Ragnar Relay: Madison to Chicago, June 10-11

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Crazy as it sounds, I am reluctant to go to sleep tonight because then today, Friday still for me, will be completely over.  I suppose now that I have showered and brushed my teeth and hair, it already has ended, and nothing is left but a grumpy intestinal tract, a sunburned face, some sore quadriceps muscles, and a renewed passion for running so strong that it makes me want to cry to think about it.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure if this weekend was going to be a good thing or not.  In particular, I didn’t know what my foot was going to do, and it seemed to me that that had the potential to ruin the whole thing for me.  I have just had enough with injury and inability and being the weak link.  It feels awful.  And I’ve been a bit disconnected from the running group for a while, so although I am friends with everyone who was going to be in my van, I was feeling cautious about that as well.

Fortunately, as soon as I woke up on Friday morning, well before 6am,  I was excited.  I was excited just to be going somewhere and to maybe be running, although still pretty nervous about the foot.  Mary picked me up a bit after 7am, and we met the rest of the team and all trooped up to Wisconsin.  We made a gas/Wendy’s stop, a grocery stop, and a chai stop (for me.)  I started to feel like things were going to be OK one way or another.

We arrived at the park in Madison before noon and decorated the vans.  We hung around a bit and attended the mandatory safety meeting.  Then I hurried back to the car to change out of my jeans and team shirt and into running clothes.  I had been watching the weather prediction obsessively.  It seemed very likely that we were going to get rained on constantly, and the temperature was supposed to be quite chilly.  But in spite of predictions, the weather was perhaps 60 and overcast before my first run.  I put on a tank top and shorts with a long-sleeve over for before the start line and went back to find my team.  I had only a few minutes for pictures and race numbers and last instructions before the 1pm teams were told to line up.  There were maybe 20 or so teams in our group.  The MC read off the team names.  Of course when he read off “Fox River Trail Runners,” I got the loudest cheers.  Both vans were there to see the start.  As the MC announced that we were seconds away from starting a 197 mile race, I could not help but smile.  How incredibly cool.  I was at the beginning of a challenge and an adventure. 

Still nervous about my foot, I started out at the back of the pack.  Honestly, since I am still not up to my normal running mileage and speed, I was worried that I was just going to be left in the dust.  For a few minutes I was left behind, but then I passed a few people and found my rhythm.  It is rarely smart to abandon all self-control and common sense at the beginning of a long race, and I was testing out my foot as well.  I talked to a guy briefly who said he had just been recruited to his team the day before and that in running the nine-minute pace we were at, he was going way faster than he had promised his teammates.  I picked the pace up and he slowed down, and I probably never saw him or his team again. 

My run started out around Lake Monona in downtown Madison.  It was lovely to be running, and although my foot was a bit uncomfortable, and I was still anxious about what that meant for the overall race, I was happy to be running along the water and through the city.  I felt myself beginning to relax into the run.  My foot did hurt, but not more than usual, and I accepted that it was going to do what it was going to do.  Too late to back out.  At the very least, I was going to do this first run and enjoy it. 

My team passed me in the van and honked and yelled and then had to stop at a stop-light.  I ran past them.  Then they passed me again.  Then I was held up by some traffic in the busy downtown.  It was not a closed course, so I did have to stop at intersections and wait for the lights to change, which was a very odd experience during a race.  I followed the signs, or so I thought, and since we were still only a few miles from the starting line, I could follow the runners in front of me.  Because I had had to hurry back to the van to change, I had been told that I missed an announcement about a detour in leg one.  I figured it would be marked or that the people ahead of me would know what to do.  We ran down a street that was all torn up.  Strange, I thought, that they would detour us into construction.  In spite of the construction, however, and the frequent need to stop or slow at intersections, I enjoyed the urban neighborhood I was running through.  There were co-ops and bead stores and markets and older but not fancy homes that looked very down-to-earth and like they housed my kind of people. 

Eventually, though, it did seem like we had been running through construction for a  long time, probably a couple of miles, and the three people ahead of me all slowed and stopped at an intersection.  “Are we lost?” I asked.  The two women and one man who had once been ahead of me said that we probably were.  None of us had maps or cell phones.  None of us had memorized the street names on our route.  “Well,” I said, “I know that we pretty much follow the lake the whole time, and our exchange is by the lake, so we could head toward the lake.”  We did so, and after a couple of blocks-worth of running, we saw a guy with an orange flag.  Ragnar gives every van a couple of safety flags (for a $15 deposit) and demands that every non-runner use one when crossing a street.  We had made fun of this over-the-top safety precaution, but they actually came in very handy in this case because someone used their team flag to point us in the right direction.  Within a block or two we saw more Ragnar directional signs and finished without further confusion.

Although I am sorry that I probably missed some non-construction scenery, I am, in retrospect, grateful for the course confusion.  Once I turned my attention from my foot to my possible lostness, and then to the people with/against whom I was running, I allowed myself to really race.  I picked up the pace a bit to pass two of the people with whom I had become lost.  Both were ultra runners, meaning they were ultimately going to be running twice as much as I was, but they did not just have foot surgery either, so it was a valid victory.  They were very fit runners, and I was definitely picking up the pace.  A third woman stayed out ahead of me and gave me something to chase down.  I finished my run feeling stronger and faster than I began it. 

My team’s uniform was a brightly colored orange and yellow tie-dyed shirt, and I saw a few in the distance as I approached the exchange.  Then I saw Brian moving away from the exchange.  I was really glad that both vans had come to see the first hand-off but was a little disappointed that they were going to miss the actual hand-off.  Why not wait two more minutes? Then I saw Dan, the person to whom I was handing off, sprinting toward the exchange area almost as hard as I was, apparently quite recently alerted to my approach.  I slapped the bracelet on his arm without hitch.

