Another Transition

Since I can't remember who I have told and what I have posted I'll just write from the assumption I've left you all in the dark :)

A little over a year ago my best friend made the statement 'you should be a marriage couselor.' This was after about  6 weeks of relationship advice but it also resonated deeply in me from over a decade ago. About 15 years of God giving me a burden to help marriages. Sean at this time was winding down his first year of school to become a counselor and I had become very interested in what he was learning. 

I had an ah-ha moment.

I went to God with this passion burning a hole in my pocket but felt I was supposed to wait a year. In the mean time things started changing in our recovery ministry and 7 months ago several possibities became an option for me there, facilitating groups to help finances,  marriages and infertile women.  I realized as a marriage counselor I could touch on all these! I felt very confirmed.

Then about 2 months ago, in the midst of feelings of purposelessness and depression I felt whispers about school again.

Well I wanted to sign up that minute but courses for next term were not posted until mid - June. Then they changed the requirements to enter even the part-time courses,  I need to have volunteered in a social services type setting for minimum 100 hrs. Well my recovery service was applicable but I had to quickly fit that verification in before our vacation. Then when we came back I found I had to go in person to do a name change since I hadn't been a student there since before marriage.  It took awhile to finally get down there,  then I had to wait for my application to be approved, then another day to get my verification in the mail. 

Yesterday it came! It is now official!

Wellness Wednesday

It's been awhile since I posted on how the wellness is going. A lot has happened in a month.

Vacation (and preparation for a vacation) monopolized two weeks. Getting home and starting to plan a fundraiser for our friend to help pay for cancer treatments and related expenses has monopolized the other two weeks.

Not excuses, just priorities.

I actually have a big chunk of my fundraiser to-do list done, and the remaining pieces either are waiting for other people's contribution or I can fit in here and there because they are smaller tasks. So I think I can actually schedule a run in tonight! That's how I'm going to approach running until the end of summer, one day at a time.

As for food, I had some big successes and some big indulgences.

I am the kind of person who gets really hungry during traveling, I'm not sure what it is. So I prepared and I packed granola bars, pretzels, cashews, all mostly healthy snacks. But because it's vacation, I also packed candy :) That was probably my biggest indulgence was the candy, even though it's not technically a cheat, it's not a 'baked dessert', I gave myself the mandate that I wouldn't replaced baked goods with candy, I could only eat candy the same amount as I would have last year. If I had been on a vacation trip last year I would have eaten just as much candy ;)

Starbucks, that was another pre-planned indulgence just for vacation. And that one I only allowed on the US side of the border, just to help my head get around returning to eliminating it again.





The rest of my cheats I didn't plan, I made decisions in the moment. Like a vanilla milkshake, which is technically just vanilla ice cream, so still not sure if that is even a cheat. And while not a cheat, only two burger joints the whole trip, both healthier than most, and so filling we could barely eat the fries.

Then there was the wine....Sean started me off and our hosts kept it coming :) They were on vacation too!

Then there was the Cheesecake Factory, and you can't go there without having cheesecake! I actually could only eat half of mine though!

And my only other cheat was a few (giant!) cookies from Panera through the week.

 It was actually my meals I was most impressed with though, I think I did very good considering my vacation track record. I choose pretty healthy and had good portion control at restaurants, other than previously mentioned burgers, and one moving day pizza.

We actually had mostly homemade meals thanks to our generous hosts.

 

Coming home it actually wasn't too hard to transition back to homemade meals, especially considering I planned them out to be pretty easy to make before we left. The challenge has been denying myself the cheats again. A few times at work already I've been confronted with the choice, and I've come really close to saying, 'you were cheating just 4, or 8 days ago, why not?!' But I did it, I said NO! :) It actually feels pretty good to exercise that no and be ok with it. Here's to 6 more months of doing so!

Cancer Sucks

I am fairly certain that everyone knows someone who has/had cancer. 

In 1982 was my first experience with cancer, my next door neighbor/friend's older sister, whom I only met once or twice because she was more often in the hospital in the year I knew her. Before she died. I had no idea what cancer, no idea the weight of that diagnosis. All I knew was it was a disease that made a very young girl very sick and die. 

As I grew older I knew people who knew people who had cancer, but mostly it wasn't terminal. Cancer was fairly benign in my experience.

The next time I personally encountered cancer was in 1998. It was closer to home this time, it was my grandma, who was in her 80s, and so her death 3 months after diagnosis, while sudden, was not focused on the cause. At that age it was not a surprise she would fall ill, that it was cancer didn't seem to cause any extra grief.

