Not Good Enough

"All I wanted to do was run up there and rescue him." 17 years ago those were the words someone said to me right after my wedding ceremony. No hugs, no congratulations, no I'm so happy for you both. Only words spoken with such a clear message that I was not, and would not ever be "good enough". I remember standing in the back of the Church being so incredibly happy, yet having been told that, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of my sails just a tiny bit.

I have learned something over these past 17 years, that person was right. I am not good enough~and no matter how much I try to be the most amazing wife I will fail 100% in some way every single day. But something else I have learned is marriage isn't about being perfect, marriage is about being vulnerable, and honest and transparent and ugly. Marriage is about figuring out how to be less of me, more of him. Marriage is about leaping out of an airplane with a parachute on and trusting your partner to know when to pull the cord to open up that chute!

Marriage is hard. Marriage is messy. Marriage is imperfection, quite possibly at its best.

However, marriage is also about the most incredible love I have ever known next to God's love. It about laughter, and incredible joy. It's warm hugs on cold days. It is jumping into the deep end of the pool and treading in the water together. It's figuring out who we are over the years and what matters.

It's faith, in a God that is so much greater then we will ever comprehend or understand. Yet, we choose to trust our entire lives to Him. It's grace given to one another, just as it has been given to us. It's the very picture of forgiveness poured out from our Savior, dying on that cross for us.

It is truly the best thing that has ever, ever happened to me. I am so thankful that I am loved within my imperfections. I would give nothing back, trade nothing, wish for different. I am beyond grateful for my best friend, my soul mate, my partner in this messy thing we call life.

I will love him always~thank you for making the last 17 years forever beautiful.

Graduation Day

I have been in physical therapy since mid November and tonight I "graduated" (mostly because my prescription ran out).  I exceeded my therapists expectations. When I started upon assessment I had absolutely ZERO core muscles and I couldn't even do a sit and reach sit-up. Tonight upon assessment {and after a million crunches} I can do a full sit-up with my hands behind my head. I can also do full side planks {I could only do them with my knees bent before}. I can hold a front plank for over 60 seconds {only could do it for 10 seconds when I started}. The BIGGEST gain though is that I actually have been able to run, not fast, but I ran 1.5 miles without debilitating hip pain.

So, now it's up to me as I have no one to be accountable to, except myself. I need to keep doing my core strength building and my resistance bands for my hip strengthening, pretty much indefinitely.   It is a true struggle to actually make the time for myself and my exercises, my personal self is ALWAYS at the bottom of the list of my million daily tasks to get done, and my princess 13 month old who takes up any and all "extra" of me. By the time I have, more like if I have 30-60 minutes I'm so exhausted I can hardly walk down the stairs to work out!

It's amazing the things you take for granted in life, like exercising without being in constant pain. Or even just being able to exercise in general....my will to do it is there~it's my ability that's lacking!! I can sit around and blame my shallow hip sockets, or my dislocated hips at birth, or the fact that how they corrected them as told by my orthopedic Doctor has been proven not to work {nice to know that NOW}. Or, I can do what he told me to do~get those muscles, ligaments, tendons strengthened to hold my hip joint in the socket so I can run~~and hopefully prevent a hip replacement surgery for many, many years. It's nice to hear an orthopedic Doctor tell you that running has been very good for you and that we were created to run.

I HAVE to do this now, for me.........WHY is it so hard to get this through my head??