At the next couple of exchanges, I was good to my foot, sitting and icing more than is generally my inclination, but I really wanted to run on it again, so it seemed worth it.  The second van stayed with us for a couple of exchanges, and Mary and Max (captain and two-year-old) stayed with us for several.  I spent an exchange or two trying to find out about a friend who had been in surgery all day, but once I heard that he had come through, it was easier to hang around with my teammates and chat.  At one exchange in a small town in Wisconsin where someone had driven their riding lawnmower to the gas station and pulled it up to the pump, I went into the gas station to buy ice for our cooler.  The guy in front of me at the counter, possibly the owner of the lawn mower, was asking the employees what all the commotion was about.  The one handling the money said, “It’s some relay from Madison to Wisconsin.”  When the guy with the checkbook said, “Yeah, but why?”  She answered him, “I don’t know.  I can’t figure that part out.”  They turned around and looked at me.  Seeing it from their perspective, it was a good question.  “We’re doing it because we love to run, and it’s what we do for fun,” I told them.  They shrugged and didn’t appear completely satisfied with my answer.  It is, I must admit, something that a non-runner could probably never understand. 

When Ryan, our sixth runner was out on the course, we met up with the other van again.  They had stopped for a meal (we hadn’t had lunch—except for my Starbucks wrap and some food from the van) and attended the orientation for van two.  The exchange from van to van was fun.  We felt more like a team than I had thought we might. 

When all of our runners were in, we had a couple hours off, so we went to downtown Lake Mills to Carp’s Landing and had what was, by then, dinner.  That was a bizarre treat: to sit down to a nice meal with your team in the middle of a race.  It had the effect, as most shared meals do, of making us feel like family, like we belonged together.  We were a very agreeable mix of personalities with no sore thumbs and no one being rude or rubbing anyone else the wrong way. 

After dinner, we went to the next van-to-van exchange where I would be picking up the baton.  The number of vans there was astonishing!  Hundreds of vans with hundreds and hundreds of runners!  By then we had caught up with earlier waves of people.  I saw a pair of women I know slightly, and they had started hours before we did.  We had been on the road for over 13 hours by then, but since each of us had actually only run once, it seemed a bit odd that we were feeling tired.  Perhaps it was because we knew what lay ahead.  Both dusk and a light rain were falling when we arrived at exchange 13, and it was getting chilly as well.  We decided to hunker down in the van to rest until we received word that the last runner from van two was on his way.  I did not fall asleep, but we all lay there in the dark piled on top of each other perfectly silently and motionlessly lest we wake each other.  My foot ached a bit, and my hip started to get sore from being curled up and bearing all my weight, but the silence and stillness seemed too sacred to disturb until it was absolutely necessary to do so.

It was full night and still raining and chilly when it was my turn to run again around 10pm.  Ragnar demanded that all night-time runners wear a reflective vest, head-lamp, and tail-light for safety purposes.  In addition to those precautions, I was asked to take a cell phone on my leg as it was going to be on a trail and I would have no contact with my van along the route.  I wore a billed cap both for the rain and for the purpose of supporting the headlamp, and it worked fairly well.  I had a pocket that attached to my race number belt for my cell phone.  I also carried a small flashlight.

The exchange was in a large wide-open park near Waukesha, WI.  The previous runners were coming out of the thick foggy darkness, and we could not see any features beyond their headlamps until they were actually in the exchange, so a few hundred yards out, a race volunteer would shout out the number of the team coming in.  Todd came in at full speed, put the bracelet on my wrist, and I set off into the darkness as well.  Immediately my tail light fell off, and I turned back to retrieve it.

I had to run on a street for a short bit and then turn into a parking lot and thence onto the trail.  The runner ahead of me missed the turn.  I tried to call to him/her but I do not know if he/she heard.  The only person who responded was the guy behind me.  “Are you going the right way?” he demanded, not very kindly.  “I believe so!” I said, and flashed my light onto the sign right in front of us. 

Once we gained the trail, the grumpy guy still right behind me, we were completely alone in the absolute darkness of a foggy, drizzling night.  The path, as it turned out, was a paved one, and a fairly smooth one at that.  The foliage was thick and glistening with rain on both sides of the trail, and it smelled green and lush and clean.  It was late at night, and I was out running on a dark trail through lush verdure in the rain.  I took a deep breath and smiled all the way down to my belly, perfectly happy.  I was pushing my legs and my core pretty hard, but my soul was relaxed and free and about as blissful as it has been in these many long months of injury.  I said to the guy maybe 20 feet behind me, “Isn’t this glorious?”  He didn’t respond, but the vibes coming off him were not adequately joyful, so I left him in my dust, or more accurately my puddles.  I pushed just a little harder, and after a while I could no longer hear his footfalls.  I was a solitary runner in the deep night.

My second run was 4.3 miles, and for almost all of it, I was completely alone in the thick, dark silence of the trail.  The mist danced ahead of me in my headlamp in bright silver sparks, and I heard only the rattle of my jostling taillight, my own footfalls, and the wind in my ears as I flew down the trail.  I was working hard, but I was at complete peace.  I could see no civilization, no light, no stars even, but I felt completely at home, as though I was at the single best spot in the planet, and I was the one privileged to be there.  I could hear and feel myself working hard, pushing against the ground faster than I’ve run in months, but I was also airborne.  That run alone was worth the surgery and ensuing recovery.  It was worth every sucky careful run I’ve had in the process of getting back into shape.  That run was a perfect embodiment of why I run.  I felt my most joyful me.  It was even, dare I say it, a reason to live here on this planet at all.

Eventually, in the distance, I saw blinking red lights.  They turned out to be at the promised water station.  I did not need sustenance beyond the sheer pleasure of running, but I thanked the volunteer for being there in the middle of the wet night for us runners.  He told me cheerfully that I had one mile to go, which left me with a strange dilemma.  A glance at my watch told me that if he was right, I was running surprisingly well, and I felt like I could certainly maintain the pace.  But that would mean less than eight minutes more of the perfect run.  Slowing and prolonging it, on the other hand, would mar its perfection.  I dug in to hold on for another mile, to give my full self to the joy of running. 

Just past the water station, a bit ahead of me was figure in a reflective vest with a flashlight swinging from side to side.  The person was moving so slowly that I assumed at first that it was a volunteer looking for cups discarded after the water station.  As I approached, however, I saw that it was a fellow female runner, just a different level of runner.  I do not like to be passed, and I was not passed the entire relay, but I also am aware that by zipping past a much slower runner, I may have a demoralizing affect, so I like to offer encouragement instead.  For this one I said, “Woo hoo!” as I passed her.  She jumped and made a startled noise.  “Oh, I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said, “I meant to cheer you on!”  She laughed and thanked me, and all was mended. 

I emerged from the trail and the woods and exchanged the bracelet in a wet, open field.  I was sad to end the perfect run, the perfect half hour, but I was also decidedly euphoric.  Running was back.  I was a runner again.  I was home.  I was in love. 

