If you're not breathing hard, you're not doing it right!

If you've talked to me lately, you know I'm working out a lot. Some of the workouts are high intensity intervals. During the recovery periods in one of them, Chalene Johnson says, "If you're not breathing hard, you're not doing it right!" Or something very similar. In other words, you need to push yourself hard, to your limit. Your body rewards you by improving. Your cardiovascular level improves, you recover more quickly, you gain more muscle, you burn more calories, you lose more weight. But for it to work well, you have to push yourself hard. Otherwise, you're not doing it right.

In church today it hit me: if you're comfortable, you're not doing it right. Meaning you might not be on the right track if you feel comfortable. God pushes you out of your comfort zone. Like anything else, you have to push beyond what's comfortable if you want to improve. Which lead me to the realization that I'm too comfortable. It's easier for me to push beyond my comfort level in fitness than in faith. My fitness level is more tangible. But my faith is eternal. While fitness is an admirable thing to aspire to, I think it's time to re-evaluate my focus. This doesn't mean I'm going to stop working out. But my workouts are non-negotiable and I view most things through a fitness lens. I can relate pretty much everything to fitness or health now. I read about it, I think about it, I put my time and energy there. How big would my faith be if that were my primary focus instead?

Randomness

Thoughts I've had lately...

- DNA evidence would be the same for a set of identical twins. I wonder if the wrong twin has ever been convicted.

- Relatively speaking, I have bigger feet than Steve. I'm 5'4", which is average height for a woman. In most shoes, I wear between an 8 and 9, which I'm pretty sure is bigger than average. When I was recently fitted for running shoes, they gave me a 9.5. Holy giant feet! Steve, on the other hand, is 6'4", which is several inches taller than average. He wears size 11-11.5, which is pretty average and probably even a bit small for his height. Ergo, I have (relatively) bigger feet. So the girls' height will come from Steve and the huge feet to ensure they don't tip over came from me.

- I have a hard time understanding how someone can have kids with someone they hate. I know it's a pretty common thing, but I don't get it. Did they change that much? (Sorry if I offended anyone with that one, but it's been on my mind lately.)

- Nora likes it to be dark when she sleeps. If the light is on and she's tired, she flips her bib up over her face. Seriously.

- Steve has ordered an inordinate number of things online lately. Off the top of my head: two pairs of earbuds, an Xbox 360 controller, a router, a pair of shoes, a book, a waffle iron. Most of that has been in the last two weeks. Good thing he's enormously talented at finding deals online.

- That I know of, the tally of my ex-boyfriends' kids totals 8 girls and 1 boy. It appears that no matter who I married, I would have had all girls. Isn't that weird?

- Other than a weird heat wave this week, fall is here! I wish I had an excuse to buy school supplies.

Nora loves her sisters

Nora is a happy baby, probably 95% of the time. It's a wonderful thing. She's getting to that stage where she can't quite sit up on her own but she always wants to be sitting straight up, able to see everything around her. Without a doubt, Nora is happiest when she is sitting up, watching her sisters. She LOVES when they pay attention to her. She giggles hardest when they dance or jump for her. She smiles when they talk to her and kiss her goodnight. There have been so many times the girls are playing on the floor and Nora is sitting on my lap, straining forward with an eager look on her face. She can't wait to join them. (Side note: when she's on the floor, she immediately flips to her belly and starts moving her arms and legs. If she could get her belly off the floor, she'd be crawling. I have no doubt she'll crawl earlier (and probably walk earlier) than her sisters did.)

The big girls currently have a fort. Ella kept draping a blanket over the coffee table to make one. But once there were pillows under it, the girls barely fit. Not willing to give up the dining room table indefinitely, Steve fixed the card table. It's been sitting in the den for a few days now with a sheet covering it. The girls have pillows, blankets, books, and stuffed animals under there. I found some old star push lights (I have no idea what the real name is, but they're just lights that you push the top to turn on and off) and they have those under there too. They think their fort is the greatest thing ever. I think the fact that they're entertained for hours by a card table and sheet is the greatest thing ever, lol.

