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. 

Wild heart

I have a reckless, wild heart. In vain did my parents warn me of boundaries, and control, and steady steps to love. In vain did they counsel me in the importance of objective decisions and practical choices. In vain have I sought in life and especially love to hold myself back and measure out slowly, safely. I have a reckless, wild heart...and oh, how I have hurt. Those brutal mile long, helicopter rescue, debris strewn heart breaks that leave you shattered, and battered, and bleeding. Those tightness in the chest, sharp pain in the core, grasping for air kind of train wrecks. And yet, when the smoke clears and the dust settles, that heart gathers again and impulsively  foolishly, recklessly begins again. Oh, how it betrays me, always leaving me more vulnerable  with more invested, always the one out on the limb, looking foolish with my heart in my hands, and my foot in my mouth.

And it is ridiculous because often I don't see it coming...well, if I did, I didn't admit it until I'm all in, hands up, ready to go for broke. You'd think I'd have learned, you think I'd have slowed down, you think I'd have nothing left.

But lately...it's gone and done it again on me, twice over and this one...this one I know it's a dosey. You see, there are two little blondes with vivid blue eyes that have just captured it and tottered away with it. And they don't even know how far gone I am, they don't even know what they've done to me. How that reckless heart feels for them, something more powerful then human articulation can name. How when they giggle and smile it does flip-flops in my rib cage and catapults in my stomach. How when little hands cup my face and quizzical eyes peer deep into me, I feel as if they are somehow myself, just in another body, with goodness and innocence. And my heart feels bare and vulnerable because I know that they will always carry it with them. Someday it will be taken from this place when they leave me, they will walk away with it like another article in their suitcase...and I close my eyes tight and draw in the sharpness of pain that I already feel for that moment.

But that doesn't slow me down. Not even a little. There is no reserve of caution, even though I know of this impending heart break. Its a hundred miles a minute, careening out of control. It's a wild love affair of kisses, and adoration, and discovery, and simplistic trust, and unreserved emotions. It's dancing in the living room....both of them in my arms with their hands in my hair and heads on my shoulders. And I feel my heart falling, flying, wild and I say to it, "love reckless, for before this moment, you only ever dreamed of love."

They Are My Reason

I've been here before. The hospital rooms, the unanswered questions, the calm resolution and clarity of priorities. I've held my husbands hand before as they told us he had a brain tumor...told him before that we would beat this, we'd fight it. Four years ago actually. And we did, we fought and we won. Or this is what we thought. But I'm standing in the ER and the Doctor shows me the cat-scan and tells me it's back. And it is. Bigger, badder. And I lean down to tell Dustan in a choked whisper..."its back babe." And he says, "that's not good". And its not. I know this. I've been here before...but I've never been here before. Because this time, back at home, there are two little girls who call us "mama" and "dada". Because this time, there are innocents. Two little lives that belong to us. This time, it's not just me, or us...its ours. Because this time the stakes are higher. And we know this. And I wonder, how strong can I be?

It's an ambulance transfer, drugs, tests, scans, and a frenzy of Doctors. It's questions, and possible solutions, and the reality that the answers are unknown. It's numbness, and resolutions, and a determination to get through. I've been here before...but I've never been here before. Because tonight instead of staying with Dustan in his room, I will go home. Because there are two more little people that need my care. So I leave him...and wish I could be more then one. Tonight I feed them and dress them and sing them lullabies. Tonight I hold them and tell them I love them and tuck them into their cribs. And tonight little Emmie pulls herself up to grip the bars and expectantly cries. "Dada! Dada! Dada!" and something inside me tears right in two, top to bottom and everywhere in-between. And it hits me so hard it could have been a freight train. This time, it's not about me, it's not about Dustan, its' not about us. This time the reason for fighting this is them. They are my reason. Emmie quiets down and goes to sleep. Yes, she would get used to not having her daddy there to put her down... but I never want her to. Both my babies need their daddy. Both of them adore him and he them. But little Emmie is so much like her father. I want her to know how she is like him, I don't ever want to have to tell her. And little Ellie is my coordinated sportswoman, I just know it. And I need her dads physical talent and ability to nurture that. Yes, this time, they are my reason.

I don't know if I would call it resentment. But this motherhood thing has been slow in coming for me. Slow in taking hold that I am now not my own. I often feel in a blur of functioning, and less of really experiencing. But tonight there is something bigger then myself. Something wholly powerful beyond my own understanding that takes root. THEY ARE YOUR REASON. The reason for everything I choose, I do, I endure.

And so, my strength is gathered around me with a new purpose. Stronger and bigger then I ever knew possible. I put on my boxing gloves and stake down in the corner of the man who my children call "Dada." And I fight, I fight, I fight. I tell him we will beat this, I tell him we will live...really live. I tell him we will simply work this into our extraordinary life. I hold his hand while he vomits. I clean him up when he cannot clean himself. I spend sleepless nights repeating bible promises to him to ease his troubled mind. I answer the same questions over and over because he cannot remember. I help him sit. I help him stand. I help him walk. And we walk, and walk, and walk. I ride the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical roller-coaster that is brain trauma and cancer. And I fight, I fight, I fight. I am tired. Not tired, more then tired...weary. But I fight, I fight, I fight with him, for him...because they are my reason.

