the second to start writing down my prayers because I always fall asleep at night in the middle of saying them.  I feel that my prayer journal is  helping.  I would love to pray for everyone that comes to mind but that would probably last take a couple hours.

Refinding my Passion

When I wasn't injured I was getting tired of some of the training I was doing, specifically running after I had trained for my half marathon.  I hadn't really been running a lot since, maybe twice a week and then about a race every weekend.  I was doing really well in all my running races since my half.  I finally ran my first race two weeks after my half marathon and came in 3rd in my age group and got a new PR(personal record) of 24:27.  Tom had told me I could do under 25 minutes and of course I thought he was crazy.  When my injury first happened, the first thing that I thought of was that I wasn't going be able to race the King Tiger 5k the following weekend.  The races that I had been running post half marathon were all part of the Run For Your Life Grand Pre Series and the two that I was able to run I placed 3rd in my age group.  This only fueled my fire to keep going and do better.  I was so upset the night that I got injured, that yes I even cried in the shower.  Training and racing were my life and I didn't know what I would do without them.  As I was having my boo hoo fest in the shower I realized that a lot of people have it worse than me.  It is only an injury that I can recover from, so I was trying to tell myself that it wasn't that big of a deal considering some people can't even walk or have other series medical conditions.  

On June 9th, a Saturday morning, I headed out to Latta Plantation Nature Preserve to guard the Tri Latta Sprint Triathlon.  I worked the water portion and then stayed to watch most of the rest of the race because a lot of people I knew who either trained at the club or were apart of One2Tri Racing or the One2Tri team were in the race.  I was super excited to watch some of the people I train with and worked with race. I missed a lot of the people I knew on the One2Tri Racing Team come in because this year they combined both days that the used to be Latta into one day, so I was out in the water for a good hour or more.  It was still excited to see a lot of people that I knew out there racing, but it really made me wish I was out there racing with them and having all the support from the team as well.  I really wanted to be out there doing it all.  To see the camaraderie of everyone from One2Tri was an amazing experience.  I was itching to race really bad and I still am.  I am ready to train for a triathlon.  I have so many races that I want to do this year, from running races to triathlons!