Over the next several years it went back to very little exposure to anyone battling cancer. The 2000's brought just a bit more. I met a childhood cancer survivor in our Church in 2002. Sean's estranged father, whom I never met and Sean hadn't seen in 20 years, died in 2005. A family friend was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006 and survived.  A woman at Church had an inspirational battle with cancer and died in 2010. 

My uncle (by marriage) who lived in BC my whole life and I didn't know that well, was stricken suddenly and painfully with cancer in 2012 and he passed away a few months later.

Over the last year or so I have known someone who has had a large influx of people in her life who have passed away from cancer, people she has felt such grief at their lives being ripped away from the world far too early. I thanked God I haven't been afflicted with such distressing loss to cancer, and wondered when the odds would catch up with me.

They just did. 

Right now we know very little. We don't know what stage it's in. We don't know if it's affected more parts of her body than the tumor that was biopsied. We don't know the treatment plan. We don't know how it will affect her imminent plans for the future.

And she has a BRIGHT future.

This young woman captured our hearts just under two years when she was barely 17. We knew immediately she was special. We very soon thought of her as our surrogate daughter. She is a star in so many ways, it's the meaning of her name and God knew what He was doing because she doesn't just shine, she radiates. People can't help but notice she's different, she has that IT factor, yet she is so humble and has a heart for God's heart, a heart for the outcast and the broken. She is mature beyond her years and I sometimes forget, she's still only 18.

And here she is, so young and faced with this weighty diagnosis. If anyone can survive cancer inspirationally it is she. But she shouldn't have to. 

And the worst part is it has hit her right in the heart of her dreams. She has been accepted at a theater school starting in September, she is a dancer, an actress, a singer, her talent and dream is to be a performer. The cancer is in her foot. She has no idea the condition her foot will be in after treatment. She doesn't know if she'll even make it to her first semester of school in 9 weeks.

While cancer has been in the realm of possible for the last 6 months, it still seems so unreal. We weren't going to live like it was real without a real diagnosis. But now it's real. And we don't know how to live with it.

I do know I was given this summer to spend a lot of quality time with her. God has been showing me that this summer I was to pour into women he had laid on my heart and I already knew, due to various circumstances, that she was one of those women. Now I know that even more so.  I don't think it is because we will lose her, I still have a strong feeling about her amazing future, but I sense God wants to do something through this season in both of us. I just wish the day after her diagnosis I wasn't leaving for vacation for 9 days.

So yeah, fyi, today sucked.

Wellness Wednesday

So even though I've seen motivational posters that say even if you just started running 'You ARE a runner', I've been reluctant to call myself one. I've started down this road before and never felt like a runner.

Today I felt like a runner.

Even without my coach (informal coach, she's one but she's my friend), today I pushed myself further than I have been able to push myself before. And I was able to go further than the goal I set for myself today. And when I was going to walk the rest of the way home I decided to run some more because it felt good. I was actually enjoying it.

Granted I walked a big chunk in the middle because I wanted the stretch next to the river to be my date with Jesus this week, so I was really slow on that stretch but I think that's just what my body needed because when I started running again after I expected to have to push through the exhaustion but instead found renewed energy! 

And today's run brought me to just shy of 5 hrs, just over 25 km, in 11 days!

So, today I feel like a runner!

And, Jesus joined the running too, he was cheering me on near the end in some very 70s running gear. He cracks me up :)

Schrödinger's Cat

TMI Warning

I'm weird.

Evidence:
1) I know about a quantum mechanics experiment named Schrödinger's cat, and if you do too it's because you are a physicist or you watch Big Bang Theory. I am the latter. The experiment essentially is a cat in a box with the potential for dying and while the box is closed, with no way of knowing the status of the cat, the cat is both alive and dead.

2) I related this experiment to my uterus this month. My last two cycles have been 37-38 days with no real PMS symptoms and yet negative pregnancy tests. So earlier this week I came to the conclusion I have Schrödinger's uterus. Not sure if life or death was waiting for me.

3) I found it hilarious the day after when I 'opened the box and the cat was dead.' Really I laughed....mostly because that result in that wording was a funny coincidence.

See, told you.

I'm weird.

Why Me?

This is not a question I ask often, or ask in my depression. No this is a question I typically spout when I am perplexed by my abundant blessings. A few years ago we did a series at Church on what justice really is and I wondered why was I born in Canada, into privilege, into a home with Christian parents?  Something triggered this question in me again just the other day.

It was the movie Saving Private Ryan. It was the part when they finally find him and tell him they are there to bring him home.

Private Ryan: [after being told he can go home] "It doesn't make any sense, sir. Why? Why do I deserve to go? Why not any of these guys? They all fought just as hard as me. "

The reason this resonated with me was because of a truth that has been coming back to me in many different ways over the last month.