Pleasantly, during the course of my run the rain had diminished from drizzle to mist to tangible fog.  The rest of my team ran their night-time legs, ending at about 1am at a large high school where the other van had been resting for an hour or two.  We debated resting there as well, but ultimately we decided to drive ahead to the next van-to-van exchange site so that we would certainly be ready to run when it was our turn again.

I think I actually did doze off for a few minutes while the van was being driven by someone else.  By the time we blearily grabbed our pillows and sleeping bags and made our way from the van parking area to the church that was offering a place to rest.  Four of us stumbled into a dark room with room for four more and unrolled our bags.  I went off to find a bathroom; all had very long lines.  By the time I was able to lie down, it was 2:30 am. 

It felt wonderful to stretch out flat in the dark, but although I was content and relaxed, I did not fall asleep.  My phone made a sound—a text from a teammate.  I tried my back and my stomach and could not fall asleep.  A bit before 3am a phone call informed me that I should be ready run again around 4am.  I had set my alarm for 3:20, figuring that would give me adequate time to get back to the van and put in my contacts, maybe eat a bit, and get back to the exchange site in front of the church.  I found, however, that I was not going to be able to sleep for those last twenty minutes either.  I had to pee, and I was hungry, so I crept out of the room and again stood in the bathroom line, which was still very long. 

No one was talking in line.  It was 3am and we were runners in line for a bathroom.  When else do you have such fodder for small talk?  I asked the women around me when they had started running.  The one ahead of me in line had started at 8am, and when my eyebrows lifted in amazement, the woman behind me said she had started at 6am.  “Wow!” I breathed.  I must have been not entirely awake, because before I thought about it, I said, “Well that’s good!  You must be about done….” And then I realized that of course they were not any more done than I was.  They were still outside Racine and had to run to Chicago.  Oops.  Swallowing foot….  Of course, then they asked me when I had started.  When I guiltily admitted that we had started at 1pm, the one woman said to the other, once a complete stranger and now a comrade in endurance running, “Oh, she must be one of those elite runners.”  I do not usually think of myself that way, but put into the perspective they had provided I thought that yes, we probably had been allowed to start at 1pm because we were going to finish on time even with a late start.  “Well the people in my van are all good runners,” I said.  “We can generally average paces somewhere between 7 and 8, but the people in the other van are really really fast.”  To comfort them, I added, “But that means that we don’t really get to sleep.” 

“How long is it going to take your team to finish?” asked one of the women, in awe.

“Well, we were shooting for around 24 hours,” I answered her.

Both women looked impressed.  One was hoping to finish mid to late afternoon.  The other one was hoping to finish around 7pm.  She said the course closed at 9pm.  37 hours out on the course!! Wow.

Leg 25 was mine, and it happened at 4:05am.  Save for a brief doze in the van on the way to the exchange, I had been awake for about 23 hours.  I hadn’t had a meal since 6pm the previous day.  So my insides were a little confused by the experience.  Luckily, the porta-potties outside the church had no line and I was able to frequent them.  I wished I had known about them before standing in line inside.  The conversation might have been worth it, but just flushing was not.  I was well beyond niceties by then.  I had a bite of Clif bar and a vanilla gu with caffeine and just hoped for the best.  My right quadricep was also starting to twinge a bit.  My foot felt no worse than it did on the first run, so I considered myself, overall, ready to go.  My previous run had been such a soul-lifting experience, that, honestly, I would rather have been running than sleeping at four in the morning anyway.  The weather was still hovering between precipitation and just heavy fog, but the air felt a little warmer to me and I decided on a short sleeve shirt and shorts.  I had tights and a long-sleeve at the ready, but I decided that if I got cold, I’d just run harder.

As before, my team number was called out before I could actually see Todd.  A man was running toward me, and I stood so that he would run right into me.  My team shouted, though, “This is not him!”  That guy gave his bracelet to someone else, and I stood at the ready.  When Todd actually ran up, he put the bracelet on me and I ran off down the street.

The venue of my third run was not nearly as spectacular as the previous run.  I was running down what would have been a moderately busy street at any other time of day.  Even at 4am there were a surprising number of cars.  Most of the run was on the side of the street.  Toward the end a sidewalk became available.  As before, I was able to both push and relax into the run.  So often when I am racing I hear other runners around me, particularly at the beginning before we’ve all spread out and grouped ourselves by ability level, complaining about the heat or the cold or the damp or the early hour.  In a long-distance relay, you almost never get to run with someone for long enough to have a conversation, but all of the people I passed on my third run looked far less happy to be there than I was.  For one thing, I reminded myself, they were much slower than I was and probably didn’t have the kind of speedy team I had, so they had been on the road a lot longer than I had.  And the scanty 3.8 miles we had to cover on our leg would probably take them longer than it would take me as well.  Add to that, then, that some skinny woman was zooming past them, and yeah, I had some advantages in the spirit department.  But as with any other race, the thought most prominent in my mind was gratitude and joy that I could be out running instead of doing anything else.  The question from the gas station earlier that day, or, excuse me, technically the day before, crossed my mind.  Why would you run from Madison to Chicago through a day and a night and a day if not for the joy of doing it?  What else would I rather be doing?  Whenever I passed someone I would look at my watch and try to estimate how much longer we had to go.  When I passed someone who looked like they were really suffering through their run, I would tell them they were doing a good job and how much further we had to go.  It wasn’t until the end of my run that I passed a couple of women who were closer to my pace.

My team likes to keep track of how many people we pass during the relay and tally them on the side of our van under the heading “road kill.”  This earned us some disgusted looks when we drove back into Geneva with the markings still on the van.  I assume the older man who looked appalled probably thought we had intentionally been running over small animals.  I passed ten people on my third leg, most of them probably from starting waves many hours before ours.

About half-way through my run, the birds started to sing.  We were still an hour before sunrise, but I managed to be out running at the mysterious moment when birds decided it is close enough to morning to start making noise. 

My favorite moment of my last run, however, was near the end, when suddenly the course dipped down and turned right, and suddenly I was running along Lake Michigan.  We had run half-way across Wisconsin.  I knew that was going to happen, of course, but it was still surprising when I realized it was there.  Had I been running in the daylight, I’m sure I would have seen the lake before I was right next to it, but in the darkness and the fog, I could not see it even when I could hear the waves on the shore quite clearly.

