Your Word

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We watched the movie Eat Pray Love recently. It's a true story (and book) by a woman named Elizabeth, recently divorced, who travels around the world in search of her life's meaning. She stops in Italy (to Eat), India (to Pray), and Bali (where she finds Love). When Elizabeth is in Rome, one of her friends explains to her that each city has "one word" that defines it - like "Ambition" for New York - and then gives her a personal challenge to define herself in one word.

This scene reminded me of a yearly tradition we have in our household. When we were Trinity Fellows our friend Shannon asked us all to share one word that defined the previous year, and then to share one word that we hoped would define the next year. We've been doing it ever since!

The exercise is interesting because it requires you to consider the past year's events - it's joys and sorrows - along with your responsibilities and relationships to find one single word that could define an entire year. It then it requires you to consider your hopes, dreams, prayers, and desires for your life (or more specifically, your next year). Our "word" speaks a lot about who we are (both our stories and our characters), and who we want to be.

So if you're reading this, let us pass the tradition on to you. What is your word for this past year? Next?

Stay tuned for our "words" in the coming days. In light of all that has happened in our families this year, we have a lot of words to sort through!

By the way, we're up to 6 miles in our training program which we found especially hard to accomplish after fattening up on all of the baked goods of the season!

Note to self, Eggnog is not a protein shake.

12-11-10

Today we reached a new milestone in our training program - 5 miles! For both of us, who have never been long-distance runners, each "long run" day brings about a new personal record - so we have a little mini-celebration each Saturday for each other! This morning Lauren (a.k.a. Superwife), made scones and French pressed coffee right after we finished!

Today is also a special day for Jon's family. His brother Ben and sister-in-law Summer are in the hospital right now having a little baby boy. Prayers for them as they welcome their second into the world! Lauren noted that 12-11-10 is a pretty cool birthday for the little guy.

As for other countdowns, we are 5 months out from the Indy-Mini!

We struggled to roll out of bed this morning to train knowing how cold it was outside and how tired we've been with the busy travel schedule of late, but were reminded of our brother Andy and his daily, moment-by-moment struggle to make his way in this new world of his. At each moment of pain we experience in our runs, we count it as joy to be sharing in some small way in Andy's journey.

We are as determined as ever to complete this race and run our hearts out for him.