Lessons taught by our kids

One of the hardest things for a runner is to not run.  Most runners feel the need to always be up and moving.  Apparently I've always been wired this way as well...my parents tell me I was a terribly fussy baby.  I supposedly cried all the time unless someone held me.  My mother says once I began crawling, my constant crying finally stopped.  I guess I just need to be on the move!

This fall I had started training for a marathon I was hoping to run in January. In early October, I started feeling some pain in my lower back. The pain persisted for a couple weeks, so  I started taking ibuprofen and cut down my mileage.  That that didn't help, so I finally stopped running altogether and decided to see my doctor. After 4 weeks on a prescription painkiller, followed by 4 weeks of physical therapy, the pain was almost nonexistent.

During this time, I had signed up for two events that I could not run.  The first was a Thanksgiving Day 5k, which I walked.  It was torture to walk the entire race while watching everyone else run by me!  The other event was the Tough Mudder, which I was really disappointed to miss.  I'd signed up to be a team member with some friends from The Sanctum Gym, and I felt really bad because I couldn't make the trip with them.

On Dec 22 the PT finally released me to begin exercising again!  I decided to go for my first run on Christmas morning.  On Christmas Eve night I bent over to put Emry in her car seat, and shooting pain ripped right through my lower back.  Two more times that night, I felt a shooting pain in my back that brought me to my knees.  After spending almost 3 months rehabbing, I was back at square one.  I woke up on Christmas morning stiff as a board(my back was stiff...get your minds out of the gutter!)  I was no better off than I was in early October. 

It sounds like I'm complaining right now, but let me clarify that I'm not writing this to be a sob story or to feel sorry for myself.  Its certainly been a frustrating experience, but I am very aware that God has blessed me with great health my whole life.  Earlier I said it was torture to walk the Turkey Day 5k...often times we exaggerate to make a point.  It wasn't really torture, it was just not what I wanted to do.

Before having a child, I would have absolutely been angry, upset and impatient with the injury.  I would have shouted to the heavens and asked "Why me!?"  But having children forces us to look beyond ourselves to the needs of others.  We instinctively put off some of our selfish wants and desires to put our children's needs first.  Things that were so urgent and important before now seem minuscule in the grand scheme of things.  The point I'm trying to reach is that having children give us a raw perspective on what's important in life. 

Emry has also taught me that some things just take time.  Having watched her struggle for so long to accomplish such basic tasks as rolling, crawling and walking, I found a level of patience within myself I didn't know existed.  Just witnessing the amount of effort and time it took Emry to accomplish one simple thing was an inspiration.  Another example of her determination was when she learned to eat with a fork.  She'd get her face about 1 inch away from her plate and concentrate so hard to make the fork stab into her green bean.  It would sometimes take her 10 tries to get the food to stay on the fork.  Most of us would starve if we had to work that hard to eat just one green bean!

In our current world of internet, mobile devices, diet pills, cosmetic surgery and 90-day workouts that promise a ripped body, we all want instant results.  But our kids are the ones who really know that some things take just time to unfold.

***To update you, my back has started to feel better and I'm slowly easing back into running.  I'm trying to put a positive spin on the situation.  Since I'll be running very short distances, I'm taking the opportunity to try barefoot/minimalist running again!  My feet and my fitness level are both starting from scratch, so I won't be tempted to do too much too soon this time around!  I'll let you know how it goes!