We take each day for what it is...and we live, really live. There is something beautiful about this. Something precious and holy. It is a privilege to see life like this, to understand the clarity of your priorities. To have so much to live and fight for. I do not resent it, I do not fear it. They tell us there is no cure. And then time lines are discussed. And I find myself calculating where the girls will be in life. There is never enough time to love them. To watch them grow and learn. There is never enough time to discover these incredible little humans who God has somehow graced us with. They are my reason. And I fight, I fight, I fight.

Dustan is an incredible man, with incredible spirit. And together we will win again. It may not be forever, but it will be rich. We will live...really live. We will keep growing, keep learning, keep exploring, keep moving until we cannot anymore. Until we have to succumb to our humanity and go where every man most go. We will do this for our children. They are our reason.

I will not stop. I will do the harder thing. Today I came home from radiation and tried to make amends for a house in chaos while Dustan rested. My girls where restless and demanding at my feet. I wanted nothing more then to put in a movie and zone them out. But my strength gathered round me and I pulled out the finger paints. I stripped them down and put them on the kitchen floor and we painted. Bright splatters of wild color,  hand prints, and feet prints, and chaotic swirls. And at the end there was more paint on them and the floors then the paper. But we lived...really lived. They are my reason.

The Luxury of Beauty

I come from a long line of women who take care of themselves. My great grandmother on my mother's side was a little firecracker of a flirt who wore red lipstick and pretty dresses, and although I never really knew my great grandmother on my fathers side he had a picture on his dresser where she looked like a Cameo in an elegant top knot and lace peter pan collar perfectly pressed in the soft black and white of the photo paper.

 My Grandmother on my mothers side who I affectionately call Gamu, is a a delightful platinum blond piece of work, with designer clothes and tan skin and a remarkably perky figure for a woman in her eighties. She has beautiful soft skin that has hardly aged at all, especially given the fact she has spent most of her life in the sun. She is beautiful...really, and when she was young she was all legs and tiny short shorts and a little bit of rock and roll. My Grandmother on my dads side who I call Granny, is in her nineties and still stunning. I never remember her elegant white hair ever being out of place. She told me once when I was ten, while I sat in front of her vanity on a little white wrought iron chair swinging my legs while she got ready, that a woman should always wear pretty underthings and made sure they matched. She had as a young woman an impossibly tiny waist and fantastic figure. Trying on one of her one of a kind tailor made dresses as a 14 year old, I discovered my waist to large and my body considerably lacking to fill out other areas. She must have been a real knock-out.

 My own mother is a beautiful woman and even in the woods of Montana where there would be no one for days and days. She always got herself fixed up first thing in the morning...a little makeup, hair done. I never have once, seen my mother in jeans. She always wore something just a little bit classy, a little bit nice. She always was active and healthy. I remember as a child some women being jealous of her. Intimidated by her graceful, thin, classic, beauty. But I was proud...still am proud.

 And so, I try to carry it on...I do love beautiful clothes, and shoes, and makeup...I spend considerable amount of energy trying to stay healthy and fit. I try to dress well, and appear put together. But the luxury of beauty is somehow escaping me these days.

 When my twins were first born I felt like my body was a bit of a train wreck...all night sweats and bloated, loose and out of shape. My skin was going crazy with all the shedding hormones and I didn't quite know what to do with the in between stage of regular clothes not fitting me, but the maternity clothes making me look like I was still pregnant. It didn't take that many times of brushing baby puke out of my hair that my long, thick hair got lopped off for a more practical, out of my way, bob. Putting on makeup in the morning became a circus act...shoot even getting dressed became a circus act and I found that these days I'm lucky if I get out of the door with my pants on the right direction. Twins and uninterrupted productivity is really not a common combination. Most days I'll glance down to find some greasy little hand print on my suit, or a mystery stain right on the front of my shirt. I'm always wrinkled, usually from carrying a baby on my hip, and there has been times when I look in the mirror at work to discover I only got one eye of makeup on before I rushed out the door. Blowouts don't wait. Clumsy top heavy toddlers don't wait to crash of the couch. "Sister stole my binki" squabbles don't wait for mommy to finish the other eye.

 My body has changed too. I trained and ran a marathon, a half marathon, and a obstacle endurance event since giving birth. I run and work out like potato chips, often pushing significantly heavy babies with me. Previously this would have afforded me the body I wanted. But still my body protests loosing those last five-ten pounds and stores them in the most frustrating places. Presumably terrified I will put it through the strain of 10 months of making people again. Whatever it is, it's ridiculous how hard it is to make my body what I want it to be since pregnancy.

