I am not a track athlete. I have never been a gym rat. In fact, I think there were about 6 months in my entire 27 (almost 28) years of living in which I would have considered myself to be fit. And by fit, I mean, I ran about 2-3 miles three times a week by convincing myself that I could eat more ice cream that way. But never- never- have I considered myself physically incapable; it's just not my preference. I can do it if I really want to, there are just so many other things I'd rather be doing. Like, reading. Or writing. Or cleaning the lint trap in the dryer.
This, however, all came crashing down on me today when I had to walk up two flights of stairs at work to accomplish an errand I had been putting off. And I stood at the bottom. And fought the tears. Why did they look so long? I have never really enjoyed taking the stairs before, but never have I felt like I couldn't do them. Yikes. This is a whole new step toward the end of pregnancy. I gathered my courage and refused to cry in the corridor, in case you were wondering. I took those stairs, panting and sweating like Richard Simmons the entire way. I encouraged myself that if worse came to worse, I could always take the elevator back down. But I didn't. I waddled the whole way. Did you know that going down the stairs preggo is worse than going up? When you can't see your feet, you definitely can't see the next step and what might be stuck to it that you would have probably avoided if your vision wasn't so impaired by the large, basketball sized bobble in the front of your shirt.
I'm sure there's a metaphor in here somewhere- something God's trying to teach me through this embarrassing revelation, but all I can think of right now is to concentrate very hard on getting my breath back to an even pace, not to drip sweat on the test booklets and that I, officially, have 10 days left of staring down those stairs before I'm out on maternity leave.