I didn’t have much time with the lake, and I spent it trying to pick off some runners who were actually running.  I finished on as much of a high as I had begun, and when I met up with my team, minus Dan, who was running, and they asked if it felt good to be done, I told them that I was sad to be done, and that I would take someone else’s last leg if they wanted.  I was mostly kidding, of course, since the original plan had been for someone else to take my last leg if my foot was not doing well.  Ryan called me out on it, though.  “Really?” he said.  “I have eight miles of goodness.”  OK, so maybe not.  Probably not a good idea for my foot, my quad muscles, or my tummy.  Maybe next time.

After our van was done running, we went to the exchanges for the other van to cheer them on as well.  We joked that we should have kept track not only of roadkill but also of u-turns, as we saw that another team had done.  At one point we were lost for so long that when we arrived at the exchange site, we thought we must have missed seeing Javier come in.  We called the other van, but no one answered.  We looked at the crowd around the exchange but saw no one.  Then I said, “Wait, is that him?” 

“No…yes!” said Ryan.  “I think that is him.” 

“We have to get out of the van!!” Chuck, Ryan and I screamed, but we were clearly not going to make it out in time.  So we yelled as loud as we could and beat on the windows of the van, hoping our team would notice us as they exchanged right in front of us.  The sudden screaming and banging woke up Dan and Dawn, both of whom had been asleep for the last couple of hours and had no idea where we were or who was running. 

We were all starting to get a little weary and loopy by the end, and driving through traffic from Evanston to Montrose harbor for the end of the race was tricky.  Thanks to some uninhibited driving, we pulled into the parking lot about the time we expected Todd to be arriving.  We all piled out while Dan went to find a parking place.  We hustled over to the course and waited for Todd about 30 meters from the finish line, which was on the beach.  Within minutes, Todd appeared.  The rest of our team appeared as well, and we all put on one last bit of speed to run Todd in as a group (minus the people trying to park,) wearing our yellow and orange tie-dyed shirts.  What a complete blast from start to finish!

We ended up finishing well under 24hours, in spite of some initial skepticism.  When we were walking back to the van to get some things we needed but had abandoned in our rush to see the finish, I was reminded that I was one of the worst skeptics.  To be fair to my team, it was my part in the projected finish that was in question for me.  I thought I could very well single-handedly bring our time down enough to make us miss the ambitious goal.  I knew that no one would say anything to me about it.  They probably wouldn’t even think uncharitable thoughts about me silently in their heads.  They are kind people.  But I was dreading letting them down.  I was hoping they wouldn’t come away from the weekend wishing someone else had been invited on the team rather than me.  I ended the experience pleased not only that we had, in fact, finished in less than 24 hours, but also pleased that while my pace was not what it maybe could be in peak injury-free fitness, I still was able to give it my best shot and had some pretty respectable runs.  I felt like I was a runner again, like I belonged among runners, belonged on that team of runners.  The time didn’t matter much beyond the indication that I could, finally, return to running, that I can maybe starting putting some races on the calendar.

And speaking of putting races on the calendar, as we were approaching the end of our journey, we all agreed that we would certainly be up for another such relay again in the future.  Maybe another Ragnar?  Maybe Hood to Coast?  But we also agreed that one per season is probably enough.  That kind of sleep deprivation is best enjoyed only on special occasions.

Prayer

Yes, yes, I know that the nature of most things involving God is meant to remain a mystery to us who are still here seeing through a dark glass.  His ways are not our ways.  Blessed are those who believe even though they have not seen.  And so on. 

But I must say that I really really do not understand prayer, and I’m a little pissed off about it.

I have been thinking a lot about prayer these last few months.  It keeps coming up as the most essential thing I must do as a follower of Jesus.  It's how Jesus recharged, and Jesus knows I could use some recharging.  Mother Theresa claims that everything starts with prayer.  It's how you make big decisions and carry on with your little duties.  It keeps you in connection with God.  It can be simple and humble or long and involve candles. 

I have been trying to make prayer more instinctual and to discover who I am as a pray-er.  I think I have noticed that my prayers feel more real when they are physical.  After my uncle died, and the mystery of his seemingly graceless life was foremost in my mind, I found myself wanting to pray on my knees, preferably with my face on the floor too.  And then when the miracle of how the Holy Spirit was working in this most unlikely person was revealed, I wanted again to be on my knees.  Last night I was running with my relay team-- the ones who showed up, which was only the fast men.  It was very hot, and even when they promised to run my pace, I lost them after a couple of miles, so I was running in an unfamiliar forest preserve in the stifling heat with a sore foot by myself.  It seemed like a good time to pray.  I sang a few hymns and held up to God a few people.  I asked God to run with me for a while.  See?  I’m trying.

Yesterday a friend called me from the east coast and told me that she is just being eaten up by the situation of a little girl in her community.  She has a tumor on her brain stem that has permeated most of the brain, up to the cerebrum.  My friend is friends with the girl's mother and has known the little girl since she was born five years ago.  Her name is Gabby, in case you are a believer in prayer and can add yours to those already being sent out.

I am praying for Gabby because I know what it’s like to be desperate and to have even unknown people care about my desperate situation.  Shortly after my sister had her kidney transplant from my mom, I ran a race in another state.  On the way home from the packet pick-up, a friend of a friend, someone I had met in college but really only knew through others, asked about Cassie and my mom and told me that her church had been praying for them for weeks.  You could say that the fact that doctors were able to remove a functioning organ from my mom and put it in my sister, where it would resume working, and that my mom survived the procedure as well is a testament to the brilliant advances in medical science in the last century.  Or you could see it as a God-given miracle.  I have no problem with seeing it as both, for it certainly is amazing enough to be amazing in any way you choose to look at it.  But regardless of whether or not you see their on-going renal health these five years later as an act of God, I continue to be grateful to that congregation of people in another state praying and praying for my family.  Even if God did not exist, I would still have felt lifted by their prayers.  And so, having heard the story of Gabby, I added her to my recent list of people for whom I feel that I am, indeed, praying continually. 

Last night before I fell asleep, I said one more prayer.  I prayed for people I’ve been praying for for a while.  I also prayed (again again again) for Gabby and for her family, for them to have strength and courage and for Gabby to get well, if that can fit into God’s will.  I prayed for a friend who is having quadruple bypass surgery.  I asked, again, for him to be well, if that can fit into God’s will.

