If You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going!

In my "searching the internet" boredom, I ran across the above quote by Winston Churchill. I got it immediately!  It was like the words on the screen just yelled at me! However, for further clarification, (and to make sure I wasn’t posting something that had an alternative meaning), I looked up what the “Literary Geniuses” have interpreted it to mean AND if it matched what I concluded. In my search I ran across another blogger of a totally different topic and this is what she had to say about Mr. Churchill’s quote:

“If life is a journey, then any short-cut is a death-trap. It might be
literal death, or it might be that drawn-out metaphorical death of
the spirit I have spoken of before, but bypassing and cheating your
own journey will only ever ensure you spend far longer in the dark
places than you might otherwise have done. If you’re going through
hell, you might wish to go back, to a better time or place, but this
will ultimately just take you deeper into that hell”. –Vivianne Tuffnell

I would love to say that I took the meaning that deeply, but no, I’m much simpler! I looked at it as an inspiration to keep running! AND I HATE RUNNING! Yesterday, we decided to try a new place to run to make the terrain more realistic to that of a real 5K. My neighborhood is mostly flat with little to no challenge so this park with its horrid hills was perfect. Like I mentioned before we have been using the Couch Potato to 5K program. It slowly progresses you to running 3.2 miles nonstop in 9 weeks. For the first couple of weeks you run one minute, walk a minute and half, then run a minute and half, and walk two minutes and so on. Well, yesterday was the first day of the minute and half running and BOY DID I FEEL IT! I felt so defeated, considering I was killing the minute run, I thought that this would be a breeze! It was HELL, PURE HELL!  My chest was hurting, my feet…my knees… HELL! And it was only 30 seconds more! If it wasn’t for my motivation workout playlist and watching hubby ahead of me, I would have quit! But, I kept shuffling along, shuffling through my hell. So you can imagine the light bulb that went off when I read the quote. I had to laugh to myself. It’s kinda like God put that there to help me understand why I am going through this journey- through being the operative word-.

So to me, I think Mr. Churchill was trying to say, don’t stay in your hell, keep going, and get through it! Because stopping would be more painful than going through! I have heard many people say “I’m just going through” and I have heard many pastors say “ Thank God that you’re going through and not stuck”! I guess they all have the same meaning, keep going no matter how hard, no matter what has been placed in your way. For me it’s running and resisting the urge to eat cupcakes! But, I know that just going through a little hell or an uncomfortable place is just temporary and the true hell is in living life overweight and unhappy. So Mr. Churchill, I’m going to keep running through this hell… because I know there is a brighter more fulfilling place on the other side!