Maybe, Just Maybe

Sunday morning and the rain is over for the time being and the sun is out.  There is hope even in the storms.  Yesterday, I ran for an hour and a half on muddy roads in a pouring rain.  It should have been a misery but it wasn't.  There was something of a peace from knowing I was overcoming.  No-matter-what was being faced down out there and I was winning.

And today, as I smile in satisfaction about yesterday, I think that maybe that is the way it is going to be in completing an ironman. Completing an ironman?  Haven't I heard the news?  Can't I understand that ironman is done for me.  By the time they get a handle on this virus thing, I will be so old they will have to start an antique age group for me.  Maybe I am too old already.  Maybe there won't even be any more ironman events except virtual ones, with no rain, wind, and muddy roads to overcome?  Maybe the conquest of yesterday has no bearing on the performance of tomorrow?

Just maybe.  Maybe is the hope, however slim its chances of fruition. Maybe gets me out there to hang on to that small thread that maybe, just maybe God has a plan for this; a plan for me to run in the rain on muddy roads and be thankful for it.

Fuzzy Future - Really ?

With all this quarantine stuff  my little world of doing endurance sports has a fuzzy future.  Who knows but that the old style of social interaction at these events will ever be the same.  Will it be worthwhile for what I want out of it?  This future is uncertain.  Our view ahead indistinct: a fuzzy future in my eyes but not for God.  God has got this and I have to believe that however the big world turns out; how my little world ends up, it is well.  This isn't the end of the story whatever happens; it is well with my soul.  

A  piece of  a devotion by Max Lucado speaks so well to this:

Here’s what you tell yourself: “I’m still God’s child.  My life is more than this life.  These days are a vapor, a passing breeze.  This will eventually pass.  God will make something good of this.  I will work hard, stay faithful, and trust Him no matter what.”

Choose to heed the call of God on your life.  You are God’s child.  Your life is more than this life, more than this broken heart, more than this difficult time.  God won’t break a promise. You will get through this!

MaxLucado. com 

Fear Not

There is a saying that those who fail to plan, plan to fail. But sometimes even the planned can fail, can't it?  Take the pandemic for instance. Who could have planned for that entirely.  In the poker game of life, plan all you can but you still have to play the hand that is dealt you.  How you do that determines whether you succeed or not. 

So, I can plan to play the hand I have been dealt and play it well.  O don't plan to fail, but if I do hit a snag, failure isn't final with God.  In fact, many times it is just the starting line for more than one could dream of.  

What does that mean?  It means I am going to train for a half ironman event which may or may not occur.  I will train without actually paying for the entry until there is surety, and if not, I will do a half ironman here on my place in the country.  The same will apply with doing the ironman next spring.  The only drawback would be the races filling up and I wouldn't be able to enter.  However,  under the present set of circumstances, I can't see that happening.  But it could and I have planned for that too:  if the events fill up, I can still do my event here.  

Man is never defeated until defeated in spirit.  And there are times I get down on recent events and how they cloud the future.  But my Father is with me in all this and two words scattered throughout the Bible are "Fear Not."