I Run 4

Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. 

Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. 

Hebrews 13:1-2

I have been considering this post now for several weeks. I just couldn't put together the words that I thought would do my feelings any justice... I still can't.

So, I'm guilty. I admit that Facebook, social media, and morning news programs probably take up way too much of my time. I'm guilty of clicking on videos and shared posts about the positive and the inspiring. I'm guilty of watching news programs that are typically heavier on social news and viewer interest stories, than on actual hard news. I am perfectly capable of reading the headlines scrolling along the bottom of the screen but I'd rather listen to friendly and encouraging. I'm guilty of thinking there should be balance between tragic and inspirational stories, between mean-ness and bullying and kindness, and between crime and integrity. It's one of the reasons for the title of this blog - Finding Joy in an Ordinary World... I'm guilty of thinking we should look for joy, choose joy, recognize that we might actually be surrounded by joy.

I've been a member of this group for about a year and have been matched with an awesome little 4th grader buddy for about 6 months. This post really doesn't have as much to do with him as it does so many others in the group. See, for a year now, I've been reading over all the great accomplishments by runners and buddies and seeing great runner/buddy relationships develop (including my own). But, I have also seen the posts that always make that lump in my throat and blur my vision a little bit. They're the posts that mention when someone's buddy is suffering or, God forbid, lost their fight. 

Case in point: I Run 4 Michael

This is a non-profit organization founded by a man named Tim Boyle, in 2013. According to the website, http://www.whoirun4.com/, Tim took up running after quitting a 2-pack/day habit. While searching for running motivation (he clocked 15-20 miles per week), he came across and posted this quote to his facebook page: 

I run because I can and when I get tired I remember those who can’t run 

and I run harder for them.

A friend of his happened to read his quote. This particular friend was a 50-year old man with Down syndrome, and bilateral hip displasia. He answered Tim's facebook message:

You can run for me anytime!

With 16 years in the military and 9 years in law enforcement, I used to consider myself a strong person. After the birth of my daughter in 2013, I finally realized how accurate Gary Allen was when he sang, "When tough little boys grow up to be dads, they turn into big babies again". Now, when I see so many children in pain or suffering, I just can not fathom the immeasurable amounts of strength that is demanded of their parents. Every time I see that another buddy has earned their wings (and I hate seeing it), I just don't know how I could even attempt to face another day after the loss of my child. I don't know what I would do if my child was suffering and I was powerless to help her. 

 It's about fostering relationship. It's about motivation. It's about encouragement, and support, and celebrating diversity. It's about health - physical and emotional. Runners/athletes are matched with buddies of all ages, and all disabilities. When they train, they post to their buddy via a closed facebook page. They post pictures; they share special moments and celebrations. Sometimes they send race paraphernalia to their buddy. Buddies and buddy-parents write back - encouraging and supporting, sharing their own milestones and celebrations.

So, this one goes out to all of the parents of buddies. With all of these children suffering in their own ways, I am in admiration and awe of the strength and love that you exude on the good days and, moreover, the bad days. You all amaze and inspire me every.single.day. 

In the short two years since its inception, I Run 4, Inc has over 32,000 members. Over 10,500 'buddy' matches have been made across all 50 states and in 29 different countries. They desperately need more 'buddies' to sign up. Why? Because there is a waiting list of athletes, a waiting list of over 3000 who want to run for someone who can't, who want to develop a relationship with a family, who want to share their joy. Some athletes wait over six months to be matched.

This weekend, I'll run the Spartan Super in Virginia; a course that really beat me down last year. But, I apologize to my buddy, John, because this weekend, I run for his mommy, Tuesday Shannon.                       Quotes from David Paul - 8/18/2015

There were over 200 replies and comments to Mr. Paul after he posted his thoughts on the Facebook page, IRun4Michael. Comments from parents and caregivers who sometimes feel isolated and alone due to circumstances around their child's disability. I understand. Been there. And the kindness and compassion of a stranger brought me to tears. After asking his permission to print his words, I just thought I'd share.

Sierra signed up and was matched with a runner about a month ago. Just one more instance of a world of hope.

Linking with EverydayJesus, Thought-Provoking Thursday, Reflect Linkup

Humbled By Kindness Part 2

Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?"

The King will reply, "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

Matthew 25:37-40

“We sat together for a bit – until one of the teachers noticed us – CeCe knows them all – those teachers….and gathered CeCe up to sit closer to the front.  Just in time.  The principal had commandeered the microphone and was launching into a stern spiel about behavior during graduation – and hiring extra police to ensure the acting appropriately – and no hugging of board members – and – oh my, it made me think what are we getting ourselves into…..”

