About

Short answer: It’s cheaper than therapy, and I know I’m not alone in this journey.

Now here’s the long answer: I know it’s pretty cliché, but last year I felt the stew of a mid-life crisis begin to bubble up. 43 years old, overweight, tired, and wanting; I found myself in need of a serious overhaul. 

I’ve led a privileged life - I’ve been blessed by good health, good fortune, rock solid friends and a stable loving family. The appropriate response to those blessings would be gratitude and a sense of responsibility to pay it forward. That’s part of the reason for his blog.

The problem has been that instead, I have often responded to my good fortune with carelessness and neglect. Like a spoiled brat who feels entitled to everything she possesses (and then some), I’ve often discarded, broken or lost my gifts. My shame is that I cannot claim to be a victim of loss, violence, trauma, or bad luck so much as a victim of my own bad choices. Actually, I am really more of a perpetrator than a victim. I have co-conspired with the enemy to steal and destroy God’s good gifts from myself. No more.

I don’t yet know what makes a life change stick. (If I did, Oprah and Dr. Phil would be calling me for advice.) I have resolved to lose weight, start working out, balance my checkbook, make my bed, floss daily, yadda, yadda, yadda before – many times before. December 29, 2007, the headline on my The Onion desk calendar was: I Guess Now Would Be As Good A Time As Any to Triumph Over Adversity. I have a wicked sense of humor, and I know the best stuff has a kernel of pain and truth in it. So I hung that page on my wall (where it still remains), and I resolved again and began again, at the beginning.

First up was to tend to my relationship with God so I could align myself with my place and purpose in the universe. I had to ‘fess up to my carelessness and beg for mercy. Why would He ever believe in me again? Because He is the only one who could. I may have been ready to throw in the towel on myself many times over the years, but He never did. So I committed myself to the strengthening of that relationship daily and total honesty with my maker. Clean up can get messy. So my first mantra has been: Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.

Next up was dealing with the weight. There is no magic bullet here, so I signed up for Weight Watchers and committed myself to slogging through it come hell or high-water. I’ve done it before, and I know it works. After some success, I figured I could fire up my efforts by signing up for the Charlottesville Track Club’s Women’s 4 Miler Training Program. I had done this once before, too (notice a pattern here?), and I knew this was a reasonable way for me to get in better physical condition. My next mantra: Discipline is freedom.

What I didn’t know would happen is that running would do more than just make me fitter. It has been the most profound spiritual experience since my conversion. That is what I hope to explore and expand upon here – that satisfaction and joy in life can be achieved by collaborating with God in the discovery and development of our authentic self. For me this has been accomplished through the rigors of running and weight loss, and the ability to draw lines between this experience and other areas of my life. My go-to mantra when it gets tough (and it does): Never give up, never give up, never give up!