Introducing CrossFit Purged

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”
– William Faulkner

It’s hard to believe it’s been over 5 years since I found CrossFit and it quickly won my commitment, passion, and love.  Four years ago I started dreaming of living CrossFit full time - opening a box, helping others accomplish new and incredible feats, and nurturing a community of people dedicated to becoming the best they can be.

Some one else shared that dream… though I hadn’t met him yet.  It’s been exactly 2 years since I met Christopher Sheets at the SoCal CrossFit Regionals and in those two short years our lives have been turned upside down in the most amazing ways.

In two years, we met, romanced, exchanged vows, changed jobs, traveled, had two car accidents, endured injury, started brewing a baby, and opened a business together. 

Here we are: Team Sheets is at the helm of CrossFit Purged!

(I know there’s no excuse for a neglected blog, but those are my excuses!)

In the 8 short weeks that our doors have been open, we have poured our hearts, energy, and time into building not just a fitness program, but a community and a place where people can feel at home.  A place they can face their fears and limitations and persevere to overcome them.  A place where they can blow off steam, where they can find camaraderie as they work together, sweat together, and yes, sometimes even bleed together setting new personal records.  

We have been honored and grateful for the amazing people that have come our way, that have supported us and been on the ground floor of creating this new and empowering community.  We love you all and are so excited to see the positive changes in your lives as you make the time, put in the effort, and choose not to settle for just skating by, but to show up each day and give your best… whatever that happens to be at that point in time.  You are destined for greatness and we are thrilled to be a part of the journey.

The changes of the last two years moved me away from the competition floor. Maybe I will return there one day … If I’ve learned anything from CrossFit it’s that you’re never too old and it’s never too late to follow your passions.   In this time, here and now, I have a different dream.  I am so honored to have the gift of growing a new life, to pursue being a fit mama, living well, and living (I hope) as an inspiration and example in different ways.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to coach, to have been mentored and now share with others knowledge gained over the last five years.  Thank you CrossFit Purged for giving me that opportunity. 

Taking the step to open our own CrossFit affiliate did not come without lots of questions, fears, delays, and unknowns.    About that, well Kirkegaard says it best,

“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

And so, Dear Husband and I are finding ourselves, our new life, and our future in this endeavor.  Life is nothing if not an adventure! If it were something other than an adventure, though the security might be comforting, it would come at the cost of apathy and a dull spirit.  Thank you again to all the adventurers out there, to those seizing the opportunities every day brings for you.  You are our inspiration.

The doors of CrossFit Purged are always open to you!  Stop on by!

Becoming Mommy....

About 6 weeks ago, we had the most wonderful news!
Positive pregnancy test, signaling that indeed life was present and growing in my belly.
As always, so many feelings... awe, wonder, immense gratitude, disbelief, a little fear, and a little disappointment at the timing for entirely material and physical reasons, but also so much the deep fulfillment of hope.

We weren't "trying" but we were always open.  We knew OUR ideal plans, but also knew that when God wants a baby God will have a baby, and we rest in the peace of knowing who is really in charge of our lives.

We're growing a family!  On two levels really.  We have just opened a CrossFit gym, which is really a topic for another post, but it's been a labor of love pouring all our resources: time, talent, and treasure, into building something new.  It's beautiful and we are so grateful!

And behind the scenes of all that, I've been growing a tiny human.  Which is also a labor of love in a quiet way (quiet ONLY in the sense that social media has not been informed, but husband hears about daily)... with nausea and outright exhaustion and so much of the rest that goes along with the bliss of the first trimester.

But there's something else. There's something else apart from all those physical things that I've noticed. From the moment I sensed there was a life there, before it was possible to know for sure.  There was something.
Maybe you know this thing???
The down right gripping fear, which fights within me to be given credence, that something may be wrong. That something will go wrong. And it is utterly and completely out of my control.

I knew from the first moments that I have a baby. I rebelled within myself against the idea that I should wait to share this until I was "past the risky 1st trimester" - as if it's not real unless baby makes it that far.  And so we shared with friends and family.  And I talked to baby and welcomed baby and did my best to bond with baby even though I have no guarantee we'll make it through to delivery.

Geez, Kath. Why so serious? Why so negative?  I don't know. I don't mean to be. But I really did fear that we would have trouble conceiving.  Only in the corner of my heart, but I expected it. Because so many I know suffer this waiting and hoping and not realizing. And my hormones ARE sort of weird.
So then there was a hope, and knowledge, a thought that there really was a baby there... not yet even implanted. And I prayed she would stay.  I invited her to stay.  And almost every day I do the same.

And something else. It's an entirely new sort of waiting and hoping and trusting beyond my fears and worrying.  A new sort of daily sacrifice of surrender... that is heart wrenching.  I think it's the stuff of mom making.

I think it's the beginning of my heart being stretched and grown to love in an entirely new capacity.  It's the growing of a new vocation... the one I always dreamed of... wife and mom. pouring out my heart and life in love for my family. and in that, finding my path to holiness.

And so no matter whether this baby grows to live with us, or goes to live with God.  She is real, she is loved.  All will be well.


PS. I do not know that it's a girl. It's probably a boy.  I just hate the He/She, Him/Her qualifiers :)