Foot to pavement, I know my next stride will be with new purpose.

Under a canopy of palm trees beside a boat-riddled bay, I’m immersed in a sea of other runners, each with a goal somewhere between finishing and winning this half marathon. Moments ago, deep into mile 3, I decided to swap the feasible goal I started the race with for an aggressive one. This would be my own, personal version of “winning:” a sub-2 hour half-marathon time.

And I’m scared.

I question whether I’m ready, or even physically capable, of achieving this goal on this course on this day. My trusted friend, also a mom of three, is running alongside me and she appears confident, but I know her confidence alone won’t be enough. It will take everything I have within me to get to the finish line at the new proposed time. The objections flip like a rolodex through my mind: I could get injured. It will hurt too much. It will make the recovery harder or the trip less fun.

I could do my best and yet still fall short.

This fear of personal failure, to me, seems to be the most convincing objection and reason to just stay…comfortable. I mean, maybe we should just run the race…comfortably.

I slam the rolodex of excuses shut.

Because, listen, I’ve been trying that approach for nearly a decade now. I know that staying comfortable is not going to result in my best; it will leave me feeling like I left piles of potential on the table.

So I’m trying something new. It’s an approach that views comfort as not always “better.” In fact, I plan to get quite uncomfortable for the next 10 miles and see where that takes me.

Curious and slightly uneasy, I continue steadily toward the mile 4 marker, ready to see what I am capable of. And I know there’s only one way to find out.

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a new kind of uncomfortable

I’ve admittedly put a lot of resources into figuring out how best to achieve “comfortable” since having my first child 8 years ago. Maybe you have, too.

I arrived in early motherhood with confidence. Not exactly with confidence in my mothering skills, but just in my ability to, you know, figure it out. Emotionally prepared and arguably over-enthusiastic for my “new normal” in the role of motherhood, I was ready when our first baby was born. I had read parenting books and taken the prenatal classes with fervor. With some baseline knowledge and a background in working with kids in my career as a Speech-Language Pathologist, I was convinced that if anyone could excel at this “parenting thing,” I could be among them.

I was mentally prepared for it to be hard.

I was not, however, prepared for the level of discomfort I would end up feeling in the daily throes of my new role as mom.

Quickly in my motherhood journey, it became clear that events would keep happening to “call me out” as inadequate; things like a burnt baby finger from a bowl of hot oatmeal, or the constant challenge of not being able to figure out how to get my baby to sleep on literally any flat surface, or not being able to breastfeed without the baby screaming. Then there was the chronic diaper rash that seemed to proclaim me as an “inattentive mom” to anyone helping us problem-solve. These are a few in a list of so, so many other things that would remind me that I did not, in fact, have this motherhood thing figured out.

I was giving my all and still falling short. My deep-rooted fear of failure started to feel like reality. My confidence waned.

Formerly, my comfort zone had been in the achievement of marital and professional success. My motherhood role was feeling like a consistent string of C minuses.

We are DEFINITELY not comfortable here, I began to acknowledge.

It was disheartening to feel that way about a world I longed for so deeply before I found myself in it.

I persistently questioned why motherhood felt so hard for me and so totally normal for everyone else around me, you know, with their clean cars, and kids that didn’t endlessly grab stuff off the shelves in the grocery store. After leaving my job when baby #2 arrived, I found myself missing my annual performance reviews and feedback that would confirm I was on the right track.

For the next few years and two more babies later, I would do what felt like spinning a game-show-style wheel filled with random strategies to make motherhood feel more manageable. Whatever section the pointer landed on…I would try next. And to be sure, I’m a committed “try-er” – diving headfirst into whatever the new plan is: therapy, babysitters, preschools, goal planners, after-school routines, increased connection with friends, working, not working, reading, more walks, more travel, more self-care, etc, etc, ETC.

Some strategies would work well or for a while, others less so. I have learned through motherhood and this very trial-and-error process, (one I suspect we all go through in some form), to find comfort where I can and then nestle up to that.

We morphe for a season, in order to give extraordinary more than we take. I believe we do this to protect ourselves as we become what is needed for the people around us to thrive.

We give.

We give some more.

And we figure out how to cope by trying these and other strategies. We make adjustments to create a life that’s a little easier or lighter. Sometimes, this means abandoning some of the hobbies we once enjoyed because we lack the time or capacity to do them in the current season.

