Do you love your view?

Today’s blog post was going to be about feminism… how guys can’t just come into the gym and take the equipment we (females) were using because we are girls. Since apparently, they have an entitlement to be at the gym lifting weights and that we should just go back to that treadmill and walk for another mile and then go get a smoothie and pretend like we love working out… I thought in the land of equality, and women having to pay to get into bars that men would scotch over and share the rack....... however that’s not what I’m going to write about today.

 I found myself at the gym this morning at 7:50, which here is a late day compared to some of the mornings in the gym in Columbia. As I was going through my lift that Josh, our weight coach, had emailed me I saw this girl working out and her pants caught my eye. She had the Olympic rings on her pants let me tell you first hand that this girl was in great shape. Very seldom in public work out places do I feel like an underdog, but his morning I did. Let me clarify this point real quick… I’m not saying I don’t feel like an underdog at USC in Josh’s weight room, because I do.. I’m talking purely public gym facilities. This girl was crushing it, and whoever you are you are in GREAT shape.

And it really got me to thinking, I’m in this foreign country trying to come up with 2 hour workouts for myself to stay in the same shape I’m in when I’m at school working out 4 hours a day sometimes. How did this happen? How did I get here?

On top of this feeling, I got from being in the gym this morning, today I said diet for the first time in my entire life and meant it. I don’t want to know how much weight I’ve put on since being here. Between the snack and the drinks and the lack of exercise it could be 10 pounds. How do we expect to go from conditioned athletes to regular people? These transition periods that sometimes fall between one segmentation of our lives to the next one can be the trickiest.

I find myself frequently thinking about the future. About my time after being an athlete. Sometimes I think about it fondly, because I hope that God has a plan greater for me than my persual of a semi-mediocre athletic career. And sometimes I realize that paying for a gym membership and planning my own workouts is more than I can bear.

I stood at the top of the stairs that I ran for the 11^th time this afternoon knowing in my heart that this was something I had to write down. Because when people say they are studying abroad, people think of it as this beautiful time of seeing everything and not thinking about anything. However, it truly just is a long transition period, and once you think you’ve got it figured out, something else changes. I have found myself at times missing my daily repetitive boring and scary routine.

But as I sit out on this bench looking at the lake, in the warmest day we’ve had since we’ve got here I’m realizing you’ve got to love the view. Of the place you’re in. Of how you look. Of all the things that God has done for you to put you in the place you are right now. Even if it's the repetitive workouts and days that don't feel like they'll end.

So tell me? Do you love your view?