So my birthday just passed. I don’t start with this intending to solicit belated birthday wishes or gifts (though both are welcome 🤣), I say this because when my birthday approaches I find myself taking stock of my years lived, like I assume a lot of people do. Unlike some women though, I don’t care who knows my age, each day I have lived has added value & experience, carefully crafting me into the person God made me to be. Ten days before Christmas this year I turned 37. Before I go forward though, let’s go back…
Month: December 2020
Consistency a 2020 Intention
GalleryAs I started this year, God had laid a single word on my heart. Consistency. I had closed 2019 leaving behind a long, painful season of living, growing, fighting & surviving; feeling for the first time fully aware of how very little I prioritized my Self-Care & wellbeing. With a new philosophy about scrapping New Year’s Resolutions and instead replacing them with a single word New Year Intention, I headed in to the New Year with my focus fully on this word.
Through the prayer journey I took to recieve this word as my 2020 Intention, I was focused on that word in one specific area of life, my fitness. In 2019 God had begun a fitness mission/journey in my life to help me get healthy & active again. I was excited and well meaning but by spring of 2019 I was losing consistency in that journey. As I lost consistency, I also noticed I lost some of my positive progress, more than I had even realized. I had fallen back into my typical life patterns of putting myself & my needs on the back burner of life completely by fall, and by the end of the year, I was desperately trying to hide how desperate I was again.
See, for the first 30 years of my life I was sorry, always, & I put myself last. I did this, not even knowing it was happening, simply trying to be kind, gracious, polite, concerned for the comfort & happiness of those around me. I tried not to be an overreacting or easily offended person. Never wanting to be someone accused of exaggerating or offending others. In general, my overthinking nature was ALWAYS processing life through a filter of everyone else first. Though trying to constantly please, I was not always agreeable, and when set off, I’ve always been a firecracker, but I hated the drastic shifts in my mood, that increased. The older I got the harder it became to be a healthy me, while putting everyone else’s needs & comfort first.
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6 years ago I stopped doing this, not entirely, not all at once, and NOT always graciously, but I was entering a season of literal survival. One where I had to literally beg daily for the desire to still live, where I had zero value in my own eyes. One where I was alone entirely, but still in a busy world of people always around me. Without God teaching me my deeds & concern for others didn’t fill my most basic survival needs, and NOBODY else was worrying about me as much as I worried about others, I would have quit. He wanted me to be better in this season. I didn’t know how to be. It was hard, 6 years of hard, 6 years of pain, and I played a lot of tug of war with Him during this process.
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It was this time last year I heard Him tell me to listen to HIM & stop playing tug of war with Him in this….so I threw my hands in the air and surrendered. I thought, it couldn’t get worse right? I thought, I’m already as lonely & desperate & invisible & exhausted as one could get, what was there to lose? So enter 2020….
I started the year focused on the role consistency needed to play in my fitness journey. I told just a very few of the closest people in my life, then I set out on my plan to CONSISTENTLY workout, every single day, for the entire year. All 366 days of this leap year. I committed to the Intention to choose myself & my health & well being for at least 10 minutes everyday. I headed to the gym every single day this year, and I watched myself grow.
Grow in strength.
Grow in confidence.
Grow in peace.
Grow more comfortable in my own skin & my own body.
Grow calmer in my heart.
Grow more courageous in this journey.
I went to the gym for the first 75 days of this year and worked on myself consistently, until the country shut down and gyms closed in the middle of March, then I panicked.
I didn’t meltdown completely. I didn’t quit, but I sure panicked. In my panic, I cried out to Him, confused & scared. Not sure how I had heard Him correctly If these were my circumstances, or if I had misinterpreted His will for my direction in 2020. Then He calmed my spirit, and I regained my focus. God intended me to live in 2020 with the INTENTION to CONSISTENTLY show up for myself & my fitness. I put the gym requirement in the fine print. I found ways to overcomplicate His plan inside my head. With my heart focused on His plan again, I recommitted. Then I got creative.
I found ways to sub in workouts from home. I began so settle for 10-15 minutes of intense physical activity like I had initially set out to do, instead of the 30-90 minute workouts I had grown used to. And by day 97, April 6th, I decided I need to get out & start incorporating some running into the mix. My kids were all 4 “trauma schooling” from home to finish out their preschool, 4th grade, 6th grade & Sr. Years. Nothing felt normal, but I was surviving because I was still choosing me. I went out for that first run not sure how it would go. I ran around our block twice, about 3/4 of a mile roughly, and I mostly jogged, with intermittent spurts of walking to catch my breath. I had an internal dialogue going on with God the entire time. I thought I may have a heart attack, but I didn’t.
