Don’t flay the sheep.

My Come Back (Or: Is it a Good Thing to Be a Clydesdale?)

Thea and Mary Beth’s votes put running over the top, so here’s my post.

First, the running back-story:

In high school, I ran track because it was a co-ed sport at school. There were some nice boys on the team. Plus, it did not involve a ball, and I’m clumsy when it comes to sports with balls. I was slow and stubborn, and my height’s suggestion of promise as a high-jumper turned out to be trumped by the clumsiness issue, so my coaches kindly put me in the 1500m event. It didn’t matter much that I was really really really slow, because our team wasn’t too great. We were close to the bottom of the food chain in the school’s athletic system. Example: whenever the pool had to be drained, the maintenance guys drained it onto the track just before practice time.

Then we moved and my new school was serious about track. State-champs serious. I would have none of that, so I didn’t join up.

In college, I ran a little bit when I felt stressed out. And then, after my first year of seminary, I was assigned to ten weeks as a solo intern pastor at a tiny little church where my ministry mostly involved writing two sermons a week and spending gobs of time with the teen-aged girls who lived across the street and had a pretty atrocious family situation (as in, one of them was removed from the home during that summer). Welcome to ministry!! My 22-year-old self didn’t know how to handle all this, so I decided to run a marathon, which I completed under my goal of 6 hours (5:59). I ran in the back with people who had recently recovered from heart attacks. My mom cried when I finished. I took off my shoes and couldn’t get them back on so I had to walk several blocks of downtown Chicago barefoot to get to the car.

Since then, I’ve trained sporadically, run a few 5Ks, and a 25K, aged, and gained some weight.

And now, I’ve decided it’s time to run again. Problem is, I don’t train well unless I have a goal. A big goal. (If it’s too small, I pretend that I’ve been training and then just run it anyway.) Last week I sat down and plotted out a schedule of running by which I could maybe be ready for the River Bank Run this May. I followed it perfectly for about week, but now God is not helping matters because it is cold. I’ve decided that my limit is single-digit temperatures. I know there are some hard-core nutters out there who run in single digits, but I’m not one of them.

Did I mention the whole baby thing? I didn’t get to exercise at all for most of my pregnancy because I was on modified pelvic rest. (Meaning that I had a doctor’s permission to sit on the couch as much as I wanted to. Not as fabulous as it sounds.) 

My Dad is referring to the race this spring as my “come-back.” I’ll let him think what he wants, but ”come-back” is a tenuous word to use for my return to this race since the last time I ran, I think about about 3rd to last for my age and gender catagory. But, this time, I think I’m in a new age bracket, so maybe I can do a little better!

And, I’ve just discovered that my chances at doing better in my bracket get even better: there is a new “Clydesdale Division” for the larger runner at the River Bank Run. Yes, because I weigh more than 155 lbs., I can race as a clydesdale. Clearly, this division catagory was thought up or at least named by a man. What woman in her right mind wants to be called a cyldesdale? 

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Choose Your Own Adventure

I haven’t posted in a while, so here, gentle readers, is your chance for a little participation (and maybe some de-lurking!): in the comments, cast your vote for the potential posts you’d like to see. I’ll check back in a few days and write up the most popular.

1. I’m thinking about running a 25k race in May. This might be insane, since I haven’t run since March. Oh, and I had a baby in August.
2. Want to know the top ten things I learned at the conference on worship I attended last week?
3. I met face-to-face-to-face with Meg and Susan.
4. Two weeks ago, I created a cycle of prayer stations for my high school youth group. I’d love to share it with you all.
5. I’m trying to pull together a list of good children’s books with overt or covert religious themes.
6. What’s up lately with my knitting?
7. I’m long overdue for another post in my churches series. Want to know about the church I grew up in?
8. I looked at some old posts and I think my writing is going downhill. I wonder why?

Vote away! I’ll write up one of these later this week!

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Samara and the Psalms

In December, my friends Heidi and Tim found out that their baby daughter, Samara, has cancer. Because she is so close in age to Zora, and because Heidi and Tim are so dear to me, she’s been much on my mind. Last weekend, I got to visit her for the first time.

This is part of a message I sent to Heidi yesterday:

We’re doing a congregation-wide read-through of the Bible this year, and this morning Erik and I were catching up on a few days, but I was so glad we got behind because there was this wonderful convergence of the Psalms we read that had me praying for Samara.

First, the line in Psalm 6 really hit me after you were talking about the medication that can make someone’s bones ache while their white blood cell count is brought up:

O Lord, heal me, for my bones are in agony.

