To Dance With Pain

I felt it come around mile 19...sure and steady, I knew it would...hello old friend.With every foot strike I felt jarring blunt pain shoot up my leg. With every uneven grass patch the tendons in my ankles screamed in utter fatigue. My hips felt deeply torn. My thighs screaming for rest, for oxygen...my whole body was making more lactic acid then it could expel and I felt it build inside and threaten me. Hello old friend.

So I took its hand and danced a little tango with pain...we after all, have a deep relationship. I've sat silently with it in hospital rooms, its arm draped around my shoulders. I've walked beside it as I sought to hold on to expectations stolen from me and lost to circumstances. It's knelt with me in tears as I tried to pick up shattered pieces of my heart and make them into something, anything worthwhile. It has held me in helplessness, and been my companion in silence...pain and I, we know each other well...and I have much to thank you for old friend...it has given me this day, the ability to run this race, and run well.

I never realized as clearly as I did in this last race, how much heart is in my running. Maybe because there never has been so much reason to run. To live, to move. I'm 30 years old, young, but sometimes my heart feels old...pain has done that to me. But pain has also given me something I must thank it for. Endurance, fearlessness. You see, pain has never killed me...it has come, I have met it, looked it in the eyes, and moved on. It's through pain that I have learned a deeper love, a clearer priority, and reason to live. I have nothing to show for peace. We learn so little from comfort. So now, when the siren call for rest and comfort rings deep in my ears, I smile. I'd rather dance with pain, run with it, learn what it has to teach me...then lie in comfort. I do not fear it...I let it grow me.

I've seen it grow others too. It's done its powerful work of conditioning in my childhood companion Courtney. I won't try to pretend that I could ever understand the way pain must have lived his everyday as he watched his infant son fight for life and as he laid him to rest before his second birthday. Pain is a cruel teacher...but in the following year, I've watched Courtney run...13, 13's, in 2013 for his son...and he ran, not just ran...won. Because when you meet pain like that, when you feel it so deeply and you make it out alive...when you let it grow you and you live life open. It gives you something...strength. To battle to the end. To meet it and not fear it. To keep moving because in moving we live, we grow, we learn, we endure, we overcome.

So in the end if I go painfully and slow...don't worry about me. It's just my old friend and I in a slow dance...we might take it a few times around the room for old times sake, I might hold on to it a little longer before I go, to feel it again, to learn what I can...because you see...it'll be our very last dance.

The Misfit Mudder

His shirt said, “Misfit Mudder” and he certainly fit the bill. Probably 300 pounds with excess skin hanging on his under arms and chin that showed he had recently been heavier, slightly balding, and totally alone. No other misfit mudders around him, no cheering squad on the sidelines. Alone. Misfit.

In an event that touts itself as one of the toughest events on the planet, one where you promise to put your team mate before your course time, the infamous "Tough Mudder".  I had to wonder how he had got there? The second to the last obstacle, finish line in sight without a team in an incredibly physically draining event, even for the most endurance seasoned. 

I watched casually at first as he tried to run up the half pipe slicked down with water and mud at an incline that aimed to decelerate. A group of shirtless fitness junkies had spotted him and stopped to reach for his hands as he threw himself up. But his feet lost traction and the dead weight of his body was to much to hoist even for them. He fell without even the strength to catch himself face down in the mud. Un-moving, arms and legs splayed out. He finally would move again, drag his massive body to standing and back up to try again. The run, the fall, the hit and roll. The crowd started to notice, they moved in closer to cheer him on, the men on the top started concentrating their efforts in new and creative ways…but on the third fall I saw something in his face that was more dangerous than fatigue, it was hopelessness. And something inside me felt it too.

It is the human story it seems, at times, the fight to hard, the handicap to great, the fatigue too much, you surface only long enough to see the next wave of overwhelming proportions cresting for the kill, you’re going under and the giving up seems welcome relief from the struggle…and he was giving up. His head going under for the last time… and something in me rose up. 

How many times had I felt my own demons of naysayers? How many times have I depended on another hand, on hope, on my deep seeded innate belief in the power of the human spirit? How many times have I been saved from my own failures by a God that believes in turning weakness into strength? How many times has that same God sent the help, sent the words, sent a hand to pull me out?  

