#marriageistherealmarathon

Yes, I did it. I found another reason to write about running. And I used a hashtag as my blog post title. I'm slightly ashamed, but I also think it's a pretty good hashtag so I went with it anyway. I used this hashtag a few days ago on an instagram picture I posted of Skyler and I after a run. Go ahead and roll your eyes if you want to, but this is another lesson I'm learning through running. Running and marathons provide endless metaphors for real life if you look for them.

You see, that particular morning was not all smiles and happiness for us. I wake up at 5am or earlier most mornings and lay in bed for 10 minutes or so before getting up the courage to stir the sleeping bear next to me. Just kidding...kind of. Some mornings he is less bearlike than others, but regardless he doesn't often jump straight up ready to run like I do. We are currently training for our first full marathon so as grumpy as he may get sometimes, I know he wants to stick to the training plan and will thank me later, or one day....maybe. Actually he usually thanks me by the end of the run. ANYWAY. That morning was not a super cheerful wakeup for him, and I got frustrated that he was frustrated and so we were both frustrated by the beginning of our run. This happens regularly. Once we started we both sank into the run and let off some of the steam. It was supposed to be an easy paced training run that day so we were taking it slow, but Skyler began to speed up in the second half. I tried telling him to stay slow, but he was ready to get done. Now it was my turn to get grumpy. So I stayed behind muttering some not so nice words under my breath about what a "stubborn, bullheaded..." you get the picture. I remember thinking, "Ok Krystal, calm down, it's not a big deal, let him go." But I was still annoyed when just 30 seconds earlier I was feeling great about our run and how we were bonding(ha!).

We have only been married for a little over three years, but the longer we are together the more these moments of clashing and frustration seem to happen. Or maybe I just notice them more? Regardless, it's been somewhat of a shock to me. When we were dating I would get so angry when people said things like, "Marriage is ALOT of work!" or "Marriage is really hard, better get ready" or "It's not all sunshine and roses, prepare yourself." "Enjoy dating because marriage is when the real work starts." etc. etc. In my 21 year old head over heels in love brain, these warnings sounded like absolute nonsense. At that point we were "so perfect for each other" and "we never fought". I blew off all the negative Nancy's, repositioned my rose colored glasses, and went on with planning our wedding. Dreaming of the picture perfect, white picket fence, dinner together every night, married life that would surely commence after.

Cue: Reality. I won't bore you with the details, but lets just say reality was so far from my daydreams(I have always had an active imagination and my daydream world is pretty perfect so there was a lot to live up to) it was laughable. I will say that the first year went by pretty smoothly and I would label it close to amazing. But we have yet to find a house with a white picket fence, our schedules rarely allow us to eat meals together except breakfast sometimes, and his food chewing and closet keeping habits(I can't even look) make me want to pull my hair out. When we were dating we discovered all the things we had in common. After marriage and living together for a while we quickly discovered all the things we didn't. Add a little life and family stress, bills, job stress, hormones, and dirty laundry and my perfect little picture of marriage crumbled before my eyes. Before we knew it we'd fallen into the"peck on the lips" before we left for work and an unenthusiastic "How was your day?" when we got home routine. Most of the time I'm actually asleep when he gets home. I write that as if it were a thing of the past. But it's still our current most common routine. And it makes me sad and anxious because this is not the marriage and life I imagined for us. This is not the marriage I want for us. It may seem harmless to some. We don't get into knock down, drag out fights. We rarely raise our voices to each other at all, and we don't say mean and horrible things to each other. But it makes me anxious because I can feel how easy it is to slip into this way of life and letting complacency take over.

 I no longer have my rose colored glasses on telling me everything is great and we will be happy forever after(that is such a line of bs in the first place, sorry Disney!) I'm seeing the reality of what "marriage takes work" means. And I'm desperate to start that work now before this routine becomes our life and we wake up more like roommates one day than husband and wife. I'm learning how much intentionality it takes to really love someone. To love someone even when you don't like them 100% of the time. I'm sorry to break it to you dating and engaged folks, but please believe me when I say you will have moments when you do not "like" the prince charming standing next to you. You may even want to say something mean, or cause physical pain to him when he is chewing in your ear. Every day is not an "I love my spouse and we are best friends and he just means the world to me!" instagram post. Marriage IS HARD. There, I said it. I acquiesce my former stance against the negative Nancy's. But this is not me becoming one either. This is me just stating the truth that all married people already know(or will discover soon enough after the first year) And I'm stating this truth because I believe the truth should always be told, and only when we admit the truth can we do anything to change it. So there you have it. We aren't perfect. We often disagree and get annoyed with each other. We often spend more time on our phones or watching movies than in real conversation with each other. We like different things, and are sometimes annoyed by each other's hobbies. We load the dishwasher differently and I don't even let him touch the laundry....ever. I know I've rolled my eyes behind his back and he's probably done the same to me. We've argued on the way to church and walked in looking like "the perfect couple". We've gone to bed angry and in silence without even saying "I love you".

