Two weeks ago I crossed the finish line at the Space Coast marathon in Cocoa Beach.  So much went into getting to that finish line, and so much happened to me during the process.  I consider myself a runner for the first time in my life; it is a part of who I am now. Through running I learned a lot about being inside my head, about time alone with thoughts and prayers, about how much stronger we are than we give ourselves credit for!  Everyone I ran with had something going on that complicated the process of training – but they were (and continue to be) committed to working through those issues.   That level of determination was so inspiring to me.

Back in June when Robin Adams and Robin Bennett talked me into giving running a try I went out on a few one mile runs by myself to see how things would go.   I wasn’t at all conditioned for the activity, but I was fortunate to be on a mini vacation in Destin and so I got to run along the sidewalk next to the beach with lots of other runners.  It felt like community to me already.  I would get back to the room and report my progress to the Robins and they would text back with such kind and supportive comments.  That support, coupled with the friendly waves from fellow runners along the beach planted in me a seed that continued to be watered in June and July.

Then came August 5th – the day Toni died.

That day I went to lunch with my sweet friend Ann, and she asked how running was going.  I told her it was strange how easily I had taken to it and how empowered I felt by it.  When I got back to work from lunch I sent her a little email thanking her for lunch and added the comment “I’m not sure how to explain it Ann, but I feel certain God has a plan for me through running, I just don’t know what it is yet.”  Ten minutes later I got the call that something had happened at Toni’s house.

Those next few days are an absolute blur.  What I remember most is how critical Laureen was to me having any strength at all.  We were at lunch a couple of days later (we were nearly inseparable that week) and she told me that her Mom felt certain we would find a way to make this mean something, we wouldn’t let Toni die in vain.  I knew in that instant that God  was giving me strength in running so that I could use it to help raise awareness of the things we can do when we have a friend or family member that might be contemplating suicide.

Training for the months following had an entirely different intensity.  I never felt alone.  I would talk to Toni. A lot.  I started training by myself more often because I needed that time to be with her memories.   I started looking into events that are organized to raise awareness and found that many of those events are walking events.  I decided that was okay – I would make every running event I participate in be in memory of Toni.  I had a shirt made that would allow me to make Space Coast, and any other run, my personal contribution to the fight against the stigma that keeps so many people from talking about how they are feeling.   So many people struggle with not feeling like they can keep putting one foot in front of the other – so I want to keep putting my feet to the pavement in honor of them.

Wearing that shirt during the marathon provided an opportunity for a few people to come up and talk to me, and so it worked!  I sobbed as I crossed the finish line, my legs were DONE, but my heart was full.  I was so blessed to have both of my Robins waiting for me at the finish line.  They were truly there for me from the first step to the last!

But Space Coast won’t be the last time I cross a finish line!  What I am most excited about now is something Laureen and I are planning on doing in June of next year.   We are planning to walk through the night (18 miles from sundown to sunup) in an event called “Out of the Darkness” sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.  My earnest prayers are that everything comes together to allow us to take this journey together in honor of Toni and her sweet family.

When I took those first awkward steps 6 months ago, I never could have predicted they would provide healing the way they have.  I am certain God was there with me every step of the way, and I am excited to see where his strength will take me next.

Yesterday I set off on my own to complete an 18 mile training run.  As I prepared to leave the house I was focused on the physical things I would need (water, energy replacement, tissues, chapstick, headphones…) but what I didn’t give much thought to was how to prepare for that amount of time alone with my thoughts.  I have done nearly all of my long runs with groups of friends.  We push through the miles with stories of all sorts.  We contemplate many of lives mysteries (mostly of the male variety), and we counsel one another through difficulties (again, mostly of the male variety).  I will never again underestimate the comfort of distraction.

In roughly this order, here are some of the things that were going on inside my head:

Holy crap (as I’m driving to deposit a water bottle and energy bar at the 9 mile turn around point) this is an insane distance to run – and I have to do it twice!  Note to self, don’t drive the distance you will run immediately prior to a run again!

