Often in my life, I feel like I am about to run in a race I wasn’t meant to be in. It feels as though I am at the starting line and, instead of feeling confident in my ability to run the race, I am anxiously looking around, hoping that my coach will pull me out at the last possible second. I see hurdles ahead and I have convinced myself that I can’t make it over them. I’m not ready, I think to myself. This is too much. It’s not what I’m prepared for. It takes some runners years to perfect their form needed to gracefully complete the race. It doesn’t seem fair that life doesn’t really prepare you for the obstacles ahead. You kind of need to see the hurdle and overcome it as best you can.

Now the problem with hurdles is the spacing. That’s the problem I have with them. You need to get the exact right number of steps in order to push off with your dominant foot. If you fail to do this, you won’t make it over. You may even get hurt. My life hurdles sometimes feel like they are spaced too close together. They probably are since there are no regulations in life. I feel as though I don’t have time to recover in between the last one and the next one. Before I know it, I’m pushing off with the wrong foot or I have too few steps to even get a foot off the ground.

If you’re like me, you will probably want to stop short. The thought of I can’t do it is still in your mind and it overwhelms you. You don’t want to collide with it, you don’t want to get hurt. You might even be afraid, no one said the obstacles that life puts in our path were easy to overcome. So you decide to stop. Unfortunately, that’s not how to handle the situation. These hurdles are here and with each one you overcome, the better prepared you are for the next. You’re getting stronger and even though you may not be jumping over them as gracefully as you hoped you would you are still landing with your feet on the ground.

Often in my life, I feel like I am about to run in a race I wasn’t meant to be in. But I’m going to run it as best I can and I will jump over each hurdle despite not having perfect form. And when I finish the race, I’ll look back on all I have accomplished and feel content with myself for how far I have come.

"Life’s problems wouldn’t be called hurdles if there wasn’t a way to get over them."
-Uknown