Hello!
It’s so good to be back here. You probably didn’t notice, but I’ve been gone for 2 weeks, on a 3,000 mile road trip to visit family for Thanksgiving. I’ve had a guest post and reposts and what not, but I’ve been mostly unplugged for two weeks straight.
It feels good to sit down here, now, and say, Hello!
One of my favorite parts about family trips is that I get to read. I always take with me the really delicious books like fiction, memoirs, or just highly recommended reads that I know I’ll want to crawl right into and lose myself in the pages. I can’t let myself read these during “normal” life or no one would get fed. So I wait for trips, and then … devour.
My two favorite reads from this trip were The Spark and The Homeschool Experiment. I’ll review each of these later, but one small reflection I made, as I finished the final pages, was that both of the moms represented in these books were similar to me, but oh so different too. Often I felt like I was reading about myself. But then there were other parts where we differ vastly. In some ways, their lives made mine look SO EASY. Oh my. My life looks like a walk in the park compared! In other ways, I have some life circumstances that make a lot more challenging, or at least different, for me.
So what struck me about these two great books written by two great moms, was just this: We’re each running our own race. I don’t have to run their race and they don’t have to run mine.
On Thanksgiving morning, Jeff ran a Turkey Trot race.The race has a 5k option and 10k option and both run at the same time, together. More than 4,000 people ran this race, so the place was swamped.
Now, Jeff is fast. He ran the 10k race, and he began 10 minutes after everyone because it was so crowded. Because of that, and because of running the farther distance, he came across the finish line at the same time as … well, people who are running a whole different kind of race altogether, let’s just say that. So my hard-core husband comes sprinting across the finish line next to … look to the left. Do you see her?
That’s a tutu. And a turkey hat. Yes, dear Turkey Hat Girl is directly to his right, finishing her own little merry race, grinning ear to ear, as Jeff is striding it out for his Personal Record.
And there they are … crossing the finish line together.
Because isn’t that it? She doesn’t have to win Jeff’s race. She’s winning her own. Jeff’s 10k PR is completely irrelevant to her own happy adventure.
And there they are, side-by-side at the finish line. Sure, he ran farther, faster, but there they are, both champions because they both got out there and ran their own race the best they could.
I’m not Kristine Barnett or Charity Hawkins or you. You are not me. But what a joy it is to run together, amen?
I’ll do my race, you do yours, and we might just cross the finish line together.
{Happy race-running! Thanks for reading.}