Monday, February 21, 2011

The Race

I love to run.  I love it from the moment you say, "now" and you get your iPod ready and start the stretches.  The excitement of looking out and planning your trail and how much effort you are willing to put into it - what you want to think about or plan for in the future.  It is an escape.
Life can be like running.  You hit it hard and just start running.  In the beginning you believe you've mapped out a trail.  You may have decided what thematic music you want playing to your life.  You might have even marked out a finish line and visualized the crossing through to the other side - all smiles of course with the look of victory on your face.
What happens when you are hitting the pavement at full speed and you've been going awhile and you look around to realize you aren't quite sure where everyone else went and where the finish line is suppose to be?
Do you stop and look around to see if you can hear or see anyone?  Or do you keep pounding the pavement with determination to get somewhere, even if it ends up to be nowhere - at least you will get there fully spent and exhausted?
I am not a psychologist, yet, but I think either answer must reveal some real drivers of our hearts.
I personally, am stopped in my tracks by the abrupt halt to my life when someone dies.  I have had it happen enough to recognize the need to identify the race and who is running it with me and where on earth am I going?
I first felt this way at age 15 when I lost my 17 year old cousin.  My life as a crazy, young teen was a rapid race in a cheerleading uniform practicing lines for the school musical and holding a seat as an officer in student council.  Her car accident brought a vicious HALT to a marathon I was running for being "somebody" at my school.  As I sat in a hospital waiting room at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night being told my best friend had not made it through the crash - I stopped and looked around.
The race dramatically changed.  The people running the race became the actual finish tape for me.  I stopped being as concerned with me being somebody and more concerned with expressing my love to the somebodies racing around me.  In some ways, I quit running and became a real sideline gal rooting those around me to pursue living and love because I knew it was brief.
I stayed in that state of mind for a long time.  Truth be told I probably used it as a cop out of running.  I created a new high school and college mantra, "do the minimum to get the maximum."
That mantra rang in my head for years until the next experience - my dad's death.
As he was dying, this talented man in his fifties, he spoke of regret - oh, the pain of regret for having not really raced in his heat.  He did a 5K when he was built for a marathon.
So, I emotionally quit filling everyone's water bottles and laced up my shoes.
Engaged in life - wrote a book, wrote a song, started a nonprofit - if it was a dream I had ever secretly desired in my heart - well, then I pursued it.  Oh, it felt good.  I loved running again.  Busy feet, busy fingers, busy - busy - busy.  Running, running so hard I could actually hear the wind singing in my ears.
Then, yet again, another death - my light-hearted, living free step dad who ran his own victorious race!
So, Lord, I stand before you on a track, looking around yet again - no runners in sight - no markers to find the finish line.  And I think I finally get it.  Jesus, you are the pacesetter running just slightly ahead with your balloons or flashing light letting me know that I don't need to know where we are going to end up.  I don't even have to know my own pace.  I just have to know Your pace and follow those feet pounding the street.  My days of standing on an empty track unaware of why or where I am going are over.  Jesus, You are the steady.  I will follow You until we go through the finish tape together - having run the whole race.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

