Jogging Appreciation Post?

Teddy and I went on our first jog in Japan!

Also possibly only our second jog this year?? We’ve been doing other exercises that are less seasonally dependent and have fallen out of the habit. But we took advantage of a cool day and got out there!

What a lot of you may not know is that when we left Japan last time I started a bit of a fitness journey. I was A) the heaviest I've been in my life B) feeling quite large after trying to buy clothes in Japan (they're so skinny here!) and the main contributor C) so tired of always being a tired grump whenever we went out to explore! It felt like my feet and my back would start hurting as soon as we left the house and I was tired of complaining!

So I started jogging. Well, interval walking. I saw an article on the internet that called it “Japanese walking” and claimed it is how their 80-year-olds are still fit. Who knows about any of that, but I figured an exercise meant for 80-year-olds was about where I was at. 🤣 I tried to jog for my fast intervals not remembering that it said that you could just walk faster… and it took me months to actually be able to do 30 minutes this way. But I did! And kept at it pretty consistently for a year! This has actually proved to have been a game changer and helped get me into other exercises, and made me feel comfortable volunteering to hike! Remember that post? I suggested going on a hike! Me!

While I have been pretty excited and chatty (I could go on) about this fitness journey, I want to point something else out today. Something I wasn’t expecting from getting exercise: God would use it to teach me. I think He might have even planted the idea in my head in the first place. He certainly was why I kept at it.

I was in a bit of a rough place when we came back from Japan. Honestly, I was in a rough place in Japan. And, depending on how much you want to lump together… an entire decade before that. But all of that is another story.

Sticking with exercising became important to me and my relationship with God. On days when I didn’t want to read my Bible, on days I couldn’t be asked to pray, I still went on my jog. Knowing it was an act of obedience God had asked of me. Not having any idea why.

I think the first spiritual parallel I saw was in that God had asked me to do something hard. But this one, unlike leaving America to go to Japan, was a hard thing only I could choose to do. Teddy wasn’t going to drag me along with him as he gladly obeyed and I begrudgingly obeyed this time. This was my call. And I obeyed. And it was hard. And I kept choosing to obey.

And then I got to see improvements. Did you know that you can get stronger? I’m not sure if I really believed I could. Physically, or mentally, or spiritually at this point. But physically? You can guarantee results by just being consistent. Results that you can’t talk yourself out of, like I became quite good at with spiritual growth. You can run for longer if you keep running. You can run faster if you keep running. The proof is right there. The proof that I needed to cling to.

I had been doing a lot of hard things. Trusting God with way more than ever before. Way more than seemed reasonable to me. Begrudgingly. And I felt like it wasn’t working. I wasn’t learning to trust Him more, I just had no other options. Showing me that I was growing physically was how God started showing me I was growing spiritually too.

Sometimes people talk about faith like it is a muscle. You have to use it and push it to new limits if you want it to grow. That analogy didn’t work before because I’d never tried to make any of my muscles grow before. 😆 But the analogies kept building.

There was a day once we had switched to different exercises (I don’t recommend trying to jog in a Virginia winter) when I was super frustrated that I didn’t feel like any of the exercises or trusting God was getting any easier. I still couldn’t do planks for even one minute, I couldn’t do all my squats without getting winded, so what was the point in exercising?! I wasn’t getting results anymore! And then Teddy pointed out that we had made the exercises harder. Once you can do the squat, you start doing it with weights, once you can do that reliably, you up the weights. Of course it was still hard; it was supposed to still be hard. It was such a natural part of the process I hadn’t even realized it. And then we realized that that was true for trusting God too. It didn't feel like it had gotten easier because He had kept asking me to trust Him more and more. My muscles were continually being challenged - but they were bigger now, too.

The biggest take away lately has been about pain. Enduring the pain of exercise/soreness as well as the pain and hardships of life. Enduring the pain isn't just worth it because the outcome will be good: You get stronger! Hooray! But also because going through the process is worth it. You can’t skip over the pain to get to the good parts. I have built a resilience and determination previously unseen in me. Because I continue to choose the painful process knowing it is for my good.

So this post was definitely more spiritual than you would have expected from a post about jogging! But so has my relationship with jogging!