But we do still love each other. And we are both committed to this marriage like we said we were on day one. That has never changed. We see the issues brewing between us and we are determined to work through them. We are finally starting to talk about them with each other and with trusted friends. We know we don't want to stay this way, and our goal is that we age like fine wine...getting better with time.

Here is where my marathon metaphor comes in. I tend to take life like a sprint. I want things fast, easy and now. I like to solve problems quickly. I clean house and grocery shop like a woman on a mission because I like to get my least favorite jobs over with. When I trained for our half marathon this spring I focused on running faster every day and didn't care about the toll it took on my body as a new runner. The consequence was 2+ months of running in pain through the summer because my body couldn't take that much speed that fast. I am learning that the best runners train extremely slowly to build up their aerobic base and condition their body to be able to race on race day. 26.2 miles is a long way to run no matter how many times you've done it. It takes patience with yourself and your body, mental strength to fight through the hard days, and grace to accept all the things you can't control. In other words...it's a whole lot like marriage. I've been thinking about my anxiety over our marriage and realized I am looking at it more like a sprint than a marathon. I want to fix it all now. I want to work out all of our problems and get to the finish line of perfection now. I want each of us to suddenly be perfect in a perfect world with a perfect relationship so that we never have to feel sad or angry or lonely or frustrated again. Typing that out makes me feel so silly, but I'm realizing that is the underlying cause to my stress.

You would think I'd have learned my lesson about perfectionism by now. In my head I absolutely know perfection is not reality, and it's a never obtainable goal to have in any area of life. So I'm working on changing that goal. When we got married we promised to love each other "In all things til death do us part" or something like that. I still mean those words with all of my heart, and I know Skyler does too. We didn't promise to be perfect. And no one's vows say, "Only when it's easy" So on the days when we are muttering under our breath at each other or turning on the tv instead of talking about what we need to talk about, I will remember that this is our life together and one bad day doesn't mean we have a bad marriage. I don't ever want to settle, but I don't want to measure us as a failure because we fail sometimes. We are a couple in training for a marathon and in training for our life together. Our goal is to get to the finish line, even if we are cussing the hills under our breath along the way. The hills actually make us stronger. I believe in us and I know we will do it. We have so much to learn, but I have hope that we are good students. We are still at the beginning, but thankfully we have "forever and ever" to figure it out.

** May 17, 2017 update
Guess what? We are still on this journey together and going 4 years strong as of today. This season is still hard and stressful as Skyler has transitioned into a new job and our schedules are even more off balance. But we are getting so much better at talking through things and loving each other through the good and bad. We make a conscious effort to put our phones down and have real conversations more often. To show each other love in little ways and to be grateful we have eachother to lean on at the end of long days. Marriage is hard, but there is a strange and powerful beauty in hard things. Working through hard things together brings a depth and strength to relationships that nothing else can. And much like crossing the finish line after 26.2 miles....it is SO worth all the work.
Also, we are both officially marathoners and I've been able to let the sleeping bear sleep since we aren't in training mode at the moment. :)

Happy Anniversary Skyler....I'm ready to climb more hills and cross more finish lines with you for many years to come.

The In Between

I've found myself in a difficult place lately. A place I've come to reference as the In Between. No one talks much about this place, but I have a hard time believing I'm the only one who has found themselves here. I'm in between the old me and the future me. The sick me and the whole me. The addicted, disordered me and the real me.

You see, I dropped out of life at 13 when I began starving myself, self-harming, and living with depression. I retreated into a giant shell that was my armor for over 12 years. I dropped out of school, out of relationships, out of my family, and out of growing up. I didn't know how to handle the pain, the chaos and all the feelings in the world around me so I did everything in my power to stop feeling anything. If you know me at all you know that when I get passionate about something I get very, very passionate about that thing. I give everything 110%. I feel everything to the extreme. This would be great if the world only dealt out love, joy and happiness, but we all know that is not the case. So I decided that even the intense love and joy I felt at times were not worth the intense pain, rejection, and sadness I also felt.