A Daddy's Heart

Most of you have realized already that my step dad, Tom Hudson, the man who ripped my heart out with his suffering, passed away last week.  He did.  He suffered at the end more than I have ever witnessed firsthand and unfortunately, I have seen a lot, as I watched my biological daddy turn to skin and bones - screaming out in pain as cancer ate through his bones.
You may think I am being a bit graphic, but I want you to understand the visuals that expose these thoughts.  Graphics that will not soon be forgotten - until now.
Why now?  Because that is the power of taking thoughts captive.  That is the power of our minds.  When I begin to camp out on the horror of their suffering, I stop - kick it out - and remember what these men lived for.  They did not live to suffer.  Their lives should not be highlighted by the end.
Ironically, these two men had a lot in common.  I shouldn't be surprised considering the same woman, my mom, choose both of them.
Tom Hudson lived to share the gospel in complete freedom.  He announced his position in the family of God to whomever would listen.  Sometimes it got embarrassing, not for him, but for us.  I am far from embarrassed now.  I am thankful.  His child-like declarations of grace and love are comforting me now.
My dad, Michael, was more of the serious sorts when it came to his faith.  He loved to have philosophical conversations about the way God worked in the world and what parts of life emulated His character.  He spent a lot of time being incredibly curious about the details of the inner workings of creation.  I understand that.  I have that side, too.  That side causes me to dive into study verses taking the Christian rhetoric and calling it faith.  It isn't by the way.  It is just a vocabulary that brings no comfort at all, just a social circle that can talk the same.
These men, have me in common, a daughter with a piece of each of them to carry on a legacy.  The legacy of faith, real faith.  I am blessed.  I am grateful.  I have been loved as a daughter by two exceptional men.  Men I am pleased to call my dad.  I praise God that after three step dads, He allowed me to have an open heart to love a man that was able to give the best gift a man is able to give - a daddy's heart.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Why I journal...


Dr. Pennebaker, a psychology professor who applies physiological research to the benefits of writing, claims that writing increases your immune system and ups your psychological well-being.
But I write because it is the only way I can make sense of my over-sensitivity to human suffering, sadness and even sometimes abundance of joy.  I write because at the end of a complete thought is resolution.  
Right now, I am writing out of an enormous amount of pain for another person, my step dad.  When my mom called me to let me know that he was being put on a ventilator in ICU, I began to envision what that would be like.  So, as we packed the car and planned the details, I created this picture of walking in and hugging him and talking with the other family members in his room.  
I was shocked to round the corner and see a once vibrant man with his head taped pointing up to the ceiling with tubes uncomfortably coming out of his mouth and bruising all over his collar bone.  Swollen hands strapped to the bed with glassed over eyes still begging for a fight.  As he struggles, my heart begins to break.
I don't want to selfishly assume that I am the only girl in the whole, wide world that has been given the witnessing of two dads suffering beyond what I thought was imaginable with today's modern medicine.  I don't want to assume that I am the only person that empathizes with fighters.  I can walk into a pet store and cry for the dogs batting at their cage begging for someone to get them out.  I know I am one of many to feel these trials of human struggle.  
How do I make sense of this?  How do I complete this thought to get resolution with this tattooed image of anguish?  I fear I cannot.
My default is quickly becoming what is real.  The Lord is my Shepherd, He leads me.... - and beg for Him to lay those suffering souls by the calm waters. 



Thursday, February 3, 2011

Tale of a Tree

Tuesday morning I woke up to the howls of strong, blizzard winds truly sweeping down the plain.  As I made my coffee, I simply stared out the window watching the snow in its complete chaos.  And then, this furry ball of brown scampered across the golf course looking from side to side as if to say, "Where is my refuge from this storm?"
He found it.  The big, more like enormous, tree that has been around at least a hundred years and has clearly housed many animals from the storms - the large holes prove it.
Today, the storm has passed leaving behind a blanket of white.  The small squirrel emerged from his hiding place in the tree.  As he climbed out of the hole, he looked right to left as he proceeded farther from the tree. He looked back.  Almost as if he wanted to say, "thank you."  The tree obviously remained unmoved by the experience, as if it was created solely for the purpose of being a refuge.
Watching all this I couldn't help but remember the tree when it was absolutely stunning.  When we first met this tree it towered over even the largest of homes.  It's foliage was like an eagle sprawled for a landing.  It was beautifully memorable.
But since that day, the tree has been through its own storms.  An ice storm that caused large branches to fall violently to the ground, one by one.  A Spring storm that ripped the leaves and small branches right off of the trunk.
The tree doesn't care.  The tree was designed to be a refuge, irrespective of how beautiful it was, the squirrel found a refuge.  The squirrel survived the blizzard.  The tree will probably do it again for one of the squirrel's children.
Purpose is not always packaged as beautiful, nevertheless, it is always a refuge.