Snapshot 2-1-13: Starting Over

In 2010, I took a picture a day to catalog our lives. It just so turns out that 2010 was a pretty crazy year. And by crazy I mean hard. And also sweet. And also beautiful. But did I mention it was hard?

Funny thing, though. The other day, Sophie was reading through my blog and spent most of her time looking at pictures. And as I looked at the photos with her, I realized that by capturing so many of that year's moments, I could see the bigger (ha ha) picture. I saw the messy mix of life. I also saw the hunger my kids have to place themselves in time, to see the growth and the change and moments that matter but that are so quickly eclipsed by the next day's moments and the next day's.

The time we spent looking at pictures and laughing and remembering cemented my desire to leave something behind from our time together in the GreenHouse. So here I am 9 days late in beginning: as usual, full of good intentions, but so often slow in implementing.

I hesitate to fill your Google readers with so many posts. I know that the pictures of our family life hold most of their value for my little family. To make it easier to weed these out, I will title all of my picture posts as "Snapshots."

And so, here is the first picture.

Starting over is hard for me. A body in motion stays in motion, but a body at rest doesn't want to do much but eat cookies and play Triple Town on the iPad.

Since we added Maisie the Goldendoodle to our family, my exercising self has turned into a couch-sitting self. It wasn't just Maisie, of course. It was 4 mornings of teaching piano around 6:30. And lots and lots and lots of ice and snow and slush. And (being honest here) a little bit of depression. Plus laundry. And a new calling. And being in charge of the high school Reflections contest. And cooking and dishes and four kids with four different school schedules. And then the holidays. And then the post-holidays. And that INVERSION...blah.

Dang. It's been rough.

Not exercising became symbolic of my inward turmoil.

I've started and stopped over and over. Done the same thing with eating right. And trying to go to bed on time. And I started to question why it's so darned hard, why, after 41 years of life on this planet, I haven't figured out how to live life well, intentionally, in an ordered manner. I've placed lots of F's on my inner report card. And that, dear friends, doesn't lead to a healthy head.

Which leads me to February 1. After weeks of nasty, terrible air, a morning dawned with gorgeous skies and roads with less ice. It was a little miraculous. And I had just picked up my first new pair of running shoes in over a year. And I decided that starting over isn't the problem. In fact, it's evidence of being willing to accept responsibility for imperfections, of wanting change, and of optimism. Optimism is a good thing. I want more of it in my life.

So I laced up, and I ran four miles.

I know, four miles doesn't sound like much. I used to knock that out in my sleep. But it's a lot to me now, and at the end I felt a little like celebrating. So I took a picture.

And while the inversion hasn't left us alone yet, I've found my way to the treadmills at the gym (reading dumb free Kindle books on the iPad helps miles go by faster, I've discovered), and I've been doing some DVDs in my basement for weight training, and I've been walking the dog. Small steps, people. It's all about the small steps.