Standing Still

I loved church today. It had been a while since we hadn't been out of town on a Sunday, so it felt good to be back this morning. I admit that there are many Sundays when I leave church and don't feel that the message really hit home for me, but today was not one of those days. And thank goodness for that because my day didn't start off as planned.

I set my alarm for 6:30 because I wanted to get a 7 mile run in before the rest of the house woke up. We are somewhat stuck on mountain time and haven't been rolling out of bed until 8:00 (eek!). That is NOT the norm for my kiddos. They like to "sleep in" until about 6:45 every day. Anyways, my alarm went off at 6:30. I hit snooze, and woke back up at 7:45. NOOOOOO!!!! That did not leave me enough time to run before church, so I cleaned up around the house instead and was pretty much moping and pouting the whole time, realizing that I had missed my chance for a run today. 

Before the sermon started, there was a guest speaker who gave a personal testimony. He was a man who suffered from epilepsy (now 62 years old) and had been somewhat shunned by his parents who never accepted his illness. I am currently reading a book called Women Who Run (thanks Rochelle!), and one of the chapters highlights a woman with epilepsy who runs ultra marathons, and running helps her to have less seizures. Now I'm sure that this was just a weird coincidence, but I immediately felt a connection to his message, having just read this woman's story 2 days ago. Turns out they both had the same surgery in which part of the frontal lobe is removed, and the number of seizures decreases significantly. Pretty amazing stuff.

Next, during the message, the Pastor spoke about his recent trip to Colorado. He told us how he is a runner, so he was pretty confident in his ability to hike up mountains, but due to the elevation he felt completely out of shape and unprepared for running and hiking out there. Sound familiar?!?! Yup, that was me last week! 

Finally, the main part of the message was to remind us that if we are not moving, we are standing still. And if we are standing still, we will never get anywhere. Ultimately, he was referring to our relationship with God the Father, but he also spoke about our physical health. If we are not doing any work to improve our current fitness, or at least maintain it, we are going to end up in a losing battle with our bodies. We need strength to be prepared for whatever is put in front of us! Sometimes we are just unlucky and a disease takes over us that we couldn't have controlled. However, often times people become sick because they do not work to remain healthy. Everyone wants to be healthy! We must be willing to put in the effort on a regular basis to make this happen.

Church was a breath of fresh air for me today. It reminded me of the things I need to be improving on in all aspects of my life, and I really felt that God was letting me know He's got his eye on me. (And thank goodness for that because things are a bit hectic right now!)

I missed my run today. Oh well. My alarm is set again for tomorrow morning. And I will do better to get up and get it done! My kids need me to be healthy, and my sanity depends on that run (especially since I don't have a church service to help me stop moping around tomorrow if I oversleep!).