Then, one day, we look around and who we are looks very different from who we were. Which, in most ways, feels like a worthy sacrifice. We see the incredible people we created and what they are becoming and feel satisfied and proud.

We wouldn’t have it any other way, really.

We’ve been stretched in so many ways through the journey of motherhood that when we have the chance to be comfortable, we cling to that: tightly. I have learned to do that well in these last few years.

But right now, I’m on mile 5, and I’m uncomfortable. Al-freaking-ready. 8.1 miles to go. I politely grab a teensy cup of Gatorade from an encouraging volunteer and try to chug it without stopping. Because once these legs stop moving, I know they won’t want to go again. Not at this pace.

Onward.

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a new season

“Oh, I’ve been travelin’ on this road too long, tryin’ to find my way back home, the old me’s dead and gone, dead and gone.”

Justin Timberlake and TI duet on one of my favorite songs to run to. I admittedly love great running metaphors on my race playlists. I enjoy getting reflective when listening to the lyrics, and this one has me thinking about how much has changed for me recently, in order to get me to exactly where I am in this very moment.

Because life really took a turn for me about 6 months ago.

Before then, it was about 7:00am when I would roll out of bed, begrudgingly. I’d never been a morning person. Tim and I eventually troubleshooted our way to a system where the girls don’t need us until 7:15am. I stayed up too late most nights, even during the week, so although it was 7:00am when I woke, I still didn’t feel as rested as I could have. At the time, I was about 20-30 pounds heavier than necessary. My healthy eating habits, as with my many other personal goals, had been inconsistent at best. I was feeding my soul with True Crime podcasts and feeding my body with a LOT of Chick-fil-a chicken strips (and not the grilled kind).

But things were getting done (*brushes off hands*).

Each day, I had a life-imposed, sizable list of to-do items. There was grocery shopping to complete, travel planning to do, gifts to buy for the next birthday party, garden tasks to accomplish, appointments to make and keep, mail to sort, laundry to fold. You know the things. And every day I did them; I got them done.

Like a “mom robot,” I accomplished the “mom things.”

But I was left feeling, well, blank, empty. Fine.

Capable, but not fulfilled.

The things that lit me up, that sparked something inside of me that made me excited to show up in the world and challenged me in a way that made me enjoy the journey just weren’t there.

That spark was gone and I didn’t know how to get it back.

I had convinced myself that adding anything to my plate would make my busy life harder. I tried to embrace a season of abandoning myself.

Deep inside, or maybe not even deep inside, but right there on the surface, I KNEW I was not living into a full version of my life or self. I was certain that God had called me to use my gifts and hone my talents and point people to Him, but right now, serving those around me had to be His plan for me. Right? 

The words, “dreaming big and playing small” would regularly come to mind, alarming me during another late night Netflix binge that I suspected would probably result in me skipping my workout the next day.

But that was then.

6 months before this race, I joined a gym. I’d been a member of one before COVID, but not since. At first, it was just another strategy on my list, but this one stuck. I started to see myself thriving in a new season: one where I could see what I was still capable of, after all these years and all these babies. I lost the weight, but it wasn’t about the weight, or the gym, really. It was about a slow, steady rebuilding of the confidence that had petered out along the way. It was about proving to myself that I could keep the promises I was making to myself and consistently showing up for my family and for myself as the better version of myself, the version closer to how I envisioned my future self.

I started changing my habits. Committing to getting up a little earlier wasn’t easy at first, but it allowed me to spend time with God and accomplish some of those home management tasks in order to free up space for creativity later in the day. I began actively working to change my people-pleasing behaviors that were keeping me contained, for fear of inconveniencing people around me.

In making a decision to do these things that objectively seemed harder, I learned that harder isn’t always worse. Doing the harder thing has led me here to this moment in this new city with some new friends doing a thing I haven’t done in 10 years. “Harder” was making me feel more alive, and closer to the confident person I once was and the person I want to be.

I had forgotten, in my comfortable life that had become marled in mediocrity, that I’m the girl who shows up and gives everything I have.

And I realize in this moment, approaching mile 8 of this race, that THIS, this challenge, is what I long for. This is what makes me come alive. This is what I’m made for.

That is the force that propels me forward, stride after determined stride.

“You are stronger than you think,” I tell myself. Because I know it’s true.

I also know that accessing that space, that difference, the difference between how strong I think I am and how strong I actually am, is an uncomfortable place to step into, but yields some of the most rewarding results of all.