Then I started to get confused and maybe even a little angry.  Gabby is five.  Why would it not be God’s will for her to get better?  Surely he does not want her or her family to suffer, and if it is already God’s wish, what difference does it make if I pray continually for her health?  Who am I that God would say, “Oh yeah, I do love that child and her family,” and make everything OK?  And if that’s the way it is, why wasn’t God already fixing it? 

Joe, the one planning to have heart surgery, is a grandfather, and not just to his own grandchildren.  He is a leader in the church, a friend and father-figure to us in the running club, a devoted husband.  He is very beloved here on earth.  As far as I can tell, he lives for the Kingdom of God here on earth; at least he does as well as any of the rest of us.  We depend on him.  And so surely God understands that.  Surely some of his will can be accomplished through extending Joe’s life another decade or two.  If that’s not the case, then are my prayers going to make a difference?  If it is God’s will that Joe’s surgery go well, what is my will compared to his?

So I guess the thing that bugs me about these prayers is what God does with them.  Does God even receive them?  Psalm 139 says that God knows a word before it is even on my tongue, so clearly David thinks God does hear my prayers, but what if they are all just in my head?  Or do they reach God and bounce off?  Is God is like a parent who hears the pleas but cannot fix things?  Is God like a parent who could choose otherwise but makes us unhappy for our own good, for some more worthy long-term purpose we cannot see?  How can that be possible in the case of a brain tumor in a five-year-old? 

I have heard numerous people say they believe in the power of prayer.  I understand that my prayers could change me, if I feel that all day I am in constant conversation with God.  It makes sense that prayer could work in that way.  But when it comes to the kind of prayer to which one expects an answer or a response, it all breaks down for me.  Maybe God answers prayers, but maybe the answers are things God was going to do anyway because God was already God before any of us said a word.

I suppose when you get down to essentials, what God does with my prayers is not really my concern.  The only decision I must make is whether or not to keep on praying.  I’m sure my prayers will come and go, as they have in the past, but for now, the decision is made.  I will keep praying for my friends and for my strangers because they are in my heart, and their troubles are simply too big and for me to do anything about but pray.  If God is waiting for me to love people and to pray for them before God acts, well then I’m disappointed in God and feel less like praying to God.  If God was going to come up with something wonderful whether or not I prayed, then God is as a loving God ought to be, in my opinion, although it renders my prayers pointless.  It may not be my place to understand, but a little understanding would certainly help.

Next

Adam has finished his last day of first grade.  More accurately, his last hour of first grade.  He'll come home in a few minutes and the summer before second grade will begin.

With our last Adamless hour, Gretchen and I biked (I biked and she rode the trailer, which was more fun for me than for her, as she made clear) over to the grade school to drop off a flower for Adam's teacher and to pick up his epipen.  Then, because there was still a little time left, I rode around a nearby prairie preserve.  Gretchen complained the whole time, but in spite of that and the 90 degree heat, I felt wonderful.  I love riding the bike when I do not have to worry about getting hit by a car. 

I don't know how biking is going to go this summer.  Last summer we biked to swimming lessons most mornings.  But last year I could get in the pool with Gretchen, and this summer I will be stuck sweating on the the sidelines.  How sad!  I also don't know if the kids are just too big to both fit in the trailer this year.  They have both grown significantly since last summer.  It just might not work.  And neither one is proficient enough on bikes to ride their own.  And so good-bye to a lovely little season in my life that was biking with my children behind me.  I'm glad I did it.  I will miss it.  I could be very very sad about that.

But G and I can bike again in the fall.  We'll walk to preschool twice a week most weeks, and I will love that.  It will be a new season of contentment.  And eventually my children will ride their own bikes.  Eventually they may go with me on long long rides.  Who knows what life will bring.

I think that is the secret to not breaking down into weepy tears on the last day of first grade: having lived long enough to learn that life is never ever going to stay put.  A perfect state of balance, once achieved, will shortly be upset.  Someone will grow or change or get involved in a new activity.  Someone will be born; someone will die.  Kids will outgrow some pleasures and grow into others.  Careers will end or change directions.  If one must mourn, one must also place trust in the future, that beauty and joy can be found again somewhere new.

This summer we will visit aunts and cousins and maybe the zoo.  We will go camping.  We will go to the library and the pool.  Maybe Adam will ride his bike without training wheels.  I will get up early and ride or run as the sun is rising.  The sun will stay up late and the neighbors will meet us in the back yard.  We'll whip up some mudslides and eat beans we grew in our new garden--maybe not together.  And if we look back, we will also look forward to the unknown blessings that await us.  Next.

Rest in Peace

My Uncle Rick died this morning.  He called 911 at 4am, collapsed in the vestibule of his apartment building with blood coming from his mouth, and, in spite of the efforts of paramedics both on site and at the hospital, did not revive.  And like that a life is over.  Those are the facts, and, for the most part, the rest of it is a mystery.

That is not to say that it is a surprise, at least not entirely.  Sadly, we have been saying to each other for years that it would happen thus in the not-too-distant future .  He had COPD.  He hadn't had teeth for decades, having let them rot out of his head during what should have been the prime of adulthood.  He lived in such filth and squalor that no one was shocked that he would, from time to time, get random infections in various body parts.  He would fail to seek treatment for said infections until he could no longer walk or urinate or perform some other vital act.  It was not the first time he had called 911, not the first time for any of it, except it was the first time they couldn't bring him back.  That part, for some reason, feels shocking.  He was 58 years old but had been slowly killing himself through poor hygiene and abusive self-neglect so that he could easily have passed for someone 15-20 years older than that.  Although it's hard to really grasp the reality of it, there were multiple systems on the brink of failing, and it was just a matter of which would give out first.  To be sure, now that at least one of them has, we still aren't sure which.  Preliminarily, they are calling it cardiac arrest, but the pathologist can take his pick and we would just nod our heads.  Yep.  Shoulda seen that coming.  Shocking but not surprising.

And a mystery.  What was he thinking when he decided that he needed to call 911 for himself?  Did something suddenly change, or was it like the frog in the pot who, if put in there while the water is cool will not jump out until it's too late and the water is starting to boil around him?  Did he know he was about to die, or did he figure it would turn out like all the other times: with a hospital stay, someone to bring him food, medical staff to talk to, a few rounds of heavy-duty antibiotics, and maybe even some oxygen?

