Feeling the Burn: Living and Growing

As a runner I throw that term around liberally. I try to push my runs just enough that I can feel my muscles working and growing, but not to the point where I’ve injured myself. I like that burn – it reminds me that I’m being strengthened.

When Randy and I first acknowledged to each other that there was more to what was going on than just friendly banter we struggled with the fear of not having our situation accepted by others. We were afraid that we’d meet so much resistance that we’d be doomed, in spite of our best intentions. We knew that on the outside, none of what was happening made sense.

But we weren’t living on the outside. This was happening to us.

Early on we spent hours discussing what it would look like for us to be together, in his 2 bedroom home, with four children running around. We joked about kids having to sleep in the tub and having to eat cat food. (yes! we were kidding… sort of… OK! we were kidding!) It seemed impossible on some level. But we also knew that we had the smarts to make it work.

(text msg) From Randy Archer at Feb 1, 2010 8:41 :

Fear is turning from: how will Karla & I handle that? … to just … We will.

One of the things that became important early on was to have a plan. We needed it for us. We needed it for the children. And we needed it for the people on the outside friends, family and anyone else who hadn’t been privy to our hours and hours of conversation.

We were (sort of) sure that somehow that would help anyone who questioned what we were doing: “Ooooh… you met on Twitter. How quaint… But you have a plan? OH good!”

That should have made it better; more palatable, right?

But it didn’t.

For the most part, people have been encouraging. Even our parents wanted to be happy for us, in spite of the thousands of questions that came to mind (“What exactly is a TWITTER?”). However, we haven’t been without our share of repetitive questions to answer: “Does Randy know how to change a diaper?”, “Four kids… really? Why would he take that on?”, “How do you know that he/she’s not a _________” , “What kind of woman would move her children to another state to marry a man she’s only know for _______ days/weeks/month?”

And it burns.

It burns because we have tried so hard to do this the right way. By “right way”, I don’t mean according to people’s time frames. I mean RIGHT: as in Smart. Thinking it through. Planning it out. Tossing it around in every direction to see what it looks like and how to make it work.

A time frame doesn’t mean we’ve put any more thought into things. It just mean more time has passed.

It burns because we tried to talk ourselves out of this.

But just like running, feeling the burn has strengthened me. It has pushed me to that point where I am not the same as I was before. I’m propelling myself forward. I’m growing.

The burn doesn’t always feel great, but the outcome is always worth it.

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