So Robin A. said to dress like it is 20 degrees warmer than it is – but I just can’t take this long sleeve shirt off when it is only 54 degrees outside so I’m running with it.

Wow, the St. Mark’s Trail is so pretty first thing in the morning.

Okay – so I’ll get back  to the audio of Atlas Shrugged – I am really excited to see if John Galt is real.  I think maybe Dagny is going to meet him and fall in love and they will live happily ever after.

Hey – there’s the shower where the girls said the homeless guy comes.  Hum, I hope the homeless guy isn’t taking a shower when I run by.

Is it too early to have one of those yummy Shot Bloks?

Sure glad I stopped and bought tissues – man my nose runs a lot in the cold!

Okay, so what mile marker did i put my water bottle at?  I think it was around 6, and how much farther is that?

I hope Chris is getting some good sleep – he so deserves it with all those extra shifts he is working.  I miss him.

When I’m on the trail do the rules of the road apply and should I be on the left side of the road or is it different on the trail?

What should I have for lunch?

I haven’t checked Facebook in two hours!

I think I should have cut my toenails better – but hell if I’m taking these compression socks off to check now!

How many women have been attacked out here?  How could I possibly run with my gun as Chris suggests?  I already have two fanny packs full of stuff I have to carry!

This port a potty is pretty nice.

Okay – half way there.  I can do this, just remember how far away that seemed when you drove it, and you made it! – oh crap, I have to do it all over again!

What is that tingly sensation on the outside of my knee?

Was that a snake?

Money really doesn’t buy happiness, but I would love enough to go on a vacation this year.

I don’t give a shit who John Galt is!   (At this point I turn the audio book off and all I can hear are my footsteps and my breathing.)

Why are so many of my friends going through such difficult times.  I can barely keep track of all the prayers I need to be saying because so much is happening in their lives.

Am I a good friend, am I doing all I should do for these friends?

I can’t run another step – I need to walk.

Why did I register for this damn race?

I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t deal with some sort of crap.  I guess our only hope is to be authentic and transparent with one another.  My goal is to be the kind of friend who always helps you dig out, not dig deeper.

I’m overwhelmed.

I’m not prepared.

I’m not good enough.

Oh look, it’s Julie, and she is finishing up mile 20.

I’m not going to look like a loser and walk to the end.

I’ve been training for months.

This is only 3 miles longer than my last long run.

I am prepared.

I am good enough.

I am finished – man these tears taste good.

A couple nights ago I sent Chris a text message simply saying “You complete me”.  I wasn’t sitting around pondering something meaningful to send, it just popped in my head in the midst of cleaning, and I sent it.  It was after I hit send that I really started to consider the hugeness of the statement.  What does it mean exactly that Chris “completes” me and how can I make sure to do the same for him?  When Tom Cruise’s character said it in Jerry Macquire it was sweet and helped bring about the much anticipated (and expected) happy ending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpWAlvWNZj0

In real life I think it takes a long time to get to the point where you can wholeheartedly say to another person “you complete me”.  When I was twenty and walked down the aisle to give Chris my hand in marriage, did this complete me – nope.  When we graduated from college together was I made complete by his presence there with me – nope.  When we had children together and began raising them did I feel that we completed one another in the midst of it all – nope.  It was time, and tragedy, and victory, and monotony that did it.  It was the gradual realization that he is seriously in this for the long haul that did it.  We are all very well intended when we give our lives to one another in marriage; but proving we will live out those vows takes time.  I believe it is only through the test of time we are able to marvel at the peace of those promises.

You complete me doesn’t just mean you know how to finish my sentences or you know what I will order in a restaurant.  It means you know what songs I want played at my funeral.  You know what scares me and what thrills me.  You know my weaknesses and make up for them by being stronger in those areas.  You are my history and my future.

