First, my apologies for not keeping up with my blog- as many of you may imagine these past couple of months have been filled with many stressful events (Presenting in Seattle, hosting my first 5K, and graduating!). While these have been extremely stressful and I am just now starting to sleep again, I did want to take some time to share with you the success of my first 5K!
I laughed earlier when I read my previous post on finally deciding to host the 5K. What many of you are not aware of is that after posting that I must have canceled the event about 2-4 times which gave me only 1 month to prepare to host this 5K from beginning to end. However, once I did decide to commit fully to this, I held on tightly to Gods hand and on April 30th I hosted my very first 5K having around 50 runners and raising over $900 apart from the sponsorship!
What did I learn? I learned to physically and faithfully trust the Lord 100%. I got to experience firsthand what it feels like to obey God in a totally uncomfortable and strange situation for me. I had no idea why He wanted me to do this, especially because this is not something I had ever done before, and while I love to run I am not much of a “professional” runner like most others who do this. However, this is what the Lord asked of me, and so I just had to trust completely that He would provide.
It was in no way easy, it was challenging in every way you can imagine. Even when it seemed like there was no way I could pull this off I had to remember to keep trusting in Him; for example I had people telling me the weather was going to be horrible (maybe because it had rained everyday till the day of the 5K and the fact that I hosted it on a trail this variable was very important…I mean…the trail was super muddy the day before).However true to His word, God provided me with a wonderful sunny day! Also, sponsorship…I did not end up getting fully covered until the night before when I received my final sponsorship! During this entire month of planning I wanted to give up, but God put amazing people that helped me with it all…especially Keri who encouraged me throughout it, even in nights when I couldnt sleep thinking about this I would call her around 12am and she was there ready to listen and give suggestions!
The Lord did not make any of this easy, and He made sure I would have to trust Him fully till the very last minute. The day of the event I had still not accurately measured the 5K…I had only guessed. SO that morning I went out with Leah and Keri to measure it while posting up the signs and Voila! It was exactly 3.1 miles. God is GREAT! And while it was muddy…it was not too muddy (at least I don’t think it was)!
All in all, even though I did have some people somehow going up the wrong hill and getting a little lost due to an arrow that got blown the other way (God has a sense of humor) and then having others that, because of that same reason came out a different exit… it was still a lot of fun!…I even kept getting asked if I was thinking of hosting another one (that was funny!).
“Congratulations, you obeyed and I provided.” This was the best feeling of all, knowing that I was able to obey Him in something that compared to the challenges my squad and I will be facing in the World Race seems so small. I mean- how can I go on a trip like this when I can’t even trust him with a 5K?
I will end with this, the ways in which I saw God work throughout this 5K were amazing. Many of you got to witness it because I probably called you crying of joy when a miracle happened. I would not change this for anything. Although, trusting Him was like walking next to a cliff blind-folded trusting Him not to fall… the rush of having this faith is something that I am ready to practice even further, and the World Race I believe will have many of these moments for me to practice it.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”
-Proverbs 3:5
