All the Way from Scratch

Monday's "Frank and Ernest" comic hit the spot and made me cackle. In an email yesterday, one of my aunts described herself as not being able to get out of her own way lately, and I thought, "You too?! That's it exactly." I often feel like God is bemusedly watching me and thinking, You know, you have everything you need, if you could just figure that out and get it together. That's likely the way it is for all of us, but I am feeling it pretty acutely lately.

In one example, I have completely blown off running since May's half marathon but decided to get back to it last week and ran a 5K over the weekend. Run-walk-run-walk-jog for ten seconds and walk again-run-walk-walk-walk. . . . I saw Mike waiting for me around the halfway point and berated him for not having thought to bring his phone to take a picture, since I was actually RUNNING that part of the race talked with him for a minute, and his first words were, "Are you the last one?" Apparently, he couldn't see any runners behind me. Correction, now that I know the race results: Apparently, there was only one runner behind me--I came in next-to-last in a race of 700-some people. And that's what I get for gaining back the weight I'd lost and taking off six months from running. (Don't call it a comeback. . . !)  This is when I join God in shaking my head and saying, Why didn't you just keep up with it?! Why must you always make things so hard for yourself? And I don't know, but I hope I at least get credit for trying and always coming back for more. Sigh.