All the Reasons.

I have so many reasons not to do this.

I just had a baby. I’m nursing that baby and he thinks that bottles are evil and trying to kill him (which brings a whole set of complications that I’ll have to deal with).

I’m so tired (because again...I just had a baby).

I hate running. A lot. So much. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I hate running.

I hate being in pain. I get super whiny about it.

I lived with Michael doing this last year. So I’m not going into this with rose colored glasses thinking,
“Oh, it won’t be so bad!” It’s going to be bad. Really bad. It’s going to take FOREVER. Because I’m super slow. I know exactly how much time it took Michael to run last year. (It was all of the hours. All of them.) And it will take me approximately twice as many hours as it took him. And it’s going to hurt. A lot.

I could go on and on...

But here’s the thing. I’m still going to do it. So I figured I should document the reasons why I am doing this for those days when I really really don’t want to. (Which will be all of them).

Because for every reason why I shouldn’t do this, there’s another reason to do it.

Here’s the most important reason:

Because when God asks you to do something, even if you really don’t want to do that thing, it’s hard to say no. Don’t get me wrong; I tried to say no. I really tried. And he would have let me. It’s my choice. But in the end, I know that there’s a reason he’s asked me to do this. And I can’t become the person he’s calling me to be if I don’t follow his calling - even when it doesn’t make any sense to me. I would have much preferred that he called me to spend a few hours journaling in a coffee shop every week. But for some reason he thinks that this is a better idea…

So that’s the main reason. And I don’t know all of the reasons why he’s asked me to do this. I’m hoping he’ll show me a few along the many many (many) miles where it will just be me and him hanging out.

But here’s the one reason I know he called me to do this:

Because every day when I wake up I go through a list in my head of all the things I need to do. But you know what? Figuring out how I’m going to get water for my children has never been one of them. Never.

And when I crawl into bed at night and think through my day, I have never had to wonder if the glass of water I gave to my children that day might be the one that ends up killing them.

And I believe with all of my heart that no mother should ever have to worry about either of these things.

Here’s what I believe: There is no such thing as other people’s children.

These children that I’m raising in my house - I love them with every fiber of my being. But God doesn’t call us to only love the children in our house. He calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And that means I love these children halfway across the world just like I love my own. And if they need clean water, then I’m going to do whatever I can to get it to them. Even if it means running.

So there you have it. I’m running the 2017 Chicago Marathon on October 8th.

(^And that’s the most overwhelming sentence ever.)