Biblically, God intended this exact thing.  In the Garden of Eden he looked at man and knew he was not complete – he took a rib bone from Adam and created Eve and Adam said “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Genesis 2:23.

I don’t know if it is the number of years we have been together, or the age of our children, or the things we have recently lived through that have brought me to this point where I feel complete.  I am sure it happens at different times in each relationship.  I am sure that no one can create a set of instructions that will guarantee all couples will reach it.  All I know is I feel an incredible amount of gratitude for the exact set of circumstances that have allowed my eyes and my heart to be open enough to feel it and recognize it for what it is.

God gave Chris to me as my other half – I feel completely and utterly certain of this.

Because of him, I am complete.

Chris, I started to head into Walgreens last night to buy a $5.00 greeting card that said a few of the things I would want to say to you. I realized that there isn’t a Hallmark card out there that can fully express just how happy I want this day to be for you, and just how much your birth means to my heart. Here is my own “card” in the form of a list of 45 reasons why I love you.

1. Your love for Jesus and the desire we share to live a life pleasing to him.

2. The fact that when you say “for you the world” you mean it!

3. Your strength of character.

4. Your ability to stay calm in stressful situations (especially since I clearly can’t – i.e. Cooper’s headplant at Home Depot last week!)

5. Your support of my hobbies and interests.

6. Your AMAZING skills in the kitchen!

7. Your sense of humor and the fact that you spend more energy laughing at yourself than others.

8. Your sweet heart for animals – seeing you with Monster melts my heart each and every day.

9. Your sense of adventure and the places it has taken me that I never would have gone without you.

10. Your desire to lend a helping hand, even if it means you will have virtually no sleep.

11. The fact that you are not too proud to admit when you need help.

12. The love you had for Ivan, our first Make-A-Wish child.

13. Your enthusiasm.

14. Your commitment.

15. Your passion.

16. Your sense of order and cleanliness (and the fact that keeping our home orderly and clean is something you have always helped with – with no complaints).

17. Our mutual love of art.

18. The tears that well up in your eyes at unexpected random moments.

19. Your COMPLETE devotion to our boys.

20. The example you have given them of what it looks like to be a caring, loving, and appropriately firm father.

21. The way you supported me when I was pregnant.

22. The ease with which you carry amazingly heavy loads – both physical loads and emotional ones.

23. The way you really listen to me.

24. The way you really spoil me.

25. Your fearlessness.

26. Your willingness to try new things.

27. Your sexy gray hairs.

28. Your history – it made you exactly who you were when I fell in love with you.

29. The fun we have when we travel and our dreams of seeing much more of the world together.

30. The loving way in which you challenge me to push myself.

31. The loving way you accept me if I don’t.

32. All the cliche ways that you are a man’s man: police officer, volunteer fire-fighter, pilot, Navy diver…

33. The fact that all of the above is true and yet you own more moisturizers and body soaps than me and you love to get manicures.