And, of course the whole Psalm doesn’t fit perfectly, but then these lines seemed to resonate, too:

Turn, O Lord, and deliver me, save me because of your unfailing love.

No one remembers you when he is dead.Who praises you from the grave?

And then when we got to Psalm 8, this:

From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise.

I understand that verse so much better now that I hear Zora experimenting with and enjoying her little voice. I think babies pray without knowing it. Doesn’t that give new meaning to the idea that the Spirit prays for us even when we don’t have words? So, I was thinking about how those psalms I heard this morning might fit in the catagory of prayers the Spirit helps Samara to pray.

I read this paraphrase of Psalm 6 once:

Let me live! I can’t praise you in the grave!

Give me health! I can’t think straight and sing so well for you in pain!

Save me from my temptations, the stumbling blocks and distractions that undo the work of your servant, that’s me Lord, your servant…

I thought about that paraphrase this morning, too, and had this wonderful picture of you with Samara in the baby carrier playing piano, and of Tim singing to her, of her learning already how to sing and praise God.

If you’re reading this, and you’re one who’s inclined to pray, remember to help the Spirit pray for Samara, and for Tim and Heidi. Samara has been doing really well, too, and so Tim and Heidi often ask as well that people pray for all other little children with cancer.

That’s another thing about the Spirit praying: sometimes when we don’t have the words, God gives them to other people.

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DaDaDaDaDaDa

This week syllables.

And maybe she really is brilliant enough that she already means what she’s saying.

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What’s going on…

Rather than a Friday Five, just an update about what’s been going on:

• Too much working. I have violated my day off two weeks in a row now. This is bad. Partly, it means I am just plain busy. It probably means my time management skills aren’t as good as the could be. But, most importantly, I think it means that I am trying so hard to do so well and prove that I can be so good at what I’m called to do that I cannot simply let go of some things, delegate some things, or just let some details be. Notice all the “I’s” in that sentence. Somebody needs to get her spiritual ducks into shape.
• The really fun thing I did this week was prepare for the youth group’s Sunday night event, a cycle of prayer stations that I’ve been calling “winter soul”. I remember sort of hating this part of the year when I was in high school: Christmas was over, exams, no break in sight, cold, yucky, etc. (I liked it better when I lived in NY and there was a once-weekly school ski trip.) Preparation has been fun (but, I should have let some of the details go…) I’ll post more information about this event later, but for now, I’ll tell you that I’ve been doing things this week like: creating a giant roll of paper with paint-foot-prints on it; collecting little whit Christmas lights; making soundtracks for some stations. I love it that these eclectic things are part of my work!
• Trying to figure out where to go from here with the confirmation curriculum. I have big ideas for the future, but for now, I’ve got to figure out the rest of the year. I can decide what information is most important, and I wish I had a better handle on how to work on spiritual, rather than just intellectual, development with them.
• I’m officiating at my first funeral this afternoon. I would have officiated at my first funeral last week, but the sister of the deceased (not a church-member, but an out-of-town, referral-from-the funeral-home situation) asked for a more “fundamentalist” pastor after pleasant 10-minute conversation. I guess she had been a little nervous about me from the get-go because I was female (she said she wouldn’t even have talked to me if our administrative assistant had not referred to me as the associate for children and youth). The female pastor thing made her wonder how liberal I was, so she asked what I thought about salvation and I gave her a little speech that solidly acknowledged Christ’s role in salvation, but also admitted that there was some mystery about how it all works and we humans don’t really get the final say about who makes it and who doesn’t. Well, apparently, this didn’t go over too well with her, and she was convinced that I wouldn’t be able to present the gospel truth in conducting the funeral. I was grateful that she was nice about it.
• And, the biggie, Zora seems to have a cows-milk-protein allergy. This is just not fair–she’s been exclusively breast-milk-fed, she’s got a genetic background without food allergies, babies usually develop this a lot earlier than 4 months, etc. (Then again, the placenta previa wasn’t fair either…) So, she’s been on a round of special formula while we figure this out, and I’ve been pretty much attached to my pump non-stop to keep up my supply. This is exhausting, by the way. I’ve heard of moms who for some reason have to pump all the time, and I don’t know how they do it. I’ve also had to cut every trace of dairy from my diet. This is tough for someone from a family that guzzles milk (one of my sister’s friends used to chastise her dairy habit by yelling, “Milk is NOT a thirst quencher!” every time she reached for the carton.) You would not believe how many things have dairy in them, including…SOY CHEESE!! Basically, I’m now a vegan who eats eggs and meat.

Next week, I’d like to: work less, pray more, start feeding Zora again, and find some soy cheese without milk in it!

