Trying to Give Up Who You Are

 

Stress shouldn’t be a factor, but it is.  I’m  living a quiet, comfortable life of retirement from work and now from endurance sports…  I should be less stressed, but I’m not. Little things perturb me.  People easily disappointment me.  I feel tension in my body that I cannot put away.  Tension has no reason to be there.  It is like I am frustrated from a hunger that haunts me like a ghost.

After months now of countless doctor visits, and procedures, and operations on my loved ones, I feel all doctored out.  It a push-pull thing.  While I feel so blessed to be able to be there for my loved ones; while it is a blessing to be of good health to do all this, I know a lot of my health is due to my former lifestyle in endurance sports. 

About the time I feel good about helping others, that selfish side of me raises its head to say, “What about me? Do I get any perks here in this life or do I have to be patient and wait for the next?”  I know what to do for others, but what do I do for me, to keep me viable?  What is wrong with me?

It’s evident to me that I am not taking retirement from endurance sports that well.  So far, it’s changed me not for the better but toward the bitter. This skin doesn’t fit me that well at all.  With no more war to fight I fear I might get sick if I can’t come out of this dead zone, I seem to be in.

Maybe if I keep on with resignation and retirement, I will eventually adjust and adapt, much like training adapts one to endurance sports.  Maybe I will eventually not feel my chains at all and be at peace with a normal life.  Somehow, I doubt all that because,  praise God, I have tasted it.  I got through all that and I will get through this, thanks be to God.  And no matter how hulled out, beat up, disabled, old and useless and pathetically normal I get, I will always look back on who I was, smile, and be my own hero.

Give It Up; Move On?

 

My triathlon life seems to be gone yet I can't quit mourning the loss.  I see pictures of triathletes and read about events and such and still feel a part.  I still feel connected like I still can and I could but.  

I wish God would give me a firm answer to  my prayers about this.  I seem to get more "give it up and move on" feed back than anything but I am just not sure.  Maybe I just having trouble accepting that.  However, every day there is a situation which  provokes the "give it up for real, and move on" feeling.  

Scary too is the "who  will  I be" question.  It seems a sort  of cowardice I can't accept of myself well, to just fall out of the sky and drift to earth.  I know God put this passion for personal challenge and adventure within me.  Does He want me to give that up?  I can't believe He does.  Maybe that is what I want to believe so I can keep  on trying?

Others have harder problems, I know.  In the larger scheme of things my piddling questions about whether or not to give up a sport, are way down there on the food chain of importance.   

But endurance sports is such an integral  part of my faith life.  I prary a lot out there.  I pray for those in much greater need than I.   Sometimes when my prayer list of the suffering is long,  I  pray for each  person, from one road sign or bridge abatement, then pray for another on a similar stretch of road.  There has never been a shortage of people to pray for.  There is so much need in this world and here I am whining because I can't do triathlons anymore...Or, maybe I can. 

It Hurts

 Embracing pain and the feeling is let  go.  Let the pain control you and your life.  It's Ok.  Everyone has to do that at one time or the other.  Sooner or later it happens.  In life sometimes,  every step a sharp, painful reminder that it  is just your turn to hurt and you are done for anything remotely approaching the activity level of your former life.  It's all over for you.  Time to just find a place to sit down and relieve the pain.  Can I do that?    

I  could have a knee replacement, I guess.  But with a knee replacement I wouldn't be able to run anymore.   I am not really running anymore anyway.  How can I call myself doing anything now remotely approaching what one would call running?

Running used to be my go-to sport.  The easy gait for miles and miles was a wonderful experience.  Now running is quite a painful experience; a regular painfest, sort of a test to see how much pain you can take for how long.  Running is a dreaded pursuit.  It hurts. 

But it hurts to give up on this old friend even though this old friend seems to have turned against me and our relationship isn't the best right now. I want so bad to hold on to running, but it hurts. 

And this has been prayed over many times and all I hear is the wind and all I know is that it hurts.  So maybe that is my answer; not great words or  parting of the sea or anything like that.  Maybe my  answer is that nagging, stabbing pain which may be saying move on.  If that is answer from God, that will hurt too.

And, then again, the unanswered prayer may mean:  suck it up, take another step, do it.  I know...it hurts.