{"id":229511,"date":"2024-04-01T13:51:27","date_gmt":"2024-04-01T17:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/liveoriginal.com\/?p=229511"},"modified":"2024-08-07T10:37:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T14:37:15","slug":"ignoring-the-limits-god-created-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/liveoriginal.com\/ignoring-the-limits-god-created-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Ignoring the Limits God Created for Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fourteen years ago, I suffered heat stroke in sight of the finish line of a community race I\u2019d been training to win.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was eighty degrees, with high humidity, and I\u2019d trained for months on seventy-degree mornings – unusually cool for summer. I had written on my hand my time goals for each mile \u2014 my splits, as they\u2019re called in the running world. My brain locked onto those times, and I achieved most of them until the last mile when I began losing my mind. I learned later that it\u2019s common among those who suffer heat strokes: they ignore the signs their body is giving them to stop. When the stroke occurs, the body has already offered up many signals, many cries for help, to pause, to slow, to drink water. Finally, when provided no relief, the body shuts down.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was no space for me to hear the warnings, to pay attention to what my body was telling me. My mind was fixed on those splits, on the attempt to win.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are embodied. Limited. Full of dreams and passions for abundance, and yet requiring seven to eight hours of sleep and sixty-four ounces of water daily to function well.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have eternity in our hearts, and yet we can fracture an ankle, suffer a headache for days, and scrape the skin right off a shin in one fall.<\/span><\/p>\n

This story returned to me as I faced a year that held significant surprises and significant hurts. For a while, as I fielded those, I kept the pace. Daily dinner for nine, groceries delivered on time, texts replied to on the same day, others\u2019 expectations met. I was fixed on my splits, though unknowingly.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then my body said uncle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Month after month I found myself sick, each time, with an explanation until there were no more. Friends just came through town a day after they cleared the stomach bug, so of course I got it next. I prepped our family of nine for a cross-country trip and then we drove it. Of course, with disrupted schedules and little girls waking in the night in unfamiliar homes, I was bound to get sick. But after several months of recurring sickness and waning explanations, I realized I had still been watching my splits. Still serving dinner around the table, still taking family trips, and still bringing meals to friends in need, ignoring my own needs. The temperature rose, life got heavier, and still I drove myself.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t