Have a little faith!

I have kind of "fallen into" the opportunity to work at a Shade Clothing kiosk here at the Costco for the ten days that it's up. I'm lucky to have gotten a shift of 4:30 to 8:00, Monday through Friday, two Saturdays of 9:15-2:00 and 2:00-6:00, and no Sundays. Working just until a week from tomorrow! This is the perfect way for me to make us a tiny bit of dough, without feeling stuck in a permanent job outside home (which I do not want). Phill will be home when I'm not, except for nights when he's coaching Little League Football (another thing he's got his hands in, coupled with his day-to-day job and his radio thing.....), and I won't be home so late that I can't read to the boys before they're asleep! I think it's going to be fun!

However, true to my worry-wart tendencies, I'm a teensy bit nervous. Mostly about the unknown. But I keep finding that it's mostly self-doubt that causes my nervousness. "What if someone asks me a question and I don't know the answer? What if I'm super shaky and tip over a mannequin and get dust on the bust of the shirt? What if I don't know how to help the customer?" And so on.....

Now, because Phill has a four-day weekend, this morning I was able to go run for a long time while the babies hung out at home in pajamas and crazy hair, eating sugary cereal with Phill while I whittled away my worries on the trail. Before I left, Phill asked how far I was going. (He always asks, and he always watches the clock when I'm gone, because where I'm concerned, he's a worry-wart too and calls me if I'm not back when I say I will be. Which I dearly love about him.) Anyway, I responded that it was 6 miles total, and then said, "But of course I won't be running six miles this morning." And went on my way. Well, while I drove to the start of the trail (hey, this is not laziness on my part. It starts a couple miles from home. Probably.), I was thinking why I was so sure I wouldn't run six miles. I realize that a lot of my goals give me room for a little bit of failure. Which is good to some extent, of course, because I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. But how much can I chew? :) When Phill asks me why I don't shoot for the sky sometimes (ex. "I will exercise 10 minutes at least two days a week" was my goal once upon a time), I usually say, "Oh, because I know myself." I know when I usually feel weak, I know what usually causes me to go a little off-track with my endeavors. But as I drove to the beginning of the trail, I wondered if it's really because I don't know myself.

What if I have no idea how strong I can really be? What if I'm not really afraid of failure, but afraid to find that I am in fact one hundred times more capable than I think I am, and therefore blazingly more responsible for my various failures? What if my not-so-sky-high goals are evidence of a secret belief that I am actually only capable of mediocrity?

I know I'm human. I know I'm subject to mess up, to stumble my way through some of the newer adventures, to find myself on my knees asking for help each step of the way. This is good. Humility is good. But I think I need to test myself just a bit more, see if I can do more than I think I can, and pray for the strength to do the "good things" I want to do. And I say "I know I'm human", but isn't part of being human learning to progress and grow? Isn't that our purpose here? Isn't that why we are here? To progress, to grow, to learn and then to enjoy the blessings of our efforts in this life and the next?

For the record, I did not run six miles today, but not because I didn't think I could. Because I didn't want to! (And the desire aspect of goal-setting is an entirely new post....) My stomach was growling the entire way, and I was worried about getting lost, being that I was on a new part of the trail and have been bestowed with a rather wandering navigational sense. I think I ran three miles. It was fun. It felt good. I feel good, and I'm filled with hope that I can keep challenging myself in little ways each day until past challenges are habit and future challenges are opportunities.

Well. I should go now, and see if today I can do a little more than I thought I could. (If I want to.....) My omelet turned into, shall we say, "egg crisp", while I was finishing the second paragraph. That pan is going to be a beast to clean, and Savanna is still in pajamas.