Fast forward through a dozen years of therapy, treatment centers, recovery attempts and relapses...and here I am today with over a year of true recovery behind me and only traces of the sick me that surface in my brain every once in a while. Don't get me wrong, to be where I am is a miracle and I am so grateful to be out of the dark hole I crawled into so long ago. I am no longer obsessed with food, my weight or the scale. I don't have to fight the urge to hurt myself anymore, and I get out of bed most days so thankful for my life. But at the same time I often feel like I woke up out of a dream and I am that 13 year old girl in a 27 year old body. I am married, self-employed and by all outward appearances handling myself pretty well as an adult. I've gotten really good at the "I'm fine" persona who has all her ducks in a row and is "Just living and enjoying life!" But under the surface I find myself in low grade panic mode in many situations. Especially when it comes to relationships and interacting with other people.

As an introvert to begin with, and one who never learned how to make healthy relationships in my formative years, I find myself retreating into a different shell of isolation. So while I am not struggling with the behaviors of my sick self, I am also not what I would consider a whole self either. I even find myself struggling in my marriage because I was a different person three years ago when I said "I do" to the man who had won my heart and who (I thought) knew the best and worst about me. The truth is I still put the "I'm fine" wall up with him more often than not. He says it is like pulling teeth to get me to open up and be honest about how I really feel. In many ways I feel like we've had to start completely over again in getting to know each other, and I know that is a process that will continue for the rest of our lives. But it is hard, frustrating and has left me feeling confused and misunderstood many times.

I say all this to say that recovery from any addiction, disorder or mental illness is so much harder and more complex than I think people realize or want to admit. Just because the behaviors change or stop does not mean the work is done. Just because life is a million times better than it was with the addiction(I absolutely promise you it is!!) does not mean it is easy. Just because you are out of treatment and can call yourself recovered or in recovery does not mean you no longer need help. When your entire identity was wrapped up in this thing for over a decade you emerge without a sense of who you are and where you belong now. And if you are not careful you will gravitate to defining yourself by mere labels and what your current role in life is(wife, mother, sister, friend, career woman, etc). You can feel like a ship without a rudder suddenly trying to navigate life, and all the emotions you stuffed down for years come at you like a hurricane. It can be incredibly overwhelming and it explains why relapse happens so often.

I realize the blessing in this is that I know where I am. I see that I am not where I want to stay, that I have so much more growing to do. I tell people I want to live a life of authenticity and yet I watch myself put up a front more often than not. I long for real connection that goes beyond the surface and yet I keep people at arm's length. I tend to use my introvertedness(if that's not a word it is now) as another shell to hide under. I've spent enough years of my life feeling stuck and out of control. I'm ready to move on and move forward. I want to do the hard things(ok, I don't really want to but I know I need to) and reach out and truly connect with others. I want to find out what it's like to be whole me.

Brene Brown defines whole hearted living this way, "Whole hearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It's going to bed at night thinking, yes I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid but that doesn't change the truth that I am worthy of love and belonging." I think this is such a good place to start. Addicts have so much shame to fight through even after they break free from the behaviors. Shame that the past ever happened, and fear that it might repeat itself in the future. That shame keeps us from believing we are worthy. And only until we believe that truth and begin to live out of it will we start to fully live and move out of the In Between. So this is just to say, I'll be working on that and here is a good list to start with if you are too.

Running My Race

Last fall I made the decision to sign up for my first half marathon. Little did I know how much that decision would change my life. I've had people ask why I run, and the marathon sent us an email asking us to submit our story for why we were running. I didn't then, but it's been on my heart to do so now. The short answer? I run because I can, and because it makes me feel alive. The long answer goes a little further back to a time not so long ago when I couldn't run at all.