In my mind came clarity of purpose. Get him over the obstacle. There was no other option. He hit the mud again at the base of the ramp and I hurdled myself over the boundary flags and hit it too. I got down in his face. Put my hand on his back and said, “you’ve got this, you’re an inspiration to so many people here, you can’t give up.” He slowly raised his head…silent and unspeaking, emotions raw on his mud smeared face and stared at me. He looked done, but I wasn’t done. I knew if he was here, he had to have fight. I knew he wanted it. I knew he had it inside of him. And I knew he couldn’t give up.

I put out my hand and braced myself as he leaned heavily into it. And as we rose the crowed rose too, the collective battle cry of all of us who have been a misfit mudder, his fight was all our fight and we each had a part to play in it. I squared his shoulders with both hands and pulled myself up on my tiptoes to look him in the eyes and told him he had it in him. Told him everyone here wanted him to do this, everyone was cheering him on, they believed in him.

We backed up to the starting, I told him I’d run with him, told him to get his feet up high trust the hands…and we ran. Somehow, this man moved his huge body forward, he really put his heart into it, I ran with him and the crowed accelerated with energy, we willed him up, willed him forward. He hit the incline grabbed the hands and lost his footing. Smashing his head against the wall in the process, I think it stunned him a bit and he let go, rolling brutally down into the mud again. The whole crowed groaned with him and then was very silent. I think they were wondering if he’d get up, but I wasn’t wondering. Of course he was getting up.

He silently shook his head as I knelt beside him. And to his wordless negative I answered, “no, you’re going to do it, try again, you’ve got this in you”. He came to his knees and by how the crowd responded you’d think a man just rose from the dead. And honestly in that moment I think I did see him rise from the dead, I saw a spark come alive, he believed me. We backed up again, we ran again, and he fell again. But this time, this time I knew we had already won, because he was quicker in rising and his eyes had hope.

As a young child I remember watching Apollo 13 and thinking that the fight of the human spirit makes men do the impossible, it tints everything with hope. It settled in me and drives me to this day; it fuels my own endeavors and fills my ministry. My battle cry is, and always will be…HOPE.  

Six times he fell. Six times he failed. Six times. On the sixth time I washed down his hands and arms with a water bottle someone handed me. The mud was making it hard for the shirtless junkies to grasp. I told him he had to only get one leg high enough for someone to grab it. I told him to pull back on the hands that held him and just get his leg higher. The crew at the top had thickened and grouped into a mass of hands and hearts ready to help. The crowed at the bottom had thickened and grouped into a pulsating mass of heartfelt encouragement. I told him this was it. I asked him his name but it was lost in the den of screaming and chanting. No matter, his name is mine, his name is yours, his name is all of us who have faced our own wall.

I screamed, “GO, GO, GO!!” and we ran. He hit the incline, he grabbed the hands that reached for him  and this time he leaned back and got that foot, that one foot, two feet higher…Two feet, that’s all he needed. Someone had his knee, another man flung his torso over the edged his legs pinned down by another man to grab the second leg, and through human spirit, muscle power, and deafening cheering…he did it. We did it.

There hasn’t been many times I’ve cried from joy, but a choked sob broke my scream, and I felt the waves of pride, and gratefulness, and relief wash me. It was simply,  one of the purest emotions of sheer joy I have ever felt. And I realized I was standing alone at the bottom of a ramp with probably 300 people around me… sobbing. I quickly pulled down my sunglasses and hopped the boundary flags because crying at the Tough Mudder is against the rules. But I didn’t get far. A woman with as many tears as I stopped me, “did you know him?” I shook my head no, but somehow felt that that wasn’t entirely true. I did know him, because I knew his struggle.  She said, “that was incredible and I can’t stop crying”. I glanced around me and realized that no one was untouched, many were crying, most were still jumping up and down and still screaming, the men on the ramp were gorilla thumping their chests, butt slapping our misfit mudder, and high fiving each other… And in that moment, I saw Heaven. Heaven on earth, were everyone was equal, united by a common love, defined by the power of hope, and rejoicing in the battle won.

