Ready or Not...

The Niagara Falls Marathon is just a week away.

I am feeling really well, really full of energy and wanting to run.

I know I am not as well prepared as I would have liked, though, and I think that I should explain something about that here.

On September 8, after a few weeks of not running very well, and feeling a little "off", I learned that I was 8-9 weeks pregnant.

(I have mulled over the next line here for weeks now......)

I must say that the idea of a baby is just delightful to me.

Of all the many enormous blessings in my life, my children are among the greatest.

And I must add that having babies and teenagers at the same time has proven to be such a gift for our family.

But I am sort of a "chronic Miscarrier", meaning that I have miscarried more pregnancies that I have completed.

I think that from the beginning, I suspected that this pregnancy would not continue.

And sure enough, a week later, I began what turned out to be a four week process of letting that little soul pass from our lives. For anyone who has done this it is a mentally befuddling, emotionally numbing and physically draining process.

And, this time, an infection followed and it took me a little longer than expected to get back on my feet.

And this was going on during what appeared to be a full couple of weeks anyway, from Sept 17 onward. Some of that business is recorded in earlier posts.

I was finding it difficult to get my mind organized enough to explain how losing a baby and training for a marathon could exist under the same roof.

It is a matter of connecting the dots and seeing the larger picture, and sometimes a little quiet and a little time are required before that picture can swim into focus.

I often wonder, during a miscarriage, why I am given pregnancies only to have them end with me feeling weak and with no baby to hold. But when the sun comes out again, it is clear to me that this is God showing me again that I should rest on Him, that I can expect good care from Him, and that I am not in control.

It seems that my understanding of God's care for me is clouded by my pride, which seems to rise up in the middle of each miscarriage. The best way of describing it is to say that there is a certain indignity in losing a baby. And this is an indignity to which I find it difficult to submit.

But isn't that again the gracious care of God, as he shows me my hidden sin, and forgives and leads me in repentance.

On a more mundane level, those weeks of being quite unwell happened just at the final three weeks when I should have been building my running mileage up to 22 miles.....and I missed those very crucial training runs.

I was forbidden by the doc to run for a few weeks there, and that was another, much smaller, indignity to which it was difficult to submit.

But I feel my strength returning, and on Friday I went out and wanted to run forever. I held myself back, though, as I cannot run that marathon until next Sunday.

And, knowing it is better never to undertake a great task than to abandon it once it is begun, I will be there at the start line on Sunday, and I will eventually be there at the finish line on Sunday (something funny, I accidentally typed "Monday" for the day I would cross the finish line, so I had to come back in and fix it.)

And I'm looking at running another one in late June.....