Guest list? Death Wish.

Dear all you hopeless optimists who told me I could grow up and accomplish anything I put my mind to,

OBVIOUSLY you never made a wedding guest list. I'm pretty sure I'm going to ax all of you from it just on principle (and because I'm desperate).

Can I just say, it's impossible. I'm supposed to find a way to chop a list of 250 down to 150? Well, I'm down to 200 and pretty soon I'm gonna have to give up my spot just to fit all the wonderful, influential people in our lives into the location. Hey, friends and family, quit being so dang wonderful, okay. You're making my life hard. 

AND speaking of hard, I finally tied up my sneakers at 8:30 tonight, determined to stick with it, and set out down the familiar road of pain and suffering, also known as my running route.

I knew that if I didn't go today, I'd have gone more days being uncommitted to my goal than the days I followed through. 

Do you know what the saddest part is? I thought I was accomplishing this great thing just by going tonight... just by strapping on my shoes, jogging down the block, and not walking until I got as far as I did last time. Pathetic, people. 

We spend so much of our lives gorging ourselves on the lies we love to feast on. We set superficial goals that keep us living life to the bare minimum quality because, to set the bar high, sets us up for only one of two things... failure... or hard work. 

I realized as I was running up my very last hill,  just when I've finished the hardest part, I tell myself, "Once you make it up to the top, you can quit. You can feel good about what you did." But tonight, I did something  a little different, something completely unexpected, and totally unplanned... I kept going. 

And here's what I found, after a few painful moments and a few unsteady strides, I really started to get into a rhythm. Make no mistake, I'm not saying I particularly enjoyed it. It's not as though I suddenly started loving burning lungs and tired legs and side stitch... but I finally started to get it. I fixed my posture a little, breathed a bit deeper, and just when I was about to be done, my body started moving fluidly. My arms were in tune with my legs and my mouth in tune with my lungs. 

This is a lesson that life and faith will teach us again and again and again... we settle to "get through," to push ourselves to the limits we've created. And when we muster the strength to not denounce God in the hardships, to not lose faith completely when things aren't going as we planned, to not rip off our spouse's head for doing the same dumb thing we chewed them out for yesterday, when we finish our run because it's where we decided we'd be too tired to carry on, we call these things accomplishments.

Let me let you in on a little secret about God, He wants way more for us than that. He wants us to run past the limited expectation we have for wholeness. He wants us to push ourselves right to our limits, and when we get there, keep going, even when it's hard, because that's what faith is. 

Faith is letting your heart run towards God long after your mind and body say they can't go any further.  

And it's when we do this, that we really begin to accomplish something. 

So take heart, whether you're going on your daily jog, struggling through a painful marriage, battling an addiction, taking on cutting a wedding guest list in half... don't stop when everything in you tells you, you've done all you can do. Stop, when you hear Jesus saying, "I knew you could do it."

Wedding Count:
139 days- 3.5 miles