Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Neighborhood Run

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Neighborhood Run
Last year our family began a tradition of running in the Thanksgiving Day Run in our community. The race is a fundraiser for a local mission and is a great way to start a day that would normally be considered a day of overindulgence. Win-win, right? And we had every intention of continuing that tradition this year. But due to time constraints and last minute registering, the kids and I decided to start our own Run right here in the neighborhood.

This decision was quick and without reservation for us. We are spontaneous and always up for a challenge. We called a neighbor who is an amazing graphic designer and asked her to print us some flyers. We made a list of all of the neighbors we knew well and added some others that we knew only from a brisk "Good Morning" as they ran past our house. We set out to promote our run....at 8pm on Wednesday night.

To say that we faced much cynicism from those closest to us is an understatement. We heard things like, "You realize no one is going to show up to run with you" and "Do you really think it is worth the trouble......because you are giving people only 12 hours notice and no one will actually be there?"......."Give it up Losers" is sort of what it sounded like to me. And I started to agree.

But my children perservered. "Don't give up, Mom" and "You've got to believe" were the mantras I heard at our base camp. Though I was not completely convinced they were right, I had to get on board. If they could believe then I could, too.

On Thursday morning at 8:45 we walked to the end of our driveway to wait for other runners. at 8:52 I began to lose hope. By 9am we had 10 people gathered with us, ready to embark on our first annual Neighborhood Turkey Trot. Truly awesome.

We ran with some folks we knew and made some new friends as well. I love that Ron and Laura (formally known as The Man In The Purple Sweats and His Daughter) came to run with us even though they had never met us. We will forever have that runner connection because of it. I also love how good it felt to run 3.1 miles on Thanksgiving morning. But what I love most was the lesson that I, again, learned from my children.

They did not give up, and they really did believe. They were thrilled when they saw others joining us and they waited in the driveway until all were finished running. They began making plans on how we could expand the race next year by getting many others to run with us by planning ahead. They thought of finding a cause that was important to them and making it the beneficiary of any donations collected from their Turkey Trot.

They are my heros and my inspiration. Again, I say that my contribution to this world is raising the children that God has so graciously blessed us with. To give them the tools they need to make our world a better place. To live my life to show them Jesus. I make mistakes with them every day. I'm certain that there are many days (including today) that they see much more evil in me than good. I am human, after all, and I will let them down from time to time. But in the end, I will work tirelessly to use the gifts I have been given to raise the Gifts I have been given.

Posted by KC at 11:04 PM

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