Even more unfathomable, though, is all the life that went before his death.  How does a person get so broken?  My memories of my uncle from when I was a very young child and he was in his early twenties blessedly color my perception of him in his middle age, or, as it turned out, his late years.  I was, I suspect, the closest thing he ever had to a beloved child.  He was a man who really enjoyed laughter.  He would rub his palms together or cross his arms around himself when he laughed, open-mouthed, revealing his progressively decaying gums.  He wanted to find the humor in any situation, and whether or not any were present, he would supplement with anecdotes from TV shows or movies since, for all we knew, he had few real-life experiences to draw from.  As years passed, his humor became progressively more lewd, obscene, and even offensive at times, completely inappropriate to the family gatherings which came to include his neices' children, but in spite of pleas from others that he censor himself, he seemed unable to distinguish what was appropriate from what was not.  It was, of course, uncomfortable and unpleasant and even disgusting and disturbing, and above all sad that such a genial and human desire should be so perverted from the blessing it could have been into a source of further alienation.

It's a mystery how any aspect of his life got to the state in which it ended.  The great mystery of all of us, I suppose, is how we end up so far from the glory God intends for us, but with some people the distance is so extreme as to be nearly incomprehensible.  I do not mean to say this in judgement, for I too am a fallen and bent person.  But why, by grace, do some of us manage to make a little headway while others fall and fall and fall?  Who or what should have caught him?  Why did none of us have the power to, if not fix, at least somewhat mend him?  At least make him stop killing himself.  

From the unexplained hints I've heard about his past, there were some issues going back to childhood.  I don't know what or how bad.  I know that the parenting he and his siblings received was uneven and sometimes questionable.  But I also know that he belonged to a church, both as a youth and as a prematurely decrepit adult.  I know that while his siblings might have come out with some regrets or some scars, they all managed to find their way, to make friends, get married, have children, hold jobs, brush their teeth, perform basic hygiene, pay for their cars, answer their phones, pick up their mail, wash their clothes and dishes, take out the trash, put sheets on the bed.  They function in society as tolerably well as anyone else.  Why not Rick?

By all accounts, except for his inexplicable failure to take care of himself and to sustain relationships with real people, he was an intelligent person.  His genetics certainly argued for him being brilliant, if eccentric.  He almost finished college, but his failure to seal the deal was probably not so much a function of lack of ability as it was refusal to play by the rules.  Having been born of the same line of academic skill, he used to ask me, when I was pretty well established as the valedictorian of my high school class, if I understood the chemical reactions described in my honors chemistry homework.  When I said I did, he argued that I did not need to finish the homework then, since the point of the work should have been for me to learn, and if that was already accomplished, why waste my time?  When he took up a theology interest after joining a church, he was, by his account, which I believe, able to argue really difficult points with his pastor based on some pretty wide-ranging concepts.  I'm sure his pastor loved that, particularly coupled with the decomposing mouth and the perpetual stench.  And yet his involvement with the church did not translate into an increased responsibility or a reasonable grounding into a community or even a basic sense of acceptable behavior in a human relationship.  The Bible was there; the church was there; the life path never veered. 

The only explanation that makes sense, and yet doesn't make sense, is that he had some sort of, for lack of a better term, mental illness.  Simply put, he was just made that way.  He was generous and thoughtful with his gifts: my hardback copies of the poetry volumes of Shel Silverstein are from him many many years ago.  He not only appreciated that author's wit and talent, but also that I, in particular, would also appreciate them.  He continued, even after I was grown up and moved on and saw him twice a year, if that, to never fail in his gifts to me: always books, always something I found fascinating.  Although his presence in my life and our family life dwindled to almost nothing, he always gave my children, whom he barely knew, very thoughtful gifts as well.  He loaned me DVDs and books that he thought I would enjoy or that we had briefly discussed at our last encounter.  I truly believe that he was endowed by his creator with a heart to give and share, to discuss and ponder and appreciate, to be connected to the people he loved.  But the best explanation I can come up with for why he lived and died as he did is that he was created that way too.  Some weakness, some brokenness, was too integral a part of his soul for any of his good qualities or any of his good relationships to pull him up out of the murk into which he sank progressively farther and farther as time went on.  His mother, my grandmother, seems to have some personality disorder issues which intensified as she aged, and maybe so did he.  We wondered at one time whether he had multiple personality disorder as well.  Those are the only answers we could come up with.  And yet they are not answers.  Why him?  Why not others?  If the rest of us are saved from those same genes and some of the same background by some act of powerful grace, why wasn't he?

I'm usually not as comforted as a life-long member of the church should be at the suggestion that the deceased is now in a better place, but in the case of Uncle Rick, I feel pretty sure that's true.  He was not all that good at life on this earth.  He was about to lose the night job he had held for years, and even he must have surely felt, as we all did, that he had been lucky to have that job and was not likely going to find another.  He had a habit of alienating, if not outright disgusting, the people with whom he might have had relationships.  What joy was there here for him?  What purpose?  What hope?  I feel fairly certain that death probably is the greatest peace and assurance he has ever known.  I feel equally certain that if there is a heaven, he will go there.  The last shall be first, the prodigal son will be welcomed home, the lost sheep will be found.  He has long been awaited with tenderness.

The middle of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

"It's the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine.)"  --REM

Although our weather hasn't been reflecting it much, the school year is almost over.  Tuesday was Gretchen's last day of PDO.  Most of the time she was in PDO I had a class at church, so her being in PDO was really more about her than about me having free time.  I was, however, looking forward to a few weeks of having a couple of hours a week to myself.  Once the church class ended, though, I had to go to physical therapy.  So I ended up with a grand total of one three-hour stretch of free time: the last day.