This is the part I hate to write, but if I've learned anything in the past decade it is that secrets are the diesel fuel to shame, and shame is the destroyer of life. Many people know a little about my past- I went to treatment for the first time at age 14 for anorexia, bulimia, self-harm and depression. At age 15 I came to Nashville for my second treatment center which I was at for 15 months. When I graduated I did well for a couple of months, but quickly fell back into my struggles. When I moved back to Nashville at 18 I began to work hard at making better choices and finding freedom. The eight years I've been back in Nashville have been full of ups and downs, but many people thought I was recovered and healthy. I graduated from Massage Therapy school, got married, and seemed happy. However, I was hiding the fact that I had many times of falling back into my struggle with bulimia. If you look back a few blog posts you will see that I've written about my struggle before, in times where I was making better choices and doing well. I'm not discounting those times, but I believe they didn't last because I was not being authentic in my every day life. I continued to hold on to little pieces of the eating disorders(body image issues, slight restriction, overexercising, etc) Every time change or stress hit, those behaviors intensified and I easily slipped back into my old coping mechanisms of control and disordered eating. The most recent being a very bad couple of months at the beginning of last year. But at the end of that downward spiral I decided I had had enough. I finally surrendered it all and truly let go of bulimia, anorexia and control. I didn't care what it would take, I knew I had to be done with those things forever or I would not survive. It was the scariest and best decision I have ever made. In making that surrender and letting go of the lies I was believing and the facade I was living behind, I gained more than I ever thought possible. Slowly but surely my health, my strength and my mind are being restored. I feel like all the truth that was poured in to me over the years has finally been able to sink in and take root. I am not perfect and never will be, but I truly believe I am free from the bondage of eating disorders and self-hatred and that is something I often doubted I would ever be able to say.

Back to running...overcoming those issues is a daily process, but when I realized how far I had come I decided I was ready to challenge myself by signing up for the half marathon. I've always enjoyed a challenge, I love sports, and I felt ready to take this on in a healthy way. Running taught me once again that I was stronger than my mind told me I was, and it honestly helped me with my body image more than I realized because I began to be thankful for a body that could still run and function after everything I had put it through. I stopped looking in the mirror so much, got away from the scale, and began to be thankful just to be alive. I realized throughout the training that I was still holding myself back out of fear and self-doubt, but the more I let those things go the stronger and faster I became. This applies to so many other areas in my life as well, and running helped me break through the barriers I set for myself.

I've been thinking a lot about the drastic differences in my life on this day since I made that surrender. On social media(especially in the fitness world) people often post Transformation Tuesday pictures. Well I don't have a before picture, but this year has certainly been a transformation and I thought I would write out a little comparison...

April 30th, 2015
I was driving part time for Uber and remember taking runners to get their race bibs thinking, "They are crazy, but I wish I were healthy enough to run like that."
I could not go a day without caving to bulimia, often multiple times a day.
I was barely keeping down any food in a day.
I could barely run a mile without feeling like I was dying, but I pushed myself to exercise anyway.
I was weak and unhealthy.
I was hanging on by a thread.
I was miserable, angry, depressed, and hated myself.
I felt like a failure as a person, a wife, a sister and friend..
I had fallen into the cycle of my addictions again and I didn't know how to get out.

April 30th, 2016
I just ran my first half marathon and I felt amazing!!(Actually everything hurts from the waist down, but besides that I feel great! 😉)
I eat on average 5 times a day and I haven't thrown up or restricted in 10 months. (I want to point out that I was eating healthy and only doing strength training for several months before starting to run in order to let my body heal. If you are in a similar place of disordered eating please don't jump into exercise or running too quickly. Make sure your body and mind are in a healthy place.)
I run because I love it, not because I feel like I have to.
I feel stronger and healthier than I have ever been.
My mind is free from the obsession over my weight, body image issues and the constant fear of food.
I view food as fuel instead of the enemy.
Instead of obsessing over the size of my jeans I wake up thankful for a body that is strong and capable of more than I could have ever thought.(13.1 miles in 1:50 without stopping?! Sorry, I'm still overwhelmed by this.)
I wake up thankful to be alive.
Life is not perfect but I no longer feel the need to turn to food or bulimia or self-harm when I am overwhelmed and stressed.
I can finally say that I am learning to love who God made me to be, and to embrace my flaws and imperfections as I strive to be a better person each day.
I am learning to walk in God's grace and mercy rather than living in condemnation He never put on me.
I am learning to live in authenticity and I fully believe it has made me a better wife, sister, daughter and friend than when I was just trying to put on the appearance of perfection.

 I've realized that life is a lot like running...for every brutal hill there is to climb, there is a downhill to fly on. For every mountain top there is a valley. There will be hard runs and hard days, and there will be runs that feel like you are flying and days that are full of joy and peace. There will be so many things we can't control. There are runs and there are days where you have to dig really deep, and you discover a place inside you that has more strength than you ever imagined you could have. Fear will always try to hold you back. Fear of change, fear of discomfort, and fear of failure just to name a few. But the only way to get beyond those fears is to keep running and push past them. 