34. The fact that I don’t have to share you with football or hunting or fishing.

35. The balance you strike at work between good cop/bad cop.

36. The humble way you don’t seem to recognize how incredibly handsome you are.

37. The investment you are willing to make to our marriage day after day.

38. The fact that holding your hand still makes me warm and fuzzy inside.

39. For teaching me what it looks like to forgive.

40. For saying YES when I asked you to marry me.

41. The beautiful cakes you have created for friends and family.

42. The sparkle in your sweet blue eyes when you are excited about a new idea.

43. The way you hold me tight like you never want to let go.

44. The life we have built together so far.

45. All the years we have yet to share.

As the alarm clock went off this morning at 5:45 my first thought was, why does it have to be so dark out in the morning (which was quickly followed by that confusion I have each year about the time change and if we get more sunlight in the morning when we have to give it up in the evening). I like running to start the day, but I don’t like feeling swallowed up in the darkness. As I left the driveway and flipped on the flashlight I felt the familiar butterflies in my stomach of “what might be ahead, what I can’t see, what I can’t prepare for, what I might get hurt on” and it hit me that running in the dark is a lot like my fear of not knowing the future. I really pondered this comparison and all of a sudden the little bit of light right in front of me seemed like just the right amount of guidance. The more I ran along thinking that, the clearer the correlation became between that light and the way God wants us to live. God doesn’t want us to be consumed with a desire to figure out the future, he wants us to focus on what is happening now: the steps we are taking in our relationship with him and the priority we place on a life lived for the kingdom. When we spend much of our time thinking only of the future we compromise the beauty and joy of the present moment. What is up ahead are things that can’t be predicted, but the things that are happening to us now will give us the stamina and courage to face those things when they do come. I think the things that are behind us are best viewed as our lives prerequisite courses entitled “What to Do” and “What Not to Do”. I continued to consider the similarities of running in the dark with a flashlight and living in God’s present plan and it occurred to me that street lights are like the friends we have that add extra light of encouragement and support in difficult situations.

As I came to the end of my run this morning I was really excited about the message I felt I had received about having enough faith to put one foot in front of the other in the present light God will provide for me!

I came inside, did some stretching and then got out my daily devotion book entitled Jesus Calling. Check out the exclamation point God provided to his message from my run…

“You will not Find my Peace by engaging in excessive planning: attempting to control what will happen to you in the future. That is a commonly practiced form of unbelief. When your mind spins with multiple plans, Peace may sometimes seem to be within your grasp; yet it always eludes you. Just when you think you have prepared for all possibilities, something unexpected pops up and throws things into confusion.

I did not design the human mind to figure out the future. That is beyond your capability. I crafted your mind for continual communication with Me. Bring Me all your needs, your hopes and fears. Commit everything into My care. Turn from the path of planning to the path of Peace.”

——————

“Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path – Psalm 119:105”

This morning I could feel the excitement and anticipation in the air.  It was as if the entire city was more awake and tuned in than we had been since late May.  I was imagining homes with little kids putting on new outfits and shoes and standing in front of the fireplace for first day pictures (we don’t do those at our house anymore – I miss that!).  On my drive in I saw kiddos out at the bus stop and everyone was driving carefully.  Nearly every post on Facebook today has pictures of my friends kids or comments of anticipation and hope for a good year.  I love all of this!  I love the memories I have of my first days of school, new school supplies, new clothes – rushing in to see friends I had missed all summer.  I also loved the opportunity to start over again provided to me with each new school year.

All of these happy thoughts were swimming around in my head as I drove to work so that is why I was a bit blindsided by the tears streaming down my face a couple hours later.   The shift in my mood started after I checked signals with my friend Jenn about how the first morning had gone for her sweet kids.  She was beautifully transparent and admitted some anxiety about their first day of middle school and high school.  After we talked I was saying a prayer for them and then decided to send Chase a text with a prayer I had said for him.  That got me to thinking about Conner and how he didn’t need me to wake him up for school today and before I knew it I was reaching for a box of tissues.  My prayer for my boys and for the children of those I love went something like this…

Heavenly Father I want to thank you in the most sincere and complete way for the privilege of raising the children you have blessed us with.  It is an honor to be trusted with their care and I pray you will continue to offer us guidance and support through the good and bad days of parenting.  As our children begin a new school year, please place friends in their paths that will help strengthen their relationship with you.  I pray that the friends they choose are focused on healthy choices and that together they enjoy their time in school.  Please give them teachers who are alert to their needs and dedicated to their education.  Please keep them focused on all the amazing opportunities they have been blessed with and help them not squander those aimlessly away!  If they are driving to and from school, please keep that route clear of hazards and help minimize their distractions.

Lord, I aim to let go of my human, motherly desire to be in charge of their lives.  Help me rest in the peace of knowing long ago you fashioned a plan for their lives that will bring glory to you and good for them.  My only prayer then should be that they grow in their relationship with you so they can receive all the peace and goodness you have planned for them.  AMEN!

