I want to share a small part of what life on the race has been like recently. It’s been 23 consecutive days that some of the women on my squad have participated in a workout plan that my good friend, Zach, put together.
We celebrated at day 21 because we believe that it took us that long to start this new habit. And we call it a habit because we find it hard to stop.
Every morning in Malaysia, a group of us women walked ourselves down the street at 7am to the park to workout before our ministry day started. Boy were the first couple days hard. It was almost impossible to pry yourself out of bed the first week because you were already too sore to even imagine doing it again. We also were staying in a room with no windows, so 7am felt like midnight.
Regardless, I got out of bed because they all got out. I got dressed because they did. I committed to these women and to myself that no matter how much I wanted to stay in bed, I would wake up and workout.
When it comes to physical fitness and taking care of your body, the world race is hard. For one, it’s hot everywhere. For two, you are in unfamiliar places, so finding a place to workout hasn’t been easy. For three, you aren’t able to feed your body the same nutrients you would in the states. Majority of our diet consists of carbs (rice, noodles, nsima which is a cornmeal type dish in Africa, and bread). It’s rare that we will have a month where we consistently have fruits and vegetables. So when we aren’t feeding our bodies the things it wants, it’s hard for us to ask that our bodies give us the energy to workout.
But something changed this past month. We put all those things aside, and we pushed ourselves to do something we didn’t think we could. We got up every morning to exercise without changing much about our diet. And we feel good.
Since then, workouts have been starting earlier and earlier because we don’t want to miss them. So when we have 8am ministry, we workout at 6:30. When we have to leave at 7, we workout at 5:45. Like I said, it’s become a habit.
I wanted to share this because I wanted to give you a little bit about life on the race. It’s not easy. Sometimes you have to be okay that you aren’t living how you would normally live, like eating a good balanced meal. Sometimes you have to eat bread with a side of rice, and that is okay.
The race may not be easy all the time, but when you are meeting with the Lord daily, He finds ways to give you your reward. Pushing my body to do what I thought was impossible on the race is definitely one of those rewards. And blessing me with a squad that does it with me is just the Lord showing off.
