Finishing the Race

I’ve been running for five and a half months now, and I’ve discovered that the first three miles are always the hardest.  For me, there’s no such thing as an easy three.  Three is a torture of aches and pains and sore lungs and my brain screaming that I need to stop.  After three, something in my mind clicks, and my body shifts to machine.  The machine can keep going and going, seemingly indefinitely.  Yes, there are moments where the scream rises up again, but the machine kicks in and the legs keep going.  It “almost” starts to feel good.  It is actually hard to stop when the time comes because my body has adapted to the rhythm. 

I kind of feel like I reached that same point with teaching this year.  Yes, there were really, really rotten days.  Yes, from an objective perspective, I can say that it wasn’t the best thing for my kids.  But there was a rhythm, and I got used to it.  There are worse things, I told myself, and I got up at 5am again.  So here I am, getting what I’ve wanted for YEARS, and my heart is panicking because I have to let go of the rhythm.  I know how to do this teaching/working mom thing, however painful it might be.  I don’t know how to be a full-time mom.  I don’t know how to thrive as a freelancer.  I don’t know how to homeschool my kids.  I don’t know how to move cross-country.  As much as I should be happy to cross the finish line, I am all sorts of bittersweet and scared instead. 

I can’t help but think of the Israelites when they were rescued from slavery in Egypt.  Slavery was their routine.  Yes, they were abused and imprisoned, but they were fed. They knew their way around the city.  They knew their neighbors.  So when God showed up and rescued them, they freaked out.  The river was too wide, the wilderness was too barren, the inhabitants in the promised land were too big.  They couldn’t see the blessings because the obstacles loomed to large.  I mean, why couldn't God just rescue them from slavery and let them stay in Egypt?  Right?  

The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. Exodus 16: 1-3

What a slap in the face to God who just parted the Red Sea for them.  As a parent, I can vouch that it stings when my children don't trust me, when they whine and complain while I'm making good things for them.  (Exhibit A: child lying prostrate on the floor, screaming because there is no food right now...while I'm making him Belgian Waffles.)  Here I am, at risk of making that same mistake.  I’m worried about money and moving and how this will all work out instead of being grateful, grateful for a house twice the size of the one we have.  Grateful for the chance to be at home with my kids.  Grateful for the chance to chase this crazy dream of being a writer.  Grateful for the chance to teach my own kids now.  Like the Israelites, I am effectively dishonoring God with my fear.

I am grateful.  I am trying not to hedge that gratitude with fear; I am trying not to fall into my old habit of ruining the joy of a moment by worrying about the next.  I am trying to lean into the excitement bubbling in my heart, because it is.  We are following God, and He is a good, good father.