Pursue.

I was completely alone in the woods.  Panic started to settle in.  Was I lost?  Had I took a wrong path?  I kept telling myself to push through and to keep going.  I was six hours and 42km into this race, and there was no way I was going to stop now.  I was committed.

After an exhausting climb to the top, I began my decent down, and that is when the pain shifted from muscle fatigue to joint pain. Each step down screamed at me to stop. It was all I could focus on, but I pressed on.

I felt the longing ten years ago.  It nagged at me, like something was pulling the bottom of my heart strings.  I couldn’t place it, but words started to settle in and take root;  community, family, wellness, adventure, building.

So I began to search.  I tried to create this environment I had in my church.  And it failed.  I didn’t have the people skills or the knowledge to know how to start it.  Then I tried it at work, and it started to build.  People started connecting.  Friendships and bonds were beginning to form.  Kids and parents started to gather together…I felt like my dream was finally starting to take form.

With my husband’s work causing us to move, a song inspired me to take the leap; The Struts would sing, “Could have been me”.  I had to take the chance.  Just what if its out there?  What if I missed out on an opportunity?

The song sings, “I wanna taste love and pain, wanna feel pride and shame. I don’t wanna take my time, don’t wanna waste one line. I wanna live better days, never look back and say could have been me, it could have been me.”

Often when I am inside, my thoughts and heart begin to wander.  My gaze drifts to a window and I search for a view of the mountains.  They are constantly calling me.  They often interrupt my thoughts in mid-conversation and they tempt me to run away and recklessly abandon all solidarity and run.  There are times my body is present, but my spirit is off soaring on a subconscious adventure through the trees, dodging roots and rocks that speckle the curvaceous path before me.

So we moved and I pursued again.  For five years.  I tried again to form this vision at two more gyms and another church.  My heart began to ache, and I remember saying to my husband, “Why would God place this vision, this longing on my heart if it’s not meant to be?”

I started to work at a gym that didn’t have a facility.  This gym would pop up kids camps and school bootcamps.  They had said maybe eventually they would open up a gym in Calgary.

And then the nagging grew until it felt like I couldn’t hear anything else.  I blindly started typing out my dream, my vision.  Like a dam breaking and the waters finally released to flow, rushing through unmarked land, recklessly abandoning all caution. 

I poured. And then I leaped. I sent it to my boss.

I had been running for nearly eight hours.  I was positive my toes were bleeding.  My hydration pack was causing callouses on my collar bone and lower back, and my knees screamed at every step I took.  The trees cleared and the path before me opened up towards the finish line.  I pushed past the pain, opened my stride one last time, and ran down the hill.  Fifty-two kilometres.  I did it.  I completed my first solo Ultra.  Crossing that line, I crumbled; gasping for air I was over-taken by emotions of relief, of pain, of joy.  The experience of that moment will forever be something I will cherish.  I was stubborn enough to pursue the finish line, and now have the medal to prove it.

The day after I sent that email to my boss, he called me.  I answered, and he said; “So I read your email and laughed.”

I forgot to breathe and my heart felt like it stopped mid-beat.  He continued; “Yesterday I met with the owner, and we wrote down what we had envisioned if we started a gym here in Calgary.  And then after the meeting I received your email; describing our gym.”

I am now apart of a new gym whose focus is build community and empower athletes; for every member of the family.  The gym opens in a couple of weeks, and I am so excited to begin this new job I am made to do.  Every experience, every failure, every obstacle that I faced, has been preparing me for this new adventure.

Dear friend, pursue your dreams.  Jump in with both feet.  Pray relentlessly.  And despite all of the pain, all of the years of waiting, longing, training; pursue.  Because dreams really can come true.

“When you have found just how fast you can run; When you have found your place in the sun. It’s not just you that you’ll find; has made the run and the climb. It’s everyone. Learning to bend and not to break; living to give more than you take. Dying to live, living to try; feet on the ground, dreams in the sky. It’s never how much you have.” Living The Braveheart Life: Randall Wallace.