“I took notes.  Between the principal and the student activities director, I took about a page and half of instructions – what to expect, when to do what, where to be, etc., etc., etc.  Good grief – if I have to take notes, how in the world will CeCe be able to handle this?”  The woman shifted in her chair, her voice had risen – somewhat louder, pitched higher.  She looked again at the photo, agitated.  Then smiled.  Like lights turning on.

“Just when I thought the instructions were never going to end, they did.  The students were to go to two different hallways to line up.  Their names would be posted in line-up order along the walls.  No more direction than that. “

Eyes watery – the old woman pushed her glasses up from where they’d slipped on her nose.  “She was so small – looked like a 10-year old, especially in the middle of all those big bodies.  I could tell with most of them that they didn’t even see her – no fault of theirs – they were only kids – but this line-up thing….names in alphabetical order for pete’s sake – CeCe didn’t know these kids – she knew her classmates, she knew some of the teachers – but which line…..”

“Well, we walked down the first hall – I still feel CeCe’s hands, both of them, holding tight on my arm.  And we checked names – if you get to the Ds, you’ve gone too far – I remember the activities director saying – helpful, right?  Down the first hall – Campbell, Cannon, Chelton, Cole, Cox, Daniels….. I double-checked.  One of the boys – tall, with longish dreads, was dancing in line – getting down with the hip rocking – right in front of us.  Guess I was old-fashioned even then.  It didn’t sit right – not his fault, he was excited about graduation in his own way – It’s just, sometimes the gulf was so wide between my daughter and the other kids….”  The voice drifted off into a kind of audio-stare thing – silent, thinking, remembering…  

“Anyway, we were in the wrong hallway.”  She turned and looked directly at me, with that teacher let’s-get-back-to-business voice of hers.  “So I took my girl to the other one – the other line-up – and started reading names….Black, Cash, Coleman, Coons…. There it was.  Easy peasey.   In a way, I was relieved to have found her name.  It kind of showed that we were in the right place – this hall, this practice, this graduation….but it felt bigger than just the moment – more of a validation of doing the right thing in pushing my girl to do and be – even in that unique way of hers.” 

“But in another way, I was nervous.  Again.  I knew I couldn’t be the mom who walked around with her girl – I was going to have to let her go – let her do this herself…or at least with help from the school, not the mom…  But there still weren’t any familiar faces….no official help, and CeCe wasn’t letting go of my hand.”  The voice cracked.  I looked at her – this woman – so intent on my understanding.  She had the finest tracings of wrinkles around her eyes…I thought of the joys and pains she had endured – earning these lines, like badges of honor.

Abruptly, she dropped her focus to the album on her lap, on that blurred picture – the tall and the short out-of-focus… “He made the difference.  That Daniel.”  She spread her fingers over the tall figure – peering, then looked up at me – eyes dancing.  “It just doesn’t want to focus – no matter how hard I try.”  Laughter in her voice.  “But I remember his face anyway.  He had a kind face.  Young.  Observant.  He was just watching the line form – seemed to be aware of everyone and everything. He saw CeCe.  He saw my girl.  I could tell he was a little surprised by her – maybe her size, or how young she looked.  Maybe he was surprised to see her mother tagging along.  But I could see the kindness, the little bit of a smile, the eyebrow raised just a tad, the looking-but-not-staring.  He saw her.”  She looked up again – chin tilted slightly forward, eyes challenging.  No laughter now – serious. 

“So I decided to take a chance.  I asked if he was Daniel – if his was the name on the list – in line ahead of my daughter.  ‘Yes, M’am’, he said.  He was softspoken, voice not too deep coming from that tall body.  I introduced him to CeCe – she shook his hand, looking up into his face.  I asked him if he knew her at all – a lot of surprising people did…. ‘No, M’am’, he answered.  Now or never, I thought…. so I jumbled out the situation – that CeCe would be in the graduation but that the whole thing was a little overwhelming – to both of us – and that I didn’t want her to get lost or be in the wrong place…I know I was talking fast because that’s what I did when I was nervous – hypertalk.  I remember he really didn’t hesitate – he just looked at CeCe, then back at me and said “I’ll watch out for her, M’am”.  Really?  I asked.  You really will?  “Yes, M’am”, he said, ‘she’ll be fine.”