Fast forward a month and my kids were finishing up school. My oldest was graduating in the weirdest version of a shot gun commencement I could ever dream up, on the day my baby turned five, and I was emotional, and anxious, but I was surviving. I was surviving & actually thriving, and all because I was choosing me for at least 10 minutes a day. Time after time though, 10 turned into 15 or more again. By day 162 I had managed my first mile without stopping.
My workouts became very largely running based most of the week for awhile, and by the middle of summer I looked forward to putting on my running shoes and sneaking out for at least a mile everyday. I even left at 10:00 on the night of my daughters socially distanced grad party to get my run in. Less than two weeks later after delivering her to her dorm and saying goodbye for my first full season away from her, the first week of August, I put on my running shoes and headed out for another mile. Somewhere along that road, it turned into an endurance test, and God carried me through my first 5K. I was beaming with pride in the accomplishments.
As it got chilly and wet and snowy, my runs cut back and I was getting creative for inside workouts more often than not, but I was still looking for opportunities to run. The Monday before Christmas, I ran my 5th 5K this year. Before this year I wouldn’t have even thought of attempting it, I only ever thought about how nice it would be, someday, maybe, to start trying. I always wanted to be able to, and I always admired the women I knew who did. I aspired to someday be brave enough to try with a few of those women, one specifically who I lost the chance to ever try with after she passed away of cancer far too soon. Her passing was the inspiration for my first real interest in trying to get fit again in the first place. This year, however, I didn’t just think about maybe starting to try someday. This year I started, and I kept trying, until I did it. Then I did it 4 more times just because I knew I could. I did it, for her, for me, and for God, and I know we were all proud of me.
See somewhere at the very beginning of this journey, I realized that I met God in that time. Every single time. Before gyms closed, as soon as I hit the mat to begin stretching, I was in His presence. Once gyms closed, He met me wherever I took my workouts, because in His presence was the only place I could be to get through this journey. Especially in the beginning. Literally praying for the strength to do basics. Praying for the power to push myself. Praying for myself, over and over, for probably the first time in my conscious mind. I was choosing time for me, & in doing so I was choosing time for Him, and He gave me everything I needed to keep showing up. For 366 days! I will have my official weigh in this afternoon when my husband gets home from work. I with get my new measurements and I will be posting the official results via my social media, but the real results can’t be measured with a measuring tape or a scale. The real results are way more than that.
Along this journey I learned so many things. So many more than my Intention word was ever “supposed” to teach me.
I learned there was a whole lot still to lose. In 2020 He taught me how to take my life back, and put myself as the priority that He wanted me, to learn to be. I learned there was guilt to lose. I learned there was shame & regret to lose. I learned there was a whole lotta fear to lose. I learned there were also a lot of “friends” & family to lose, unhealthy relationships. I lost a little more weight on the scale too (though most of my excess pounds were shed at the start of 2019) and I lost inches, but the heaviest weight I lost, wasn’t from the things the scale could measure.
I also learned that if I trusted God in losing all of that….. I would not lose ME to myself. Instead, He saw to it that I grew and I shrank at the exact same time. I gained so much as this year did it’s best to throw me off and knock me down. I gained confidence, and lost pant sizes. I gained the ability to celebrate me, and lost my overwhelming need to criticize myself all the time. I gained a new hobby and I lost my fear of the gym. I gained peace and I lost pain. I gained muscle and I lost my will to quit. For me 2020 was a positive & life changing year. Hard as Hell, scary as shit, and fully overwhelming, but positive without a doubt!
Now, I share all this to encourage you to consider the New Years Intention approach. There’s a blog over at www.thedazzlingdistrict.com (if you aren’t already tired of reading lol) that further explains how I decided to give this new philosophy a try. I also share this to encourage you to choose you, even if for just 10 dedicated and focused minutes a day, doing something that challenges you but still brings you peace and joy. It doesn’t have to be fitness related. For my journey specifically, it was a neccessary piece of the process, but for you it may be something else. Your journey is yours, and it’s important, and it’s necessary. You ARE important, and you are necessary. We must value our selves enough to keep choosing ourselves & keep challenging ourselves to be healthier, more joy-filled versions of ourselves, everyday. When we do this, we allow ourselves to have more energy, joy & love to share.
I hope this finds you inspired by now, and I truly hope you have a safe, healthy & Happy New Year!
Stay Dazzling & as always, thanks for reading! ~Rebecca