Goodness and Fulfillment

When I am asked about my job, I always mention that it can be really difficult and crazy, but at least one thing happens every day that makes me laugh. That still holds true, but today I had a very special moment with a student who has never really opened up to me, and I don't think she realized how much it meant to me. In my time working with high school girls, I have found that initiating a difficult conversation can be much easier when riding in the car rather than sitting across from each other face-to-face. Today was one of those times.

I was bringing her back to the residence hall, and she asked me where I am from. I told her I'm from Georgia. Then, she asked, "Do you ever get homesick?" Thinking it was a fairly innocuous question, I gave a simple answer.

When I initially moved to Louisiana, my dad was a cancer patient, and I shared with the student some of the difficulties I faced being away during much of his treatment and most of his final days. My senior year in college, I ordered the book "What Cancer Cannot Do" which is a Christian book with short essays written by cancer patients and survivors. More than once in college, I read the book from cover to cover and cried. Today, I returned to the book in search of something comforting to say to someone who was hurting in a way that I had a few years ago.

I was stopped in my tracks and knew I needed to share a passage from one of the essays. The author writes of returning to work following her treatment and describes the joys of the sense of normalcy and focus that her job provided. She finishes by writing,

After the Fall, work became "painful toll." As a result work doesn't always feel like Paradise to us. Sometimes it feels like an avalanche of unfinished projects, a tightrope of interpersonal conflict, a murky cloud of expectations. But if it's truly the work that God has called us to do, then he will help us do it. And we will find goodness and fulfillment in it.

I love that the author chooses "avalanche" as one of her descriptors, because I have certainly had that feeling over the past few days. I have never experienced an avalanche myself, but I found myself visualizing all of the stress and emotion gaining on me as I attempted to run down a snowy mountain...and that was how I was feeling.

I am so thankful for this young woman who took the time to open up to me and share her struggles so I was led to find encouragement in my own life. Not everyone has the chance to work so closely with others or make a difference in others' lives quite like my job allows. Yes, it's challenging, but there is certainly goodness and fulfillment to be found in it. I expect that I will continue to find fulfillment as I work with my students in the coming months.

New Year, New Run: Preparations for Au Marathon Louisiane

Happy New Year!  I suspect that anyone who reads blogs regularly is tired of reading New Years posts, and I am ten days late to the game. I'll just jump straight into what I'm doing at this point in the year: next weekend, I am taking back the marathon distance.

Rendevous Baton Rouge will take place from January 16-18, 2015, with a 5K and quarter marathon on January 17 and a half and full marathon on January 18. For the extra crazy people, there's the Déjà Vu Award. What is the Déjà Vu Award, you ask? Well, here's what the race organizers have to say about it:

The phrase déjà vu is a French term that literally means “already seen.” The phenomenon of déjà vu is to have the sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has been experienced in the past, when in fact it hasn’t. 

For this reason, we have created the Déjà Vu Award for those runners who see the finish line two days in a row.

Winners of the Déjà Vu Award receive a special Marathon de Louisiane Crawfish Plate, which I was all about when I signed up for the quarter and full marathons back in July 2014. I figured I would stay in my version of marathon shape for several straight months, so two races in one weekend was no big deal. Plus, I could eat so. much. crawfish. on that swanky plate.

Although I was super motivated to train hard, run fast, and not skip workouts after the Marine Corps Marathon, everything fell apart in December. I quit training, then I got sick and didn't want to train, then it was Christmas Break. I resumed running right after Christmas and even did a 10K last weekend, but I will definitely be going into the Louisiana Marathon much differently than I did the Marine Corps Marathon. My goal for the race is to finish and feel good when I do. In addition to focusing on carb loading this week, I am going to get myself pumped up with positive self talk so I don't go into the race freaked out and questioning myself like I did with the Marine Corps Marathon.

Fortunately for me, this is a much smaller race, and I don't think they even have buses. I looked at the course map, and there are 22 opportunities for water stations. I think I am going to break the race down into water stops as I go. Several members of the Red Felt Running Club will be running on Sunday, and I am excited to share the course with many of them. We are also going meet up for dinner on Saturday, which is a welcome outing for me since RWD won't be with me, and I was going to eat by myself or overpay for the race's Pastalaya Dinner.

Here's to proving myself to myself!