So, I just ran the Illinois Marathon. It was a blast. The first one in Champaign-Urbana. It was such a great race. It was well organized, fun, good route. And because I'm from Urbana, I knew tons of people who were cheering on all the runners. I ran with my best friend, Chelsea...thank God for her or I wouldn't have made it through so many of those training runs! :) But,...two days after the marathon my knee started killing me. I could barely even walk for the first couple days. So needless to say I have not been running for almost the last three weeks. I have had x-rays and an mri, and will finally find out on Wednesday what is wrong. Possibly a torn meniscus or it might be i.t. band syndrome. One requires surgery, the other just a lot of therapy. Either way I'm going to be out for quite awhile still. It is so weird going from running all the time to not running at all! All you runners out there definitely know what I mean. Anyways that has been pretty frusturating lately, and I have definitely learned some patience.
Me and Chelsea after the marathon.
Romans 12:9-21 talks about love. It talks about how love should look and what it means to love. 12:12 says, "love is patient in affliction." I was like wow, I need to be patient right now. Although I am hurt, trying to rush the process with just make things worse. Not only did this verse leap out at me, the entire passage had a good message. To highlight a few things, love must be sincere, hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Honor one another ABOVE oursevles. Be joyful in hope, faithful in PRAYER. Here is a hard part: BLESS those you persecute you. It is so hard to love those who are mean or talk bad about you.
Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. This part stuck out to me also. My friend Tara, who I have known for about 2 years now, has a brother who got in a motorcylce accident about a month ago and has been in acoma since. Her family has gone through a lot of ups and downs during the process, and they have made a website that updates everyone one her brother, Ben's, progress. Here is the link: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/benjaminmiller. There are days when I am reading and praying about Ben, and I am just like God, WHY? would this happen, but then I have to realize that God is in control and we must rejoice even in the hard times.
This is Tara and her family. Her mom, Becky, dad, Tom, and Ben.
Another thing I am rejoicing/mourning about are my grandparents. My granpa was diagnosed with cancer about 2 years ago and has been on a rollercoaster through that. He has good periods and bad periods. Right now he has been going through a hard spell, and my grandma and him decided to go on sort of "one last trip." They stopped at my uncle's in Iowa last week, and my grandma, who has been caring for my grandpa very deligently through all of this, fell down the stairs. She got pretty banged up and has been in the hospital since it happened on Saturday. She broke some vertabre, a bone in her shoulder, cracker her head open, and had a concusion. She still has a terrible headache, and is not getting better at a very fast rate. This has caused a lot of stress on her I'm sure, especially with my grandpa the way he is. Each day is a new day, and one step forward at a time is about the rate everything is going right now. Sometimes it is like GOD, WHAT THE HECK!? and sometimes its like THANKS GOD! Its hard to be like God, whatever you want. But, this is what I have to remind myself of each and everyday.
So the rest of the passage just talks about not being conceited and loving everyone. And how as much as we can we should live at peace with everyone. God will take care of everything. 21 says, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome with good." This isn't just evil like I'm gunna kill somebody evil, this is like gossip evil and making fun evil also. It's like you better turn the other check (Matthew 5:39), and give God the glory.
No comments:
Post a Comment