About a month ago, Jason, my hus­band started run­ning on our tread­mill every other day. He started off run­ning two miles and is up to three and a half as of Sat­ur­day. Now, I have never had much desire to run. Occa­sion­ally, I lose my mind, and it sounds like some­thing I would enjoy. How­ever, in my saner moments, I know that it is not some­thing I want to do. In fact, I almost shud­der when I think about it. Even though I would find read­ing the dic­tio­nary to be eas­ier and more enjoy­able, I’m really proud of him for mak­ing this com­mit­ment and stick­ing with it. Ever since my par­ents have known Jason, they have said over and over again how he is the most patient per­son they’ve ever met. One con­ver­sa­tion that I recall with my dad hap­pened after a long, hot game of golf. I think that his patience plays a big part in his abil­ity to be ded­i­cated to a goal that he has. Me, not so much patience and not so much ded­i­ca­tion, unfortunately.

Recently, one night when A wasn’t sleep­ing and Jason was get­ting ready to go run, I got grumpy about his run­ning. I stood in the shower and stewed about it. I had myself con­vinced that he was being self­ish and choos­ing his own desires over being with me or the boys. I was pretty mad at him. In fact, by the end of my shower, I was ready to sit him down and let him know that right now we just don’t have the time for him to be run­ning. He needs to spend all of his evening time with me, with A, or doing work. (How ter­ri­ble does that sound?) Sud­denly, I real­ized just what I was going to tell him. I really felt like God was ask­ing me to dig deeper and fig­ure out where my feel­ings were com­ing from. So, I spent some more time think­ing about it.

I came to the real­iza­tion that me being mad about his run­ning had noth­ing to do with him. Not so sur­pris­ingly, it was about me! I was mad that he was able to stay so ded­i­cated and com­mit­ted to run­ning when it’s some­thing that is very hard for me. I start new projects and hob­bies quite fre­quently. I’m cur­rently cro­chet­ing and quilt­ing blan­kets. I also have terra cotta pots and paint in the garage. I have tons and tons of unread books. I have a blog that I don’t update nearly as often as I should. I have also started read­ing my Bible-in-a-year at least 4 dif­fer­ent times, and I could go on and on! Per­sis­tence is not one of my strengths unfortunately.

My first instinct when I fig­ured out why it was both­er­ing me so much was to go out and make some big com­mit­ments to prove to myself that I can in fact stick with what I start. I’m not so sure that’s the wis­est thing to do though. After some more thought, I think what I’ll do is take some time decide where I really do want to spend my time and energy. Then, I’ll com­mit to doing those things instead of jump­ing onto the next fun idea that comes by.