Perseverance

Look out the window.  What do you see?  I see driving, cold rain and hail, stormy seas and utter uncomfortableness and I am going swimming in it.  A normal, sane person would take one look and turn around and go back to sleep in their warm, safe bed; I take a deep breath and leap.  As we are running down to the ocean pool in wet suits, I try not to think about what I am about to do and just focus on the run, but in the back of my mind I am thinking “what am I doing? It is freezing!”  After a quick warm up swim, the wet suit starts doing its job and I look up to see a rainbow stretched across the sky.  I don’t know whether it was my lack of oxygen or my sheer desperation to find beauty in the cold, but it was the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen: it looked like God had decided that today He would make a rainbow with all the colors of an artist’s palate and leave the viewers breathless (literally).  Then suddenly the wind picked up and the hail began to harass our faces and the cold set in.  My lungs began to freeze and I started losing motion in my limbs.  My face felt like marble and pretending to be a drowning casualty being saved by a training lifeguard wasn’t helping.  After a shower and lunch I felt something that I didn’t necessarily expect to feel: pride.  I was proud that I wasn’t scared off by the wind and rain, but that I actually stepped out of my comfort zone and did it anyway.

The whole time I have been here, I have been outside my comfort zone and loving it!  I have learned so much about myself and now I feel that I can do anything I set my mind to, and plus, I am having the time of my life.  Everyday is a new opportunity to learn something about how to live and have a new adventure.  What have you done today?

 

~ by allieandelizabethinireland on October 4, 2008.