God chose me. 

Now His Sovereignty is something I don't claim to fully understand. I find the more I know God the less I understand, but the closer I get to God the less I need to understand. But I do understand God chose me. Chose me before I was born, before I was conceived, before my parents were married, before my parents were born, before the beginning of the world was formed. God dreamt me up and planned for me to belong to Him again one day.

I also understand He has hardened the hearts of people. This is where I understand less and less how Sovereignty works, but I do understand that there have been times He has hardened hearts for the good results it will eventually produce.

So why was I born soft-hearted?

I'm not sure. I have no answer to Why Me?

All I know is God sent Jesus into this war here on earth, on a mission to find me, Private Lori Michelle Alcorn. To find me, to save me, tell me I get to go home with Him.

And He did it at great cost. He lost His life in this war here on earth. (*spoiler alert*) Just like Captain Miller, the soldier leading the search for Private Ryan.

As Captain Miller dies he says, "James, earn this... earn it."  And it haunts Private Ryan the rest of his life. As an old man he desperately asks his wife, 'tell me I've been a good man, that I've lived a good life.'

Thankfully, because Jesus found me, I know that is not what He said as He died. He said, "It is finished." Which is completely the opposite, it means, "Lori, you do not have to do one thing to earn this freedom."

No Pain No Gain

Well, I am breaking personal records all over the place.

First yesterday, then today...running for a second day in a row! Often the first day of running after a long gap my hip is so sore I can't barely walk for a week, and even when it's not that sore I tell myself I need to space out my runs. But I had the opportunity to run with a new friend who is a marathon trainer! She wanted a slow run because she's injured but still training to do the 26 mile/40k run next Sunday, so I benefited from the privilege of slowing her down :) Couldn't turn that down!

Not only did she get me out for a second day in a row but she is definitely in the right profession because she was an excellent coach. She knew just how to encourage me, how to challenge me, when to let me walk, when to say I could run more, when I needed the strength of Christ, how to reinforce my good habits, teach me better habits and form. And the results speak for themselves....

Better average speed, better top speed, longer distance, almost no hip pain (yesterday had quite a bit) and she helped me learn how to run in a form that would continue to strengthen my hip while not straining it so much as well. And she taught me to run through the calf strain, which I thought at first would do me in but she said muscle pain is ok to run through, so I kept going. So many improved results I can hardly believe it!

But I don't want to sugar coat it. It was hard. I walked very slowly home.

But that gave me some time to think.

About hard work.

I didn't think I was adverse to it, but I realized today I had a fear of the hard work it would take to accomplish a marathon, even a 5k, a distance I have easily walked. This was not something I was conscious of before, and so I wondered where this fear came from? Especially considering I have at least 3 people in my life who have overcome their own adversities to become a multi-marathon runner and I was witness to their accomplishment, why did I think it was beyond my reach?

As I thought about it I thought back to other things I had to work hard for.

I couldn't think of anything.

It's not that I haven't worked hard, but it's usually been to work my way out of a bad situation, not working hard for something, towards a positive goal. I have felt most of my life that life happens to me, good and bad things just seem to fall into my lap without much effort on my part. Of course when the bad situations came (once I realized they were bad) there was a lot of hard work involved to move forward in a positive direction, but I had to do it, to survive.

Running is hard work for the sole goal of thriving.

When you need to survive you have a lot of extra motivation, to move away from pain. Motivation to thrive....sorely lacking when you are moving towards pain.

And in survival it's easier to take it one day at a time, it's easier to say, 'well at least I don't do that anymore.' When you are trying to thrive I think you are a lot harder on yourself, expect more of yourself.

So there it was. I had been avoiding accomplishing this goal of running in a marathon because I was afraid of this new territory of working hard just to discipline my self. Moving towards and into pain in order to accomplish something. Seemed silly when I was perfectly happy not running.

But I felt like I had been missing out on something by avoiding the pain.

And I realized I haven't always made the choice to run from/avoid pain.

Tattoos are a simple example, I felt making my story visible was worth the pain.

And I chose to go back to trying to have children after I had essentially given up because of all the pain. After 6 years of so much heartache and frustration I chose to try again because I believed all the suffering would be worth it. And now in the 8th year I still believe strongly that the pain will be worth it.

Pain was worth it if I believed there was a big pay off in the end.

And I believe that there will be a big pay off to accomplishing this 10 k run next year. The difference is I'm pretty unclear what that pay off will be. I mean obviously there will be the physical health aspect but I have a feeling there is much, much more to this. It's just a feeling I have but it's enough to motivate me to thrive!

I have never liked the saying, but it finally has new meaning for me, no pain no gain.