What kind of runner are you?????

I use to run track in high school.  I was not a good sprinter.  I was more of a long distance runner.  For the last 8 yrs, as a stay-at-home mom, I have felt that my life  functioned like a marathon and I was cool with that.  I was comfortable with it. But in the last month there has been a shift.  My weekdays feel more like a sprint.  And I'm not a sprinter, or so I thought.  Business has picked up in the lives of my husband and I.  And I still have my 2 yr old at home with me for the most part.  So I'm finding my days being so filled up; and parts of my day come so quickly, that it feels like a sprint.  What do you do when days turn into a sprints, and you thought you were just a  distance runner.  

First of all, when the shift has come from God and not by your own hand, you have to trust Him.  First trust Him.  Second, you have to realize that through the power of Jesus, you can do more than you could ever imagine.  Third, don't try to control what's happening.  Don't let it control you. But cooperate with what God wants to do through it.  I remember my coach wanted to try me in sprints and I would say "No, I'm not a sprinter".  Well, I can't tell that to God because I know that He knows what He put inside of me better than me.  God is able to call out of you, what He has placed in you; and it will come forth.

Isaiah 29:16 Common English Bible (CEB)

¹⁶ You have everything backward!
    Should the potter be thought of as clay?
    Should what is made say of its maker,
        “He didn’t make me”?
    Should what is shaped say of the one who shaped it,
        “He doesn’t understand”?

Isaiah 55:11

 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

When you have been functioning a certain way in your life for a very long time and God calls you to start to function differently, there is a paradigm shift, you have to be willing to shift priorities.  For me, with sprinting, I didn't like that I had to exert so much energy in such a quick spurt.  I preferred being more in control of when I exerted myself.  With a sprint, you had to be ready right out of the gate. That's how I feel now, when I wake up in the morning.  I am sprinting until I get my daughter from school and then I'm spent  But I still have more ahead of me to do.  There is dinner, homework, etc.  But that's what a sprint is, you put forth all your exertion out of the gate and very quickly the race is over and you can be pretty spent after that, even though it is a short race.  I believe God wants us to be able to be sprinters and marathon runners in our lives.  You may be better at one than the other, but that's ok.  I have started to make adjustments in my life according to "the type" of race God has me in right now.  I only do what I absolutely have to do, come 3pm in the afternoon.   Don't be afraid of a change in the pace of your life.  Don't be scared of the exhaustion or the exertion.  Handle it like surfing, you don't try to control the wave, but you don't let the wave control you either.  You ride it, let it take you to where you are suppose to be.  It will bring you closer to Jesus