And through it all there is grace. More grace than we can fathom or wrap our minds around. Every time we fall is a chance to get back up. Every day is a chance to get stronger, to do better, to make that next right choice. Every set back can be a learning experience, every weakness a place of growth. Every fear can be overcome with His strength. One day you will look back to a year ago and not even recognize the person that you were.

Today I am grateful. Beyond grateful. My heart is overwhelmed by His love and for where I am in my life. 12 years ago I believed I was broken beyond repair. 1 year ago I was unsure if true healing and freedom would ever be mine. Today....I have no doubt that it is mine. It was mine all along...I just had to realize and start walking in it. He paid the price so we could be FREE. He did all the work! In running terms it's like someone else doing the four months of training, and you get to waltz across that finish line and claim the medal.

I've discovered an amazing life...the one I already had....was just waiting on me to wake up and live it. Sometimes we need to just look UP! Look away from the mirror and the scale and the craziness, and look around at the beautiful life all around us. Then get out there and LIVE IT!! RUN YOUR RACE. Don't try to run someone else's or fake your way through yours. Whatever your race looks like, whatever pace you can run...do the best you can do. It may have nothing to do with actual running. But you have a journey that is uniquely yours, and only you can make the choice to live it. One step at a time, one moment at a time. Don't let it pass you by, you will miss so many beautiful moments, and so many people will miss out on the chance to know the real you. You may not be able to see it right now, but He is making beautiful things out of your life. This song has been on repeat in my head for weeks. Listen to the words and believe them because they are true!

P.S. Skyler and I have already signed up for a 15k in May, will probably do more short races this summer/fall, and our first Full Marathon in December!!! I'm taking the limits off and just seeing where this journey takes me. :) I've started another Instagram account (@wholeheartedrunner7) specifically for running so that I don't blow up everyone's newsfeed if you would rather not see it.

I'm Going to England!!

 I have some exciting news to share! As many of you know I graduated from the Mercy Multiplied(formerly Mercy Ministries) home in Nashville in 2006 when I was 17. Here I am a decade later with an amazing opportunity to give back into the program that started the process of transformation in my life. 

 I am officially going to England in May!! I am headed to Mercy in Bradford,UK from 

May 7th-19th. I am going with a team of other graduates and we will be in the Mercy UK home for a week with our leader, Sarah Dixon from Arise Arts International. She is not only a graduate of Mercy, but the founder of this incredible ministry, Arise. To find out more about this organization please go to http://ariseartsinternational.com. They are doing awesome work all over the world through creative art camps. As it says on the website, ''Arise Arts International is passionate about the creative arts and incorporating them into existing programs that work with women and children. We know firsthand the powerful impact the creative arts have in facilitating healing in the brain from the impact of trauma. Arise Arts mobilizes short-term missions teams to partner with existing organizations by bringing intensive art camps and training opportunities for staff.'' 

 In January I had the privilege of helping with a condensed version of a camp at the Mercy home here in Nashville. http://ariseartsinternational.com/blog/mercy-multiplied-through-art/ It was such a blessing to be a part of, and I am so excited to get the chance to participate in a full week of art camp in the UK. The most exciting part for me is the opportunity it gives me to give back. When I was at Mercy, it meant so much to me when speakers, especially graduates, came in and shared hope and encouragement to all of us in the middle of our healing process. I can't think of a better way to express my gratitude to Jesus and the staff and people along my journey, than to reach my hand back to others and share with them the hope and freedom that is there for them. I would not be where I am today without the knowledge I received at Mercy...that Jesus loves me unconditionally, He has a plan and a purpose for me, and He gives me grace every single day to walk in freedom and joy.


 So I'm reaching out to you first of all, to ask for your prayers for myself and the team on this trip. Please pray that we travel safely, and we are open and available for Jesus to use us at Mercy and throughout the trip to share His love. I am also going to ask that if you feel led to help fund my trip, I would be so grateful.   With airfare, food and lodging for the week of the camp, total costs come to around $1,800. We have already booked the flights through Arise so that is the most urgent cost I'm asking for help with. I need to turn in $650 by February 29th and the remaining $650 by March 10th. Truly, anything you can give will help. If you would like your donation to be tax deductible you can use the following link and select my name from the drop down menu on the left. http://actinternational.org/ministry.aspx?min_id=369. Or you can send money directly to me via Paypal and select "send money to friends or family" to avoid fees. My email address with Paypal is krystal.massage@gmail.com

Thank you all for taking the time to read this, to pray, and if you feel led, to give toward this trip. I am so grateful and excited for this opportunity and I can't wait to tell you all about it when I return!

Love, 
Krystal