{"id":164,"date":"2013-03-01T06:33:55","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T06:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=164"},"modified":"2013-03-13T13:43:40","modified_gmt":"2013-03-13T13:43:40","slug":"brand-new-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=164","title":{"rendered":"Brand New Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The past couple days have been FULL of good news.\u00a0 Ask anyone who saw me yesterday, I was bouncing off the walls at all the positive things that have been happening in my life.\u00a0 As usual, life is a rollercoaster, but it\u2019s been an adrenaline pumping thrill ride this week.\u00a0 I was put to the test of how\u00a0much\u00a0I’ve grown\u00a0over the past several months, and I passed, with flying colors!\u00a0 I saw very clearly my own personal growth.\u00a0\u00a0It\u00a0was awesome!<\/p>\n

So, why did I wake up this morning feeling so down?\u00a0 I think the emotional high of the past couple days left me a little bit drained.\u00a0 Additionally, even though I rose to the occasion in the battle of some of my old demons, it was still a battle.\u00a0 To say I was emotionally exhausted this morning would be an understatement.\u00a0 It was one of those days where I wanted to set my theme song on repeat, Brand New Me by Alicia Keys, to remind myself that I\u2019m not the same person that I was a year ago.\u00a0 Lindsey quirk #3-Yes, I have a theme song.\u00a0 Actually, if I\u2019m being honest, I have several.<\/p>\n

Somehow, despite my depleted emotional state, my physical energy was oddly very much intact.\u00a0 I ran twice today.\u00a0 I needed to.\u00a0 Even though I knew I would be running 5 miles with the social run tonight at FLEET FEET, I knew that I needed to get my hills in.\u00a0 I went to Babler\u00a0and tried, for four miles, to find some answers and to clear\u00a0the fog that had settled on my brain.<\/p>\n

As I was running, I determined that despite my obvious growth, I was somewhat pissed that it had even been tested.\u00a0 And then as I thought about it more, I was pissed at the person who had tested it.\u00a0 And even more I was pissed that I had\u00a0allowed myself to be\u00a0put in a position that required so much growth over so many years.\u00a0 I\u2019m still sorting through\u00a0some of that.\u00a0 (On a side note, boxing is really good for anger management.\u00a0 For legal reasons, it\u2019s a much better idea to punch a bag than a person.)<\/p>\n

I got an email from my friend Emily this morning, and it\u2019s funny because I had actually just been thinking about her when my phone buzzed with the notification of her message.\u00a0 I was specifically thinking of the last time Emily and I got to run together last winter.\u00a0 We did about 7 miles on the lakefront on a beautiful, brisk Chicago morning when the\u00a0coolest thing happened.\u00a0 We were running along, just south of Navy Pier and all of a sudden Emily stopped and pointed to something on the ground.\u00a0 The word \u2018FORGIVE\u2019 had been spray painted on the sidewalk. \u00a0Emily said these were painted all over town, but she\u2019d never actually seen one.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if she\u2019s seen any since, but I don\u2019t get to run in Chicago all that often anymore, so it\u2019s the only one I\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n

I love the picture I took of it. I love how the shadows crossed through the word making it kind of abstract.\u00a0 Because, let\u2019s be real, the concept of forgiveness is kind of abstract.<\/p>\n

Forgiveness is a tough one.\u00a0 People hurt us.\u00a0 People make us angry.\u00a0 Webster defines the word Forgive as 1: to give up resentment of or claim to requital for; and 2: to cease to feel resentment against. \u00a0Resentment can be nasty.\u00a0 It leads to bitterness and it eats away at your heart if you allow it to.\u00a0 I have always said, I will not be a stereotype, I do not want to be bitter.\u00a0 I just won\u2019t allow it.<\/p>\n

However, forgiveness is a process. It takes time.\u00a0 Sometimes it takes a lot of time. \u00a0It\u2019s not just something where you can say, Ok, I forgive you, it\u2019s over, and then move on and never think about it again. Sure, it\u2019d be great if that was actually possible, but we\u2019re human and we just don\u2019t have the capability to do that.\u00a0 \u00a0And here\u2019s the worst part, sometimes you don\u2019t even get the apology that you may be entitled to.\u00a0 So, what do you do with that?<\/p>\n

Well, all I really can do is listen to my heart and just keep trying.\u00a0I can be the brand new me that I know I am.\u00a0I believe that I always want to forgive completely, but it takes time to work through that and\u00a0I won\u2019t say that\u00a0I have forgiven\u00a0before I\u2019m ready to.\u00a0 Coerced forgiveness or a forced apology, isn\u2019t real, so who does\u00a0that help anyway?<\/p>\n

Some things are relatively easy to forgive, like someone accidentally spilling beer on you (I\u2019m really glad we can laugh about that, Marxkors!) or your children breaking the screen door (Ok, so I was pretty mad about that one, and all three kids went to their rooms until they decided to tell the truth about it. But, once they did, I got over it.\u00a0 And, by the way, it\u2019s still not fixed.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve heard Britta say many times, \u201cNothing is unforgiveable\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s true some things might be a lot harder to work through than others, especially when someone really hurts our heart.\u00a0 It\u2019s difficult, it\u2019s challenging, but it\u2019s not impossible.<\/p>\n

The other thing about forgiving that can be really tough is when someone knows our heart is hurt and they keep poking the bruise anyway.\u00a0That\u2019s what happened to me yesterday, my bruise got poked.\u00a0 And today I was dealing with the after effects of that. \u00a0I needed to face that.\u00a0 So I did.\u00a0 I thought about it. I was sad about it for a while. Then I ran some hills.\u00a0 And then, I let it go.\u00a0There is freedom in forgiveness.\u00a0If only it\u00a0could always be that simple.<\/p>\n

\"Emily<\/a>

Emily and RRG, right after we found ‘FORGIVE’.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The past couple days have been FULL of good news.\u00a0 Ask anyone who saw me yesterday, I was bouncing off the walls at all the positive things that have been happening in my life.\u00a0 As usual, life is a rollercoaster, but it\u2019s been an adrenaline pumping thrill ride this week.\u00a0 I was put to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,10,8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-lessonsfromrunning","category-memorablerunningmoments","category-onthedword","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4eO4v-2E","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}