The other day a person that I follow on Twitter posted this video. It is actually a pretty good watch. We have the power to choose how we see and deal with things, and it is a refreshing reminder of that.

This past Sunday my wife and I completed our first half marathon. We are both pretty sore from it, but I know that we are both glad that we did it. We were not the first ones to finish the race, but we did not walk a single part of it! That was our main goal, and we did it. It was pretty awesome to go down the finish line with all the people cheering you on, and Delissa and I finished and exactly the same time.

The real point of this post is to tell you how amazing my wife is. She did all of this will a pretty severe muscle strain. She pulls or strains her back quite easily at times, and it happened again on Thursday before the race. She didn’t think it was that bad, and she decided to do a small run before the race to loosen up some. On Saturday morning, she went for a run, and I get a message from her.

I immediately run outside, and I see her bent over in a ton of pain. I didn’t think that she would be able to run the half marathon at all, but we did everything that we could think of to try to make it easier for her. We bought a brace for her back, and we had some medicine that she took to try to ease the pain. I guess that it all worked because she ran the whole thing.

I am so proud and amazed by her strength. There are people who can’t run half marathons at all, and she was able to do it with a bad back. She couldn’t walk for half the day on Saturday, and some how she made it 13.1 miles.

People have asked are we going to run another one, and we are not sure yet. I know that a part of me wants to, but I am still too sore to think about the next one. In a week or two, I might be a little more open to it. It was a great experience, and I am glad that Delissa and I can cross it off of our lists of things that we wanted to do. Now we have to get back to running for the 1,000 mile goal this year.

Over the past few years, bullying has become more and more of a topic of discussion. With the children that are taking their lives because of it, we have been forced to think about the things that we allow children to say to each other, and we have decided to take a stand that we are not going to allow it anymore. In my childhood, there were times that I was bullied, but I don’t think that the level of it was anywhere near the level that children face today. I am sure that some of the things that were said to me changed who I was then, and I don’t know how different I would be without those things.

One of the people who I follow on Twitter posted this video, and it kind of struck a chord with me. There are so many things that you have to worry about as a parent, and you have to add this to the list. A school or playground should be a safe place for a child, but that has changed over the years. I hope that we can shift the world back to the way it used to be. Teasing and name-calling will always be around, but we have to limit the severity of it. We have to take the bite of our youth’s tongues. It is not until you get much older that you realize how much of an impact your words have on other people, and a child will never understand that. We have to teach them kindness and acceptance of all people.