This morning I crawled into the fort and sat Nora up. She sat there, supported by my hands, looking around in awe. Ella and Mia crawled in too and she got the biggest grin ever. She was just so happy to be with her sisters. It was adorable. Until Ella yelled at me to get out. Meaning Nora would have to get out too, since she can't sit up alone. After I asked her if she really wanted to be mean to her baby sister and mom, she apologized. I told her if she asked nicely, we would leave. So she did and we did. I hope they include Nora better when they don't have to include me too, lol. She's only five months old and already admires them. She wants to be just like them. And they want to be like me. That's a big responsibility. Parenting is the best motivation to be the best me possible.

Bitterness

I'm not a bitter person. I'm generally optimistic and can find the humor in a situation. I was thinking about it though and thought, "Well, nothing has ever happened to me that I would be bitter about." I had a good, safe childhood. We didn't have the best of everything but we had what we needed and were happy. My parents are loving, supportive, and not overly critical or harsh. My parents are still married. I've never been badly hurt, never needed surgery, or had any real health scares (just weird things, live unexplained allergies suddenly develop, sprained the top of my foot, broke my knuckle, etc.). I've never been in an abusive relationship. I've never had anyone take advantage of me. Few things have been stolen from me and nothing of real value. I've been engaged once and the engagement ended up with a wedding. I've been married once, still am, and we're happy. I've been pregnant three times, carried three pregnancies to term, and have three healthy, beautiful daughters (you know, except for those hives). We have a house without any huge, immediate issues (it could use some cosmetic touch-ups) and two cars that run reliably. Steve has a job and I have a job available if I want it (that's HUGE in this economy!) and we have good health insurance. I was blessed enough to go to college and even more blessed to go back for my masters degree. I have had a good life. The worst things that have happened to me didn't even happen directly to ME: Dad's heart attack, Tracy's miscarriage, Leslie's scoliosis and back surgery, etc.

Then I had another thought: Is it that I have nothing to be bitter about or that I've chosen not to be bitter? I have had bad things happen, things that weren't fair. Money was stolen from my room at Spring Arbor and another time from my car at the country club where I worked. A car shop did shoddy work on our car and when it all fell apart again, they were out of business and we were out of luck. I was bullied in junior high, to the point that I went home sick a lot to avoid those girls. I was never very popular and never made Homecoming court, let alone queen. The guy I dated for a year and a half in high school dumped me the same weekend I got my wisdom teeth pulled, because he liked a freshman. My first car was a horrible car that burned oil, stalled, and I was afraid to drive because I thought it would break down. I've always struggled with poor body image. I didn't get to wear honor cords because calculus dragged my GPA down, when the girls who dropped it for health did. I've had to work hard to lose every last pound of baby weight. The kids misbehave and my husband isn't perfect. Maybe if I focused on those things, I would be bitter.

But WHY?

Bitterness steals the joy in life. It makes you hard and cold and seem older than you are. And while I do have the occasional pity party, bitterness just isn't fun. What does it accomplish? Whining and crying about the past doesn't make me feel better and it doesn't change what happened. What DOES help is to deal with it and move on. It's so much better to focus on what's good and find the humor in the bad. The sort of people you surround yourself with can make a huge difference. If you're constantly around negative people, your focus becomes negative. You complain more. You become sarcastic. But have you ever had something bad happen when you were with a positive person? They might laugh because it's just absurd and suddenly the whole thing doesn't seem as bad. It feels more like an adventure or a good story in the making rather than a disaster. Attitude changes everything. And attitude can be changed by what you habitually focus on. The more you focus on the positive, the easier and more natural it becomes to have a positive outlook. Same thing with negativity. Change your outlook and it changes your life.

So how are you CHOOSING to see your world today?