Giving yourself grace

Today I reached almost the end of a challenge I set for myself a couple of months ago.

I finally reached week 8 of my Couch to 5K running app! It only took me eight,   ok, try closer to eleven weeks to finish. But hey, I'm just proud I stuck to it for this long! I was running with one of my sisters and a little while into the run I thought to myself "Wow, I've not run this far in forever!" I seriously felt like a champ when we got finished. And to think today at work I told myself, well Chris is gone this evening, so I can just go home, cook myself supper, watch my cooking shows and be in bed by 8. Yes, I'm an old woman on the inside and I love it. 

I'm so glad I didn't! I pushed myself to do something even when I didn't necessarily WANT to at the moment, and in the end I felt so much better. I was a cross country runner in high school and deep down I loved it. I complained just about every practice about fartleks (google it, I promise it's a real word) and eight mile saturdays. I even got the Snickers award for complaining too much hahah. I complained mostly because I was the slowest one on the team and I struggled more than just about anybody. But I loved being able to run for miles on a trail, and somewhere along the way anything I was mad or worried about by the end of the run was magically not as terrible. It was just me and my dirty running shoes, thinking and running. Free therapy and I loved it and I'm so excited that I'm almost at that point where running long distance is just second nature. 

Along the way though, I've been pretty tough on myself. I think that because I couldn't make it through the whole run without stopping that I failed somehow. I would be frustrated with myself. I'll think that I didn't have a "good run" because I didn't run as hard as I thought I should. 

I mentioned in one of my posts I think that I'm reading Grace not Perfection by Emily Ley. In one of the chapters it talks about giving yourself grace. I've honestly never thought about giving myself grace. Others, yes. But not me. According to dictionary.com grace is defined as the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God. 

It kind of hit me. While running of course. Where all my most jumbled thoughts and emotions make sense. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. I shouldn't feel so much pressure to have a perfectly clean house, work full time, dinner on the table at 5:30, workout five days a week  all while being the picture perfect, wife who always has a smile on her face and has never had a bad day, or at least one that anybody knows about. Just thinking about having to juggle all that and be 100% at it all the time is so overwhelming. Like make you crawl under the covers and try again tomorrow overwhelming. And I wonder why...because that's not real life. It's not sustainable. 

 In Grace not perfection there's a quote that I liked, "We're all juggling a lot of balls in the air. And when things get hectic, sometimes something has to give. You can drop any of those balls. But you can't drop family." I love that. There's so many things going on to distract us from the real things that matter. I would rather leave the dirty clothes hamper full and spend time with my Mom and sisters. Or finally watch that Hallmark movie with my husband. I'm trying to get into the practice of giving my self grace. Letting myself not feel bad for not being the fastest runner, or fittest wife, or most amazing cook and housekeeper. Being ok with me, right now in the moment, on the best of days and worst, with a hamper clothes that need to be folded and a sink full of dishes I just straight up don't want to wash. Give yourself grace to embrace the mess, take time to enjoy that TV show without multi tasking and folding clothes simultaneously. I'll leave you with another nugget of goodness from Emily's book, "In those moments when we give ourselves the grace to let everything else fall away, we find our most sincere happiness." 

See, I told you running was free therapy :) 

I know this post kind of went in twenty different directions, but it's just my thoughts for today! thanks for reading! 

xo