 I try to make amends in the morning with the dark circles under my eyes when the girls are cutting teeth and fitfully sleep. I try to find the time to keep up with my hair. I try to make sure I at least smell nice and am clean. But I've had to let go of the luxury of beauty as I've known it. I still value it and hope to pass it on to my children, but it isn't what it was. And perhaps this is good. Perhaps it is truer beauty to find that what you do is more important then what you look like. Because I am a mother. That is what I do. And if I have stains on my shirt and oatmeal in my hair...if my clothes are wrinkled and my body defies me in some places its really ok. Because to my little girls I will be beautiful. Just as to me, my mother will always be beautiful.

 Sure I like to think in time I may be able to get back the stolen moments of luxury. Sometimes I try to create a moment of oasis...like the other night when I drew a hot bubble bath after the girls went down, lit some candles, plugged in the Ipod, and slipped deliciously slowly in, letting out a sigh of content...until something sharp and slimy dug into my spine. Fishing through the bubbles I pulled out a rubber duck with a rather sharp beak, an incredulous smirk frozen on his face...the moment was entirely gone, but I shook my head as I squeezed a liquid squeak out of it and laughed. I am a mother, this is my beauty.

The Cultivation of Character

They say that to grow a character...to really overcome things such as prejudice, dishonesty, and selfishness you have to work it like a garden. Get down and dirty and take hold of those pesky intrusions of fallacy and uproot them. Like weeding...I hate weeding.

As a young child it was my most dreaded job and unfortunately one of my mothers most popular hobbies was to create elaborate English herb gardens and flowerbeds that grew weeds in abundance. Secretly I believed that she gave birth to three strong children simply to use them as serf labor in her grandiose schemes of turning the Montana wilderness into something tamed and "civilized". Which of course in her defense, as an adult, I do understand was not the case.

Weeding is just so un-pleasant. It's boring for one, and infuriating for another, there is nothing more frustrating then laboring hard over a bed of dirt to turn around two days later and have it all for nought. There is something awful about getting dirt jammed under your fingernails, and the feeling of dry dusty dirt drying on your hands is not high on my favorite sensations. Yes, I truly dislike weeding, which may explain why I haven't even attempted a garden in my adult life, which is also because I seem to have a cursed brown thumb that could kill even plastic plants. I have never been successful, not even once. In keeping a small green thing alive. I've even killed African Violets, which my mother assures me is the most hardy and un-killable plant there is, as they are in fact..from Africa and do survive in some of the most inhospitable conditions possible. But that is no match for my plant killing skill apparently. There are no African violets in my house at the moment, if that tells you anything.

So yes, I'm not great at growing things, and I hate weeding. Which is ironic, because in the development of character as a garden plot...I am in great need. More then the average person out there I think. I have always considered myself selfish. More then most. I have had a great knack of getting what a wanted through-out my life for which I am not proud. As well as sometimes being a bit of a bulldozer when I have something in my sights and ashamedly at times have left the wreckage of the ends justifying the means in my wake. Again, I am not proud of this. I could go on with other arguments to substantiate my claims of being more selfish then most, but am also guilty of a fair bit of pride so will stop before it is to embarrassing.But motherhood, doesn't allow much room for selfishness it appears...or if it does, I haven't found out how. I know this because motherhood hurts. It hurts in the selfishness department and by this I know I've got to weed.

I have always feared that somewhere I've missed some "goodness" gene, or at least a natural mothering gene. I felt this first during pregnancy when, I heard other expecting mothers profess love for their unborn children in glowing terms of endearment and express that whatever discomfort they may be experiencing, be it vomiting, back pain, leg cramps, loss of sanity, loss of sleep, loss of memory...whatever it was, would in fact all be worth it once they saw that little child. I'll be honest, I wasn't so sure. I felt like a host planet to aliens and resented the invasion of my body. Which of course I felt guilty about. And I feel guilty now, when young new mothers talk about the joys of motherhood and how life is so much better now that they came along, and how did they ever live with out them. I'll be honest, I remember how I did. Life was easier then...Dustan and I actually knew how to communicate fairly well, I got a lot more sleep, I didn't feel like I was on a hair trigger of insanity, and it was fairly easy to complete everyday tasks. I actually felt like I knew what I was doing most days, and was a dependable, reliable, on time kind of person, who's house was respectable at most points, and appearance was mostly professional. Not any more! And guess what, it hurts a bit. It hurts to be knocked down to size, actually to feel like you've been knocked down to miro-size. It's painful to feel like you are divided and lacking on all fronts and failing miserably in some. I hate to say this because I don't hear it often from other mothers so I feel a bit like a chicken with its neck out...but I've got to say it just in case there is a mother anywhere in the world who feels like me and needs to know she isn't insane. Or if she is, that she isn't the only one.

And to encourage her to hang on, just do the next thing, keep working hard, and praying harder...and to hold so tight, to the precious little moments that slip in during those insane days. The moments of a little hand squeezing your finger, the calm that ensues in a hysterical child from your touch and yours alone, for the little imp smile that makes them so hard to be mad at when you find them putting all their toys in the toilet bowl, and for the beautiful face that is a part of you. These are God's gift to remind you, you were in fact...made to be a mother.