It hurts. Literally. And running up this unexpected mile-long hill at mile 9 makes me wonder if the extra effort will pay off. I knew I should have examined the course information.

But I’m all in as we head into the last few miles.

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a new kind of comfortable

“You’re on your own, kid. You always have been.”

T Swift comes through my Airpods at an admittedly untimely moment. I need something more upbeat right now to get me over that finish line. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get the fast-forward button to work on my playlist and I’m certainly not slowing down for that now.

I think she’s right, in some ways. It’s me out here. No one else can make my foot take this next step. I will be failing exactly zero people if I choose to even walk this last mile. And I actually think about stopping. Because it’s hard. REALLY hard.

But I don’t. I pick up what’s left of my potential and I run, literally as fast as I can. That’s what I do.

I look around with tears on my face. It makes it hard(er) to breathe and I can’t believe I’m actually crying. I am “that girl” at the San Diego Half Marathon at mile 12. And no one around me knows that this is more than a race on a decent resume of races for me.

It’s an undoing.

It’s a sifting through everything I’ve been telling myself in order to accept my own complacency and the fact that I’ve been intentionally stifling the parts of me that have longed for more.

I realized, moving swiftly toward the finish line, that for many years now, I’ve carried a jack-in-the-box of my ambition around with me. It would regularly spring to the surface, proclaiming its presence and coaxing me to take action for just long enough for me to take a few fingers and suppress it yet again, reminding it where it’s supposed to go: back where it can be contained, controlled.

Back where it will keep us all comfortable.

How long do you wrestle with your soul, with your ambition? When do you begin to listen to God’s gentle calls to come forward out of your comfort zone? How long must you wait in resistance, offering responses that you will later reflect on and define as excuses?

It feels like confining a tiger to a housecat’s cage, like my own kind of personal prison.

Upon this realization, I’m initially tempted to be embarrassed that it’s taken me this long to figure this out for myself, but I remember what a close friend recently told me: strong looks different depending on your season. My seasons have been changing lately. Our kids (mostly) sleep through the night. They are old enough that we don’t have to give the babysitter an entire pamphlet on their care each time we leave. It’s rare if they all cry in the same day. They even, miraculously, sometimes play together uninterrupted for nearly AN HOUR.

I realize that in this season, something that wasn’t previously available to me has suddenly become available: the courage to be uncomfortable. I can actually have all the things I long for. Kids who feel valued. Kids who know God. A thriving marriage. AND a business of my own, if I choose. I can have pursuits that challenge and inspire.

I have been forcing myself to pick, unnecessarily, between personal excellence or thriving in motherhood. And I find myself certain, at this moment, as I launch myself toward the finish line at a 7:15 pace, that both are possible for me now: at the very same time.

The light switch has been flipped.

I choose courage over comfort.

And it has taken all the courage I can muster today to bring me to this point where I can now see the finish line. My body feels like it’s fully engulfed in flames. I am thankful that the course is downhill to the finish and my vision is getting blurry as I stay the course, in gratitude to my body for doing all I’ve asked of it thus far.

The cheers of the crowd aren’t for me, specifically. But this excitement at the finish keeps me moving until triumphantly, we cross that finish line, arms outstretched, finally there. Struggling to breathe, I immediately wonder if we’ve done it, if our efforts have paid off. I look down at my watch to find that we’ve beaten our goal by nearly 2 minutes. It reads, impossibly, 1:58:16; it’s a number I haven’t seen in the last decade.

I feel the gravity of what we’ve just done. But even bigger than the time on my watch, I know that this is the beginning of something monumental for me. I am certain, at this moment, that more than merely believing I’m made for more, that it’s time to start doing something about that again. I already am, you see. The picture isn’t fully painted yet. I don’t know, exactly, what the future will hold. But as I unravel myself from the safety of what I thought was my comfort zone, I know. I know I am getting closer to figuring out what exactly God has created me to be and what I’m capable of when unleashed.

Being comfortable, it turns out, isn’t actually comfortable at all.

Not for me.

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Thank you for taking this journey with me, my friends. To those in the early years of motherhood, you may find this post: Run Like a Mother. (about my earlier postpartum running attempts) to be more encouraging and relatable.

To every mother, no matter your season, you are doing superhuman things. I’m cheering you on as you run your own version of this race.

Keep it up, you incredible human, you.

Biggest hugs and greatest blessings,

ann marie 🖤

(PS- Want to run a race with me? Connect with me on Instagram to find out where I’m headed next!)

for the people who like splits: