well, after much anticipation here it is: the second post.

i'm not really sure what to even write here -- i mean my sister addie (www.addieroyce.blogspot.com) has her year of new things to document. other people write about their children, of which i have none. then again, i do teach 7th, 11th, and 12th graders all day -- quite the exciting experience. but i'm not sure i want to relive every teaching day via the internet...i guess this will just be what's on my mind.

after running a half marathon this fall (yes, that's 13.1 miles) i found that i started to become slightly apathetic towards running. now it wasn't that i didn't love running, because the process of training really made me fall in love with it, it was more that i had done a half marathon and so what was going to be the big deal if i missed a five mile run? that's so easy, right? well as i was running this week i found that i may have gotten a little too big for my britches. melissa and i ran on monday and it was tough -- but it was only five miles right? what happened? i had become complacent in the what was. and i realized that i had fallen into the same rut in other things in my life. let me explain more.

while we were out in california for the race we had a conversation with our trainer, melissa's brother, jer. he had us compare our running with our relationship with God. it made me think about how when i run just occasionally i don't see life changes result from it and i don't really stay motivated to keep doing it. i find the same thing with my relationship with God. if i spend time with God just occasionally and don't really put effort into it i don't see it change my life. but if i train, if i make it a discipline, then i see change, i see fruit, i want to keep doing it. when we ran the half marathon in october i was seeing fruit coming from my discipline of training for the race as well as my time with God. and then we came home...

i began thinking, "well i can run tomorrow, i ran a half marathon, i'll be fine" and then i would find myself thinking, "i can spend time with God tomorrow -- things are going fine these days." i found myself slowly going back to a life of complacency and then (praise the Lord) my pastor had a rockin sermon on sunday.

he talked about not living in the "what was" whether that be good or bad. don't dwell on the difficulties and therefore always be down because of what had happened. and in the same respects, don't dwell on how awesome things once were. i realized i was dwelling on how things were when i ran that half marathon. i was running well, i was spending time with God on a daily basis and things in life were going well. but i can't life off the fact that in october 2008 things went well, i have to make that decision every day. and so even though the run on monday was more difficult than i thought and my time with God has not seemed as fruitful as it was a month ago, i am determined to not live in the past but instead, each day and with every step, move forward, no, run forward, seeking God with every bound.