“Weeping may come for a night, but joy comes in the morning” Psalms 30:5

Heavy with the Joy of It

Tomorrow I turn thirty. It's not like I think that is old...because I know in 30 years I'll look back and laugh at that...and it's not that I think I'm wise, because honestly it seems the older I get the less I know. But sometimes, like tonight, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday I feel heavy with life, heavy with the speed of it, heavy with the weight of it, heavy with what I haven't done. But mostly, heavy with the joy of it.

I remember my sixth birthday when the large cardboard box in the garage moved and I tore into it to find the most perfect woolly lamb with a lavender collar who I named Heidi. What a birthday that was. My tenth birthday was the traveling birthday, a celebration in every relatives home from Montana to California...my brothers were jealous. My thirteenth birthday I asked for bed sheets, there was a Laura Ashley set I had had my eyes on. For my sixteenth birthday we camped in Glacier by Lake McDonald, and my girlfriend Kim and I went skinny dipping at midnight and ate Cheetos in our tent until our tongues went numb with whatever chemicals they put in those things. I spent my twenty-second birthday on my honeymoon, and my twenty-seventh throwing up from pregnancy. On my twenty-eight I ran a marathon and pushed my six month old twins across the finish line in the stroller. And tomorrow, I turn thirty.

The next thirty years are an untold story...they will be full of the joys and struggles, the blindsides and dreams, the discoveries and losses that define life. But these next thirty years, I hope to slow it down, or if I can't do that, at least name more of it. Acknowledge all of it's wonder, make sure I articulate it's gifts, live in the present and not push the future.

I will look my children in the eye. I will let my guard down. I will love reckless. I will breath deeply and notice it. I will never say never. I will learn. I will see things I've never seen. I will create. I will make beauty. I will tell those I love that I love them more often. I will be thankful. I will acknowledge God. I will love. I will love. I will love...

And in thirty years I'm sure I won't feel wise, and hopefully I won't feel old...but I'm sure that I'll feel heavy with life. Heavy with the speed of it, heavy with the weight of it, heavy with what I haven't done. But mostly, heavy with the joy of it.

Hope Springs

I love the seasons...and New England does them well. Today I ran and it felt like for the first time in a long time that we'd shaken the cold and grey, we finally shrugged the last icy morning and that life had sprung. Blooming brambles cascaded over  broken rock wall...birds sang and busied themselves. And I took out my earphones as I ran past a marsh because the frog song was better then my music. 

I suppose the reason why spring feels so incredible here is because of the severity of winter. We feel on some level like we've earned it. We paid our dues of deep bundling, of bent heads in humid chill, of locked in stuffy days where the frost on the window pane was the only growing life outside. Of runny noses, and cold floors and early nights and dark mornings. 

And I suppose that's why it feels so good to open the windows and let out months of stale air. To totally abandon layers and let the girls run naked in the backyard. To notice the kiss of sunshine on lily white skin with a hint of romance...like a body going a very long time without the touch of a loved one. It feels like over night hope grew in the crocus and the tulips and the whole world is celebrating and my hair catches flower petals like confetti at a wedding. 

And hope does spring. Last week Dustan took the last of his chemo pills which marked the end of constant treatment since his July brain surgery. and this week feels a bit like spring. And in a way it feels like we earned it. Days of nausea, of patience running low. Of weight loss and sleepless nights, of frustrated demoralizing struggle against some unseen foe...of marking our lives by the swing of the effects that chemo brings and living under the weight of knowing there is more. 

But as I scheduled this month, I didn't mark the days he would be on chemo, and I guess I just hadn't realized how much we'd been living in our own winter until I felt the freedom of our spring. Unencumbered and hopeful that life begins again, that beauty comes from struggle.

There will be other seasons to come. Each with their own beauty and each with their own struggle. But today, for the first time in a long time I opened the cupboard by my stove where Dustan's mini pharmacy has rested and I put away our spare mugs on an empty shelf. And I smiled to myself...because sometimes it only takes a blooming branch or an empty cupboard to remember that...hope...does...spring.