This post is dedicated to the sweet life of love my friends Cheri and Craig share.  They have been on my mind since last weekend when we gathered together to celebrate their silver anniversary.  Cheri and Craig exemplify what marriage can be when there is a mutual dedication to put the other one first, to provide support and encouragement and to make the relationship a priority.

I acknowledge that there are times when a marriage does need to end for one reason or another.   The normalcy of divorce however makes it hard not to contrast that to the blessing of marriages like Cheri and Craig’s and other dear friends in life long marriages.  It causes me to humbly acknowledge that we are set apart.  Our marriages are important enough to each of us to weather the storms that do come, valuable enough to us to make the required sacrifices and filled with the unconditional love that I believe comes from a place deeper than we can create on our own.

I raise my symbolic cup and toast Cheri and Craig, and all my other friends, who like them are fighting the good and noble fight to keep their marriages sanctified and honorable, fun and interesting, kind and forgiving.  I am blessed to walk this journey of long-term marriage with you and thank you for the ways your example and support have helped Chris and me.  May you live long and prosper – in the commodity that matters most: Love!

I consider myself new to the activity of running – I have tried to make myself a “runner” at other times in my life, but those attempts have all ended poorly and so I believed running just wasn’t for me.  In my quest to try to force it to happen I have even gone so far as to complete two marathons and a sprint triathlon and the Muddy Buddy event a couple times.  I ended up walking the marathons, struggling with the run in the triathlon and using the bike segments of the Muddy Buddy to make up for my slow run time.  Given this history, it surprised me recently when I agreed to join a team of women on a journey to prepare for the Space Coast half marathon in December.  I was challenged (in a very positive way) to do this by my friend Robin Adams and then shortly thereafter by my friend Robin Bennett.  The Robins allowed me to take a new look at this activity and embrace it as the missing link in my exercise routine – friends!  I have been trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to exercise on my own at home for the past year.  It’s really just not that much fun.  I kept seeing on Facebook so many folks I know completing events around town, running together to prepare and eating together afterwards!  (I really liked that idea!!)

So about a month and a half ago I started running.  I started slow (well, let’s be honest – I’m still slow) and kept my distances rather short, but I have really made progress!  When I went on that first run I couldn’t finish a mile – but yesterday morning I ran 4 without stopping!  Something happened during that four mile run yesterday that was more significant than the mileage or the speed or the fact that I got up at 5:15 a.m. to do it!  I was listening to a Mercy Me Pandora station and using the time on the road as devotional time.  Somewhere around mile 2 this feeling of lightness and joy came over me.  I guess it might be a feeling that some call a runner’s high.  I, however, have no experience with this phenomenon so I interpreted it to be a spiritual moment of clarity wherein God was validating my desire to run.  I felt all of a sudden like there was a bigger purpose to it than just miles on my Nike tracker, more than calories burned and tight buns (although I am still hoping for those).  Running gives me an opportunity to strengthen my body which in turn provides me more stamina to do good for others.  Running helps reduce the stress that keeps us bogged down and focused on ourselves.  Running with others gives me time to talk about my faith and my sweet savior Jesus Christ.  Running alone provides me time with no distractions where I can focus clearly on my prayers.  I want to run with a purpose that is bigger than me.  I pray to keep this as my central focus and not make my added miles or faster times a celebration of what I have done – but of what God has allowed me to do with the body he gave me.

A couple months ago while riding the roller coaster of emotions related to Conner’s graduation from high school I found myself seeking out some words of inspiration.  I wanted to read clever antidotes on change, on growing up, on the importance of spreading one’s wings.  I needed encouragement!  One little google search and I had enough words of encouragement to get me through graduation (and then some).  I found two really wonderful quotes referenced from the same book and they were so beautifully written I decided I wanted to read the entire book.

