This past week has been an intense and stressful week with transitions, changes and many demands all around. I reflected on the metaphor between running and life, and felt overwhelming gratitude that I am an endurance runner. The power of endurance has served me well this past week.
As an endurance runner, I know that I always have a little more in the tank than I think I do. I can always push myself knowing that there are less strenuous miles ahead. Next week with the Fourth of July holiday and a strenuous transition behind me, it is going to be a much easier week. I'm looking forward to sharing a cup of tea with a dear friend, going for a chiropractic adjustment to counter the stress I have been experiencing and my dear friend and healer, Dr. Ryan J. Means is going to be in Boston on leave from his job in China.
It would be easy to wish away the "stressful" miles and just get to next week but the tough miles in life or on the roads are the miles where our mettle is tested; the time when my strength, my fortitude and my very soul are refined like the gold in the crucible.
As Jacqueline Hansen wrote in the Foreword of my book, "Going the Distance: The Power of Endurance":
Eleanor Roosevelt once said “Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”
I have found this to be true throughout my life. I have also found that I am attracted to strong women friends, who are strong willed, strong minded, with lots of endurance. At least once a day I must tell myself, “thank goodness I’m a marathoner.” I am guessing that Mary McManus tells herself the same thing. She is certainly someone who has left indelible footprints in my heart. I have rarely met anyone with so many life-threatening challenges who portrays such an onward thinking attitude.
In fact, another Eleanor Roosevelt quotation reminds me of Mary: “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Tomorrow is Friday! These past 10 days or so have been a marathon in my life in their own right. With my favorite runner quotes, and my power of endurance, I see the finish line and easier miles on the horizon. I am so grateful for all the lessons and blessings of the challenges of these past 10 days and look forward to moving forward!
Go the distance with strength and courage!
~Mary
Be sure to visit my website by following this link.
My books are available on Amazon.
Feel the Heal: An Anthology of Poems to Heal Your Life
Coming Home: A Memoir of Healing Hope and Possibility that chronicles the first 7 years of my healing journey:
And my latest and greatest book - Going the Distance: The Power of Endurance (With a Foreword by Jacqueline Hansen):
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