That day Doug had to go into work really early, so there was no way for me to go to the masters' swim that morning.  Instead, I went right from dropping Gretchen off to the pool.  I flipped through my little book of swim workouts and found one I liked that was 3250m.  Not being a stunningly quick swimmer, this workout took me about 80 minutes.  Add in the time to get there and change, then to shower and change again afterwards, and I only had time to make a quick stop at Lowes before going back to pick up Gretchen.  Partway through my two-mile swim I realized that I was spending my last free day just swimming.  For a few seconds I grumbled internally.  I swim a couple of times a week.  I shouldn't spend my one little piece of luxury time getting my workout in!  I should be....  And that's where the grumble stopped.  Honestly, what would I rather be doing than swimming two miles?  I am not one for shopping or manicures or any other form of expensive hedonism.  So what if swimming is ordinary and could be considered hard work?  That does not make it not worth doing.  It doesn't even make it something one cannot do with gratitude and joy.  It turned out to be a really good swim.  Maybe the fact that I chose to spend my last day doing something I do all the time anyway means that my all the time is well spent.

This last day of PDO got me thinking about all this second coming hype.  Let me first say that I think the guy who claims to know that Jesus is coming tomorrow at 6pm has some sort of self-aggrandizement psychosis.  I do not believe that the Bible was inspired in such a way that someone can use it to mathematically figure out the second coming.  Firstly, there are all the issues of translation, not to mention that it wasn't written in the scientific age when "truth" had the same meaning.  More importantly, though, Jesus pretty clearly says that God's timing is a mystery even to Jesus, and we non-God types should not to attempt to figure such things out.  So, no, I don't think there's much credence to the May 21, 2011 claim.  If Jesus does come tomorrow, I'm calling it a funny coincidence.

But since this prediction has, for some reason, gotten enough hype to be in my consciousness most of the time, and since I had the last day mentality going with PDO, I've been thinking about how I would spend this week if I truly believed everything was coming to an end on Saturday.  I came to the conclusion that there isn't much I would do differently, even if I believed it was my last week on earth.  Maybe I would have left the tar in my daughter's jacket on Monday morning, but I would have still met with my covenant group on Monday afternoon.  With whom would I rather spend my time?  I would still have swum two miles on Tuesday morning even if there was no triathlon in my future.  There isn't really one now, come to think of it.  It is just a joy to use my body, to be in water, to swim.  I would still have worked on my garden Tuesday afternoon because the world is beautiful and fertile and it's a blessing to contribute to that.  I would still have made risotto primavera for dinner because rice and vegetables taste good and  make me feel good.  I would still have gone to band rehearsal to make music one last time.  And so forth.  I would still have biked to ballet class and the bread store on Wednesday, even in the rain, because it made me feel alive.  I would still have celebrated Adam's seventh birthday on Thursday, even if there wasn't going to be an eighth, because he is a wonderful kid and those seven years are worth celebrating.  I would still have gone to his baseball game even if it doesn't matter if he learns to be a competant first-baseman.  I would still have served my sister and niece lunch and dinner.  What else of more worth would I do?  If this was the last Friday of my life, I would still have woken up at 5am this morning so that I could bike to the river to run.  Maybe I would have biked and run farther, come to think of it.   

I've been finding it easy to get that used-up, underfilled feeling lately.  I do and do and give and help and clean and cook, and to what end?  For what return?  Little praise or appreciation comes my way.  No money or recognition.  No conclusion or resolution or time off.  (Come to think of it, the second-coming might be a nice change of pace....)  Not even enough sleep.  And nothing I do stays done: it all must be done again tomorrow, if not sooner.  And while all of this will probably still be true on Monday morning when I am still here, still in the routine of do and do and give and help and clean and cook, there is great encouragement in the thought that even if I believed Jesus was coming tomorrow, I would still have wanted to do the things I did today.

I don't really blame people who, misled by the hoopla, blew off work and threw a wild party on their supposed last day on earth.  (Well, I blame them for being ignorant and gullible and probably for continuing to be such on May 22 and beyond.)  But I can't be too upset by it because how unbelievably blessed are those of us who, on their last week on earth, would choose to do pretty much what they always do with the people they see every week?  For the beauty of that realization, I'm glad the world is ending again in December of 2012.

For the Hope that is in me

Today I was, in real life, asked to give an accounting for the hope that is in me.  Is a person ever fully prepared for that?  I'm not sure I was, but I stood there and looked in the face of the questioner and made a start.  It would be easy, at least in some ways, to say that I just believe in Jesus and be done with it, but this was a genuine asking, someone looking for a real-life blood and guts kind of answer.

I won't say that I failed to give an accurate accounting.  I said some true things: that what looks to others to be something profound and unwavering and focused is, internally, a constant seeking and questioning and, frankly, failing to live up to expectations.  And if what this person wants is to have what I have, she may already be there.  The next step is just to keep showing up and showing up and showing up and showing up.  It is the kind of devotion that was the content of the sermon.  For once a sermon meant to hit the heart, to spur us to action, the type of sermon that usually reveals to me my inadequacy actually showed me that, hey, I'm doing it.  Endurance I got.  Persistance and stubbornness, check.  The tedious, the mundane, the repetitive: yup.  Devotion just may be one of my gifts.  I'm there, man, and I mean literally, almost every day of the week.  Sometimes twice.  And that, blessedly, is where today's conversation started.  It started with me taking credit for something.

My friend asked me about running.  I ran 38 minutes this morning and said so.  Last year I ran a marathon, but I'm proud of that 38 minutes.  Running after a long long injury, one that still hurts some and still swells and turns purple, is a good indicator of devotion.  Particularly when one wakes up and hears the wind howling and the rain falling.  There's a good example of putting in the time and training even when you don't really feel like it.  Of course, once I was doing it, I was greatful, and there's a lesson there too, but I'll leave that for another day.  Having just sat next to me through the sermon, the friend said, "Well that is your passion, right?  Running? The thing you are devoted to? Or is it?"  I said that, yes, it's one of the things, and that devotion must be one of my most valuable strengths.  She asked were I get my devotion.  After thinking a moment, I credited my mom.  She and I are devoted to different things, but I am certain that I learned from her the "just keep going" ethic.  She will care for people until she drops, literally.  She never begs off of anything: work, childcare, hosting a meal, tailoring a whole show-choir's worth of costumes.  So I guess I believe that you can learn devotion by example.  I smiled inside to think that maybe my kids will catch devotion from me.  Maybe they will not think I am just crazy, or maybe they will think I am crazy but also will learn how to be crazy about their own things.  Maybe the daily repetitive work of sticking to it, whatever it is, really does witness to the world around me.