The woman smiled softly and turned toward me again.  “Sometimes you just have to take a chance.”  Her voice resonated with wisdom.  “He made room for kindness – it was a set-up, you know.  A God thing.  Choices.  I had to choose to trust – Daniel had to choose to act….”  She trailed off, looking down at the book.

Humbled by Kindness Part 1

Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Matthew 7:20

This is the first of three parts of a story I wrote last year, a true story based on my daughter's graduation - told in a fictional setting.  Finding joy is sometimes a question of balancing today's news with our own experience - I was truly humbled by this young man's kindness to my daughter.  Humbled by his actions, and humbled by the fact that for whatever reason, his actions were unexpected - 

“There’s always a story”, the voice cut through the velvet-quiet of the Home, “behind the story.”  Her hand was cool, skin papery with a map of blue veins and those old-people discolorations, resting on the arm of the chair.  Her chair.  Upholstered in thick pink satin and embroidery – just a little worn at the piped edges.  Like her  - buttoned into a Zsa Zsa bed jacket, hair all poufed and perfect in a fine-line-powdered-face way – just a little touch of lipstick coloring outside the precisely drawn mouth.  I watched her mouth as she spoke.

“She was just a little girl – cute in that special way of hers – and thrilled to be in that cap and gown.  Her eyes danced between us all – flitting from person to person like a hummingbird.  And her smile just lit up the place.  She swished when she walked, making the gown and tassel swing.  Looked like she was playing dress-ups – even though she had just celebrated her 21^st birthday.  Oh, but that was our CeCe.  She had a way of showing us the joy in the smallest things – and it was contagious, that joy.”  The old woman, my Great-Aunt, shifted in her chair, smiling – and reached to point to a photo in the album on her lap – focus all gone fuzzy, like looking through vaseline.

“Can you see her?  In the blur?  That’s my CeCe – the little one, right next to the big one.  His name was Daniel – going to one of the big Texas Universities on a football scholarship – six-two at least, and around 240….”  Her mouth stiffened slightly, “Silly camera could handle lights or distance, but it just couldn’t do both.”  Pause.  “Sure wish I’d taken pictures of all the moments between the two kids.  She was over a foot shorter, probably at least three years older, and you can just imagine the social distance - between my Down Syndrome girl and the football star….. “  She raised her eyes from the book, seeking mine.  “That’s the story…. ”

 Sniffing a little, shaking her head, she continued.  “It began on rehearsal day.  I had to take CeCe up to the high school to practice the lining up and walking in and all that pomp and circumstance.  Oh, but my girl had a funny way of saying things – kind of Yoda-speak, always putting the verb before the subject, and mixing up her pronouns and tenses.  She just couldn’t get her mind wrapped around time – everything was last year….”

This pause lasted a long time – like listening to a thousand-mile stare.  Then abruptly she tapped her finger back on that out-of-focus picture,  “….last year,” she smiled slowly and continued.  “Every once in awhile, my girl would come out with a completely understandable sentence – perfect syntax and surprising clarity.”

“Mom, I am nervous.  She said in her deepish voice – the ‘r’ not quite pronounced sounding more like nauvous.”

“I could usually put a positive spin on stuff like that,  Nervous?  You’re just excited, sweetie.  I told her.  Shoot.  I was nervous.  I had no idea how CeCe would do with this graduation thing – but better that she try….”

“Anyway, we made our way into the auditorium where the kids were gathering.  I kept looking around for CeCe’s teachers, or for one of the aides from her classroom – but I didn’t see anyone.  The high-schoolers were moving toward the front of the room and finding seats – so I told her to go on up. “

“I watched from my seat in the back.  When she’s nervous, she walks with one arm wrapped around her back.  I remember thinking she was so brave-she just forged ahead with that arm reaching up behind… She was unsure, but wanted so badly to do and be with the other kids.” 

“And then she was in the bleeder-seats with me.  Her face was twisted up in that stop-my-lip-from-quivering thing that comes before tears. “

“Mom, stay with me,” she said, and she reached out to take my hand.  Her hand was shaking.  She doesn’t know what to do, where are her teachers, she’s scared to death, don’t they know she can’t do this alone, why am I making her go through this, she’s so anxious.  Thoughts were tangled up in my head – empathy, blame, pride.  I told her to stay with me until things got started.  As she sat down, I held up my right hand to her left – thumb, forefinger, and pinky up – she bent her fingers into the same position and we I love you’d – kind of our secret ‘It’s ok’.”