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RevGalBlogPals Friday Five: Birthday, Redux

It’s nowhere close to my birthday, but here goes…

1. Favorite way to celebrate my birthday? I’d say nice dinner out with Erik, maybe family, and if it’s been a calm week at church, I might tolerate some god friends, too.

2. I share my birthday with Sammy Sosa (I’m a Cubs fan: baseball bores me, but I really like Wrigley Field).

3. How do I feel about milestone birthdays? I have no problem with people knowing how old I am. How long I’ve been married makes me feel older than the birthdays adding up. Although, I think I did get really teary the night of my 18th birthday…

4. Have I been sung to in a restaurant? Yep. But not on my birthday. My high school friends made a habit of making up someone’s birthday when we went out to eat.

5. Take my birthday–please. When I was a kid, November 12 was a great day for a birthday–the day after Veterans Day, so there was always a long weekend attached. However, it seems that the church I’m at now may not be the best place for this birthday. This year, my birthday was on Stewardship Sunday, and next year, it’s a presbytery meeting.

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Ford’s Funeral

I got sucked in this morning, sucked into watching the Ford funeral.

While Ford was not of my particular political persuasion, I am fascinated by the spectacle of the state funeral. And, as Bush 43 pointed out, he is a Grand Rapids, MI, boy. I was born in that town myself (although, Ford was not…), lived there for awhile as an adult, Grace Episcopal Church was on my regular running route. There’s actually a picture somewhere from a local west Michigan paper of my Mom as a little curly-haired cherub sitting in the congressman’s lap.

Here are a few observations:

• I wish the media could surrepitiously mike the seated dignitaries. For example, at one point I saw Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Carter engaged in quite a conversations. Wonder what that was about…
• Betty Ford is the most incredibly graceful 90-something woman I have ever seen.
• I am floored by the way we use religion as a country when it’s convenient. I mean, this funeral was a CHURCH SERVICE in every sense of the word. And a good one, no less. Good, solid, high church. I sang along with the choir.
• And speaking of high church: Ford was an Episcopalian. He was high church, no question about it. But most of the country isn’t high church. What happens when our less high church presidents, say Carter and Cllinton, Baptists that they are, die? Will the services feel any different? More like revivals?
• I’m no presidential scholar and I won’t enter the debate about how good a president Ford was, but the passage his daughter read, James 1:19-24, about being doers of the word, was a great passage for any public person.
• Henry Kissinger, referring to Ford’s role in relations with South Africa, termed the situation there “colonialism.” OK, Henry, I’ll give you the colonial part, but I think it went a little bit further than that.
• By the time Tom Brokaw gave his eulogy, I was listening on the radio. But I am sure that he was staring down Bush 43 when he talked about how Ford never viewed the media as adversaries, and respected their role even when they were not easy to deal with.
• Can you imagine being Bush 43 and having to give a eulogy when, just this week, there have been releases of recent interviews Ford gave where he was highly critical of the Iraq war and the Bush administration?
• Grand Rapids was frequently referred to as: “the Heartland,” “mainstreet America,” etc. Well, kind of, but it’s also the second biggest city in the state of Michigan, and it is a city with definite urban problems. Even the heartland is not all Norman Rockwell and suburban prosperity.

Even as I write this, I’ve just been informed that I’m leading my first funeral service later this week. A little more low-key, I hope.

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Good mom, lousy head?

Following on my earlier post about an article that exalts messiness as a sign of being a good parent, here’s another gem, and a quote to pique your interest:

I now know what makes someone a good mother. Forget the debates about staying at home or working, being a disciplinarian or a softie. What distinguishes the good mother is this: When your kid gets lice, you get lice, too.

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What I did on my Christmas vacation

I took a few days off this week, and my family gathered at the cottage of our friends Gene and Faith (a godsend in every sense of that word since we no longer all fit at my parents–they downsized the minute we kids started moving out…)

Erik and I annually plan a family event/competition instead of giving gifts, often inspired by a reality TV show. This year we put together the family version of “Iron Chef.”

Here’s my brother, sisters, and my sister’s boyfriend competing in their round. Can you smell the deep fried wontons with curried chick-peas?

Obviously, we played with Zora.

Survived the obligatory family picture.

And in a flight crafty inspiration, I made mobiles from found beach items.

And now, a day to get things back together at home.

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Good mom, messy desk?

Mary’s blog alerted me to this article.

Timely since I did actually organize a scary closet today. It’s needed attention since before Zora was born. As I worked on it, I thought, “This poor child is doomed to learn my terrible organizational habits. I don’t deserve her.”
And reassuring, too. Now I know I’m a good mom, since the only time part of my desk at work truly gets cleared is when I need the space to change a diaper!

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