Maybe next time...

So, I planned on writing this blog focused on what I find myself telling my kids pretty frequently: "Maybe next time." It seems to work really well for my 3 1/2 year old son.  It's not a negative, "No." but it's not giving into everything he wants at the moment. It's a hope for the future. Whether it's a toy he really wants, a place he wants to go, or if he's at a place he doesn't want to leave. I usually will respond with, "Well, maybe next time we can ______."  I remember my mom's "magic phrase" was, "we'll see," and it always kept my hopes up. :)

The topic I wanted to go into after this was the Boston Marathon and how maybe there would be a next time for me. Last year, I signed up on a whim thinking, "Well, maybe it's meant to be! It will probably be my only opportunity considering we are planning on moving back to Texas in June (haha! Move back to Texas…. ;-) Well, I didn't get accepted and it was actually a bit of a relief. I would have been obligated to raise $3,000 for the Boston Children's Hospital (which in itself would have been quite a task). And you know what: God had a plan. Thank God I didn't run.

If you follow my blog (or if you know me well),  you know that we were there last year when the bombs went off. Right there. And what freaks me out the most is the finishing time on the clock: I don't remember the exact time on the clock (the time people were finishing), but I remember very clearly thinking, "If I would have run this year, this would have been around when I would have finished." This was minutes before the bombs. It puts a lump in my throat thinking about it and makes me so sad for those that were affected WAY more seriously than we were.

Well, my "next time" is going to be the Boston Marathon 2014. I was watching the news a few weeks ago (which I rarely EVER do), when I heard that there would be a few spots available to people who were affected by last year's marathon. You needed to apply online, write a paragraph telling your story, and they would choose the people that would run.  Honestly- at first I thought, "that's cool… but I can't…. that scares me so much, and I wouldn't be able to focus on finishing 26.2 miles after what happened last year…" Well, later that night I got this feeling that I just HAD to apply. It was really an out of body kind of experience. I was scared, but had this voice in my head saying, "You can do this! You NEED to do this!" This invitation was only for the 2014 Boston Marathon, so I couldn't apply next year. Well, I got the acceptance email today…I really really did NOT think I would get it…so today I was going to write about "maybe next time"  thinking I would be declined, when in reality…my next time is here. Even the day before the marathon last year, I went on a run and posted a picture of the 2013 finish line on Facebook and wrote, "seeing this motivates me to run next year!" Who would have thought.

I know it seems crazy…it took me a while to get over all that happened and what we experienced last year…but in all honesty…it seems to be coming full circle. Had I not been there when I was there last year, I wouldn't have a story to tell, and I wouldn't have this opportunity to run this year. And it's only made me stronger and more determined.
It's been a long road, but I get to check something off my bucket list…a BIG something that I thought might not happen. :) And even if I don't finish the entire 26.2 miles (because WOW that's a LOT of miles!) ….at least I had my "next time" to try. :)