The Sun's Up, A New Day's Begun

Last week I was driving to work, a little later than normal, when I noticed (amongst the *awful* metroplex traffic and construction) that the sun was just about to rise over the horizon. 

When I went to bed the night before, I fell asleep to the sound of rain pounding on my window. The earlier part of the week had been very ho-hum and ordinary, nothing special.  And now here I was looking through my window at very crisp skies with a few lingering clouds at the sun coming up over the horizon. 

Everyone seems to be in a hurry in the city. Rush here. Rush there. No one is ever going fast enough. I am never going fast enough (trust me, I still hear your car horn even if I don't speed up to your pace).  I wondered in that moment how many other people saw the sun rise. How many people took 5 seconds of their morning commute to appreciate it's greatness. 

It got me thinking... sometimes God puts these excruciating (at the time, to us) trials in our lives. We gripe and complain about them (guilty), we try to rush through them (guilty again), we pray that they go away and stay away (yep still guilty). But then once they're over, we rush back to life as we knew it before the trial. Maybe things are a little clearer. Maybe things have changed ever so slightly. Maybe our whole world has crumbled and fell, leaving us with nothing. But no matter what happens, we get back to a new "normal" or the old "normal" and we forget sometimes to stop and look at the sun.

I think of people who have been in the most unfortunate of natural circumstances (fires, earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, etc) {Ok maybe I think about it WAY more than I should.} No matter how long the crisis lasts, no matter how long it's dark and cloudy, the sun ALWAYS comes up again. It may be days, it may be minutes, but it ALWAYS comes up.

So, seeing that sunrise last week on my way to work, sparked a new sense of hope in my life.  I feel like I've been under a big dark, scary cloud for a long time now, and in that moment (Thank You God for that moment) I finally saw the sun! The sun rise is a very hopeful thing, don't take it for granted. 

(This was clearly not the sunrise I saw but I could wake up to this everyday.)

INSPIRATION? UMMM.... NO.

Well helloooo there! New Year's resolution #9862- Start a blog... AGAIN

So I joined this health and fitness challenge group on Facebook to kick the year off right, and one of the first things that I was "challenged" to do, was name my fitness inspiration.  INSPIRATION? Huh? No. No no one popped into my head so I did what any other natural born introvert does and I waited for someone else to answer first.  People started posting like crazy! Most of them naming infomercial fitness personalities or stars of their favorite weight loss shows.  Some mentioned people they knew personally who had lost tons of weight by blinking three times and standing on their heads naked. But seriously... the majority of the people in this group were inspired by people who had lost a lot of weight (50-100 pounds) in  relatively short amount of time (1-2 years) by making a few changes to their habits (drinking more water, exercising more, etc). Blah, blah, blah....

I recently had an acquaintance of mine lose a lot of weight (100 pounds or something like that).  It took them roughly 2 years and all they did was drink more water and start running, or so they made it seem.  This person will tell you that it was a struggle and it didn't happen overnight, and they had "hard days." Losing weight isn't easy. DUH! But this person will also tell you they LOVE working out and running is "so much fun!" And if they can do it, you can too! Blah, blah, blah...

Kudos to them, but I'm sorry that is not inspirational to me AT ALL!!! In fact, it kind of infuriates me. Show me someone who has *genuinely* struggled to lose 30 pounds. Like it has taken them more than 3 years to lose 30 pounds while they worked their butt off and ate perfectly. Someone who has done everything in their power to change everything about themselves in order to be a better person despite setbacks and not losing anything for long periods of time (not a month-long plateau). Someone who has risen above all of lives challenges and lost the weight anyway. THAT will inspire me! 

I finally commented on the challenge group and said "I honestly have not met or heard of anyone who has struggled the way I have (with the results I've gotten). I am my own inspiration." One day (soon) I'll post my story on here, but until then I'm just going to keep on keeping on, and keep on looking for that inspiration.