Letters to A Young Poet is a collection of ten letters written by Rilke from 1903 – 1908 to Franz Xaver Kappus.  Kappus was a young man in military school in Austria who finds himself at the “threshold of a profession which (he) felt to be entirely contrary to (his) inclinations.”  He is a poet stuck in a military world and he seeks written counsel from Rilke after reading his poetry.  After that first letter, where Kappus admits “I found myself writing a covering letter in which I unreservedly laid bare my  heart as never before and never since to any second human being” a written dialogue began that spanned five years.  Kappus published the letters because he believed they were too valuable to keep to himself, their insight and encouragement would reach countless others if he shared them.  He noted that “where a great and unique man speaks, small men should keep silence.”

As I read the letters, I was indeed encouraged, and invited to contemplate life and solitude and the stories of my childhood.  While not a long book in pages, it is a book I recommend reading when you have the time to contemplate its depth.  Rather than attempt to give you my interpretation of each letter I will list some of my favorite passages (including the two I found in my search noted above) and encourage you to read them yourself.  Maybe then one day we could correspond regarding the impact of his words on our lives.

“Describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty – describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory.”

“Try to raise the submerged sensations of that ample past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away. – And if out of this turning inward, out of this absorption into your own world verses come, then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good verses.”

“… await with humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist’s life.”

(speaking of sadness) “For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.”

“… as in us blood of ancestors ceaselessly stirs and mingles with our own into that unique, not repeatable being which at every turning of our life we are.”

“For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.  For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.  With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.  Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another, it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another’s sake… it chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”

And then the two that led me to this book:

“Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside of you?  Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going?  Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.  If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from that which is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.”

“Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen.  Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame… at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.”

Cute little sayings about friendship are everywhere.  Every time I log into Pinterest or Facebook I see them: “Friendship isn’t a big thing, it’s a million little things.”   “The most memorable people in life will be the friends who loved you even when you weren’t very lovable.”  “Your job won’t take care of you when you’re sick, your friends will.”

But the nuances and subtleties of the true essence of friendship can not be summarized in a cute quote.  I can’t even summarize them adequately in a blog post.  Every sentence I type I feel inclined to re-type because I can’t seem to find the perfect combination of words.  I want to get this right.

Earlier this week I met up with one of my best friends for lunch, we had not talked for a couple months and I wasn’t sure why – but the separation had weighed incredibly hard on my heart.  It was one of those times where all you can do is play back every conversation in your head, rewind all the interactions and search out the moment that things went wrong.  Feelings are so fragile, even well seasoned relationships can take a hit by ill placed words or thoughtless comments.   I learned this lesson the hard way.  I was not as careful with some written words as I needed to be and I hurt someone I love.

Thankfully, things are on the mend now because  she cared enough about our friendship to work through her hurt and present it to me honestly.  This gave me a chance to apologize and try and make it right.  I think that’s all we can really hope and pray for… a few friends who care like that.  Friends who want you in their lives enough to accept the fact we aren’t always going to do things the best way, or the most thoughtful way, or simply put – the way we should.

What is really beautiful to me though is the fact that I now feel more connected to this friend.  I think it is because her hurt showed me how deeply affected she is by my actions and the seperation showed me just how much I want her in my life.  I told her when we were talking that day that getting older does indeed make us wiser.  I was not the girl of my youth who would have been easily offended by the silence, who would have placed the blame elsewhere, who would have talked behind her back.  I believe my faith has also made me wiser – instead of judging, I prayed; instead of feeling sorry for myself, I put myself in her shoes.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed at how blessed I have been to travel the road of life with so many truly remarkable women!!  Each one of these beautiful friendships work together to make me the person I am today.   Not a single one of them is more or less important than the others.  It is like a giant complex puzzle (you know, the kind you get out on vacation when it is raining out).  Some of my friends have been the outside pieces; not too hard to find, fairly easily placed but oh so important because they create the structure and boundary for everything found inside.  Other friends are those inside pieces, they are the ones you search out, you agonize over, you turn and test and focus on until you get it just right.  What a glorious puzzle my friends are helping me create of my life story.  Oh how I pray I am doing the same for them.