Precious Freedom

For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.  That's an act of true freedom.  If you bite and ravage each other, watch out - in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

Galatians 5:14-15  The Message

They are taking a voyage through a difficult topic.  It started with kindness and a visit from the kindness lady.  Is kindness contagious?  Does kindness take courage?  Can random acts of kindness change the environment?  I watched their faces and saw their reactions.  Handwritten hearts line the hallway outside the classrooms.  Hearts written with witnessed acts of kindness - notes of encouragement, helping hands, compliments received - testimony.  But these are fifth graders.  In the middle of that hormonal period when body parts change, emotions bubble to the surface, adulthood descends.  Unskilled adulthood, deer-in-the-headlights adulthood - truly a middle age of uncertainty and chaos.  These fifth graders are struggling to understand cause and effect in this world they live in.  Can kindness be a cause AND an effect?

 The voyage continues.  Into a darker theme.  What happens when kindness stops?  They have studied genocide - they have taken a brief journey into past events.  Inhumane events.  From a distant lens of time and space, the topic of genocide has entered the classroom.  The Pequot massacre - hundreds of Native Americans killed, burned, sold into slavery - the tribe annihilated for their land.  Because they were an inconvenience to the settlement of New England by European colonists so very long ago.

In another distant lens of time and space, these fifth graders have looked at Rwanda.  They have read how a whole group of people was pushed down and made to feel less-than-human.  They have read how another group was built up and given opportunity solely based on their ethnicity - the happy circumstance of their birth into the right tribe.  Then they read about revenge.  When the first group was raised up to lead, it lashed out at the others.  They called them cockroaches.  Cockroaches to be exterminated.

These fifth graders, these students, these children-growing-into-adults learned about the numbers.  Eight hundred thousand killed while the world stood by.  They learned about the words bystander, upstander, and perpetrator.  Tough words.  Responsible words.  Words of choice.

The voyage continues into the Holocaust.  The classes of students read a book together.  A book that told the story of a young Jewish boy in Germany - in the early years of Hitler's power.  In the early, taking-away-rights-little-by-little-discriminating years.  The book showed the choices made - the choice of joining the Nazi party in order to support a family because being a member provided opportunity - a job, apartment, food.  It showed the choice of participating in mob violence, stirring the blood to boil over into destruction.  It showed the very narrow choices left for friendship between two German families - Jewish and not.  The book was straightforward - plain language and simple sentences.  It was not about the concentration camps.  It did not describe the planned extermination of an entire population of people.  It did not detail starvation, or incidences of violence.  It was not bloody.  Disbelief and horror grew in the reading as the students realized how small changes had led to greater changes.  Small acts of discrimination led to impossible circumstance for an entire population.  The main character died in the end, killed in an air raid because he wasn't allowed into the bomb shelter.  He was, after all, a Jew.

"Why didn't the the Jews just leave?" Students asked with incredulous voices.  "If he was older, he would have been ok," they said.  "If he was older, he would have known how and where to go to get away from the bombs.  He would have been faster.  He could have run."  It was unbelievable, to these students, that there could be situations of no escape.  No escape from bombs that fell from the sky.  No safe place.  No escape from a country that was literally making life impossible.  Rules and regulations that took away any option for survival.

The students raised their hands, taking turns, sitting on the carpet, gathered together, discussing this book about these events that happened so long ago and so far away from their experience, from their time, from their lives.  They discussed.  They made connections to the reading about Rwanda - the reading about the Pequot.  On the carpet.  In the classroom.  Where they could raise their hands and speak their minds.  In precious freedom.  Where being older was a solution.

Looking through books about the Holocaust, in anticipation of a field trip to the Holocaust Museum,  they saw photos of children who had died - old people who had died - couples and families.  The voice of humanity spoke through one of the fifth graders.  "Children and old people?  That's just not right - they weren't going to hurt anyone..."

The voyage isn't over.  It is a hard lesson, a difficult idea.  Students will soon make a connection that is very real in their lives.  Not through a lens of long ago and far away.  A connection that happens everyday - even in the classroom - even on the carpet.  Students will soon make a connection between kindness, discrimination, genocide, and bullying.  Bullying on the playground, in the hallways, on the carpet.  The act of bullying - the possible results of bullying.  Bullying left unchecked - bullying encouraged - or bullying stopped.  They will understand the roles of bystander and upstander.  They will know the consequences of their choices