Running.

Me a mom! It was bitter-sweet, I was seventeen and unprepared for the news of a pregnancy. Yet knowing this, that I had a baby inside me, depending on me for sweet life, well I can’t say I didn’t smile, even if I was only seventeen.

Holding my belly, I knew I wanted the shot at being a mom to this precious life, not just in the biological sense. I didn’t however want to make the decision selfishly. After all, what did I know about mothering?

Everything I believed about myself told me I wasn’t good enough for this role. So I did maybe the one thing I’ve always been good at and I prayed. First that this baby would be healthy. I bargained with God praying “God if you let this baby be perfectly healthy, I promise, I promise, I’ll raise him for you.” Secondly, I prayed that I could be changed. I pleaded with God praying “Help me to be a good mom, please God, please.”

Looking around at my life, I knew, for sure, I was far from deserving of such a calling. What a mess I had made of myself. Yet, as this baby grew inside me, I fell deeply in love with him. I’d do everything I could to secure his well-being and happiness. So I looked around at the mess, and everything leading up to it, and promised to run hard and fast in the opposite direction of it.

As the years past, without forgetting the goodness of God, I successfully disassociated myself from everything before motherhood, at least that was the case until recently. So what happened?

In previous blog posts I reference some ways my past began begging for my attention. Still, last year was one of the best years, if not the best year of my life. To meet the end of it, with a different posture, to go from confident to immediately collapsed, was not what I was expecting. Perhaps only in the contrast of a radically good year, could the evidence of those bad years be so clear.

I care about how it is that I got here because I was caught off guard, not one of my favorite things to be. Whatever circumstances got me here, I think I’ve come to realize an easy way for me to sum all this up for myself. So for now, I’ll pause a blog post on perhaps the most significant event that lead to my dismay, and instead I’ll share a conclusion I’ve come to:

Obviously, I’m avid “life” runner and though I may pause to catch my breath, though I rest to rehabilitate my strength, I don’t give up running toward what is good. I may have unexpectedly collapsed but I’m already back up and at it, feet beneath me and stretching in preparation, I will run again. May I never give up running toward what is good.