Reflection ... the past 7 years

Friday March 5th around 11:30am I sat at a red light on Highway 99 on my way back from run/walking Terwilliger with my running partner, Trisha. I'm in the minivan and Millie is fast asleep in the back seat with the bathrobe belt still supporting her forehead (left over from the run (see 2 blog posts ago), but continuing to support her head from falling forward.

I looked over at the car next to me and it occurred to me that I'm not driving a pick-up, like I used to in Montana or the Mustang that I've enjoyed for the past 4 years. I'm driving a minivan, boring, uninteresting, and completely lost and unnoticeable in the flow of traffic. And I couldn't be happier! I just finished a workout (something that feels like "me" - see last blog post), sipping on a half decaf Starbucks black coffee, with my "splurge" Wendy's frosty in the cup holder next to me, and I looked back at my little one thought about how excited I was to spend the day with her. I love that I wasn't disappointed to not be "free" to do other things or spend my time differently. I'm glad I wasn't overwhelmed by spending the day partly alone with her. But really actually genuinely excited to be with her for the day!

Further up highway 99 I thought about how this road has been in my life since I moved here, 7 years ago. Three months after I moved to Portland, still without a job, I applied at a drive-thru Starbucks only half a mile from my current home. If someone had told me 7 years ago that I'd be happily married for over 2 years, enjoying my 3 month old daughter, and living in a little condo just up the road from where I was doing a job that was my last-ditch-effort, I would have been pretty excited... possibly disappointed it would have taken so long (7 years is much longer than I anticipated these things happening), but still excited.

I also thought back on the route Trisha and I had just finished running/walking, Terwilliger. I used to live quite a bit closer to this route and have run it since I moved here. When I moved to Portland I was signed up to run a race in Spokane with my first running partner, from Montana, in May. So I started training on this route. After that race I stopped running until 2004 when I picked back up again and trained and ran the Seattle half marathon Thanksgiving weekend with my mom, only training for about 3 months (that was hard!). About that same time my boyfriend broke up with me and I remember telling another "potential" guy how I never would want to run a marathon. About that same time in 2004, while looking for more race options with people I knew, I hooked up with Trisha, my current running partner. 2 years later we ran out first marathon. When we started running together we were both single, we met, dated, got engaged to, and married our husbands, all while continuing to run together. We call ourselves accidental best friends because we didn't go into it planning to be friends, just running partners, but spending so much time together (sometimes 4 hours on a training run each weekend), you get pretty deep!

I ran Terwilliger as my midweek run when I worked at the job I had between Starbucks and Sunset. I would change into my running clothes after work, put the top down on the Mustang and drive to Terwilliger, belt out a 3 to 4 mile run and drive home, stopping at the tanning place on the way back. It was on one of those runs that I remember thinking about the guy I had just met and how he'd said he would love to follow me around for a week. 16 months later we were married.

Now I'm back running Terwilliger with my 3 month old baby, who's head is braced against her car seat with a bathrobe belt. My running is significantly slower, I now walk the uphills, but I couldn't be more happy with my little life. I have a terrific husband! A beautiful baby girl! A cute little condo! A tight but manageable budget. I no longer get to drive the Mustang as often, have time to myself, or even get to buy clothes or eat out much. The past 7 years have been quite a journey. I've held 4 different jobs, 2 temporary jobs, 2 relationships, 1 almost relationship, 3 cars, many different ministry positions, lived in 5 different homes, one of which was temporary and one of which I now own, engaged, married, and now with a little baby girl who likes to squeal and talk to me all the time.

So that's my reflection on the past 7 years. I would have never picked this exact route to my current place but am SO thankful that God had something better in mind. In my preferred timing it would have all happened faster and with less occasional heartache. But I feel like I've had so many great experiences, had to rely so heavily on God, learn to be grateful for the things I didn't choose, which have all shaped who I am now and am learning to accept not being in the exact place I pictured 7 years ago. But I'm the first to say that although I always have a plan and think it's the best one, God's plan is certainly better!