The friend asked, then, what it is I am devoted to.  It's a fair question since it was asked in the sermon.  I was ready for that one.  I am devoted to running, to music (to a lesser extent,) to my church, and to getting my family through every day.  I should have added in reading.  I probably also should have added in that I have some friends for whom I would drop everything.  I am devoted to loving my kids and my friends.  Add those things up, and there you have pretty much every minute of every day.  Seriously.  I don't leave room for anything else.

"You grew up in this church, didn't you?" asked my friend.  I told her I had.  "I think that makes a difference," she said.  We talked about her early church experiences and her mom's faith, and then there it was: the demand for an accounting of the hope that is in me, even if not in those words exactly.  Although in my own head, I am failing to live up to the demands of Christ, although I know of myself that I have a good deal of unworthiness, to someone who is seeking, someone who is paying attention, I am focused and full of faith.  I am the one of whom the question "How do you do that?" is asked.  It is the moment any disciple should live for, is it not?

I assured her, out of a need not to misrepresent myself, that I'm not by any means as certain as I look.  That's a long conversation.  So I will send this friend some of the things I have written about faith and faithlessness, about walking the walk (or stumbling the walk) in the face of doubt, about keeping at it day after day in a number of little ways if not in the grand gesture.  But right on the spot, in a matter of minutes, while my children were probably anxiously wondering why I was not picking them up from Sunday school, I was able to point to something concrete that helps me, that would help her.  I said, "Well, I'm in a covenant group...."

For me, that was the truth.  I'm just as flawed as the next person, truly.  I'm flawed in ways I won't post on the internet, but you can trust me that some of the flaws are big.  But because I am tenacious if nothing else, I don't just give up and let the flaws be the only things that define me.  Love, if you can find a way to do it, is worth the effort.  One of the ways I keep going is by leaning on and loving people who look to me to be doing even better than I am.  I am not unaware of the lovely irony there: you could become cynical in the sudden knowledge that probably everyone who looks faithful is also unfaithful.  I could be shocked to realize that I could be for someone else the inspiration that others are for me.  Or I could see that as Jesus, through the body of a friend, taking my hand during church (as did someone I love and admire after today's sermon) and saying, "See?  Keep going.  Hope."


"Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."
Acts 2: 46-47

Simple

Today I feel like writing more about me.  Of course.  Sigh.  The trouble with my writing, or one of the troubles, is that I get caught in an endless loop.  I tell people I'm not doing it because I have nothing to write about.  They, being friends all of them, say that of course this is not true, and they are right.  I don't know much about much, but I do know about being me.  I could write about being me every day.  To tell the truth, being me feels like a hard job most of the time and only getting harder.  That's interesting--to me.  But does it contribute to the wider world?  Hard to say.  I will confess that I like reading about other people much the way I like seeing their living rooms and kitchens, just to see what it's like to live somewhere else, and, often, to see what I can do better.  Somehow details about others' lives turn out being about me too (how self-centered can I be?), so maybe my writing about me turns out to be about others for them (if I ever let other people read what I write, but that's another topic.)  I hope so.  May God's grace make it so sometimes because I don't have much else right now.  Maybe I'll grow out of this phase that's been going on for 36 years.  Maybe.

My goal for this week, and for the last few weeks, although I hadn't moved toward the goal at all until two nights ago, was to get better at prayer.  Some weeks ago I had checked out a book titled, simply, Prayer by Richard Foster.  While reading chapter one, it occurred to me that my prayer life has many of the same troubles as my writing life.  I don't want it to be all about me, but if I take me out, there isn't much substance there, just some well-wishes, really.  Not really a relationship.  No depth.  And then there are plenty of things about me that I don't want to either write or tell God about.  Of course, if there is a God and God is who we think God is, God already knows.  And then there is the concern that I'm just so darn not good at it.  My attention wanders.  I don't know what to say.  I fall asleep.  I just stop and stare blankly at whatever is before me.  Who am I to be writing or talking to God?  There are so many people who are so much better it almost seems silly to put myself out there at all.

The book starts out by giving permission for all of those things to be true.  It says to start out with Simple Prayer, in which all of those problems are OK, maybe even good.  For example, it may be good to be bad at prayer: "Our problem is that we assume prayer is something to master the way we master algebra or auto-mechanics.  That puts us in the 'on-top' position, where we are competent and in control.  But when praying, we come 'underneath,' where we calmly and deliberately surrender control and become incompetent" (Foster 7-8.)  Oh boy.  That hits the mark.  I do not like to be underneath, to be clearly and humbly incompetent, and I never have.  How ironic that in thinking myself too lowly to pray or write, that the thing that is shutting me off is out-of-control pride.  Foster says it's OK to have some selfishness mixed in with the altruism when it comes to prayer.  As Foster explains, you can see it like a child talking to parents.  Just because my children have crazy and selfish and confusing requests, how much better to have them tell me than to have them be afraid to tell me.  Foster says that prayer begins wherever we are because wherever we are is the only place God can meet us.  Simple and obvious.  He writes, "We must never believe the lie that says that the details of our lives are not the proper content of prayer" (Foster 12).  He makes sense, and I think, as I read about simple prayer, I can do that.  To make matters better, we believe, and scripture promises, that God's grace makes even a lousy prayer holy.  Even the worst prayer is still prayer.

When I sit down to write something and find the same old inhibitions haunting me--I have nothing to say worthy of being read, it's all about me, this may not be any good, etc.--I wonder if maybe I should give myself permission to continue on with my simple writing, as Foster gives permission for simple prayer.  To just write from where I am with the stuff I have and allow it to be shoddy or laughably bad or ignorant or boring.  What, after all, do I have to lose?  Pride perhaps, but I'll admit here that pride isn't serving me very well.  I am risking the low opinion of others, which is very scary to me, but the opinion of others is not something I can ever control.  Their opinions are their problems, not mine.  They can stop reading at any time.  I may suck at writing and have only drivel to contribute, but for some reason I am drawn to it.  I feel little tugs.  I feel better while I'm writing.  Maybe it's worth being mediocre and self-centered and vulnerable.  Maybe good will come of it.  Maybe it's OK to be simple.  The alternative, it appears, is to be nothing, and there doesn't seem to be nearly as much room for redemption (or blind luck or grace or whatever we want to call it) in doing nothing.

"'Tis a gift to be simple. 'Tis a gift to be free. 'Tis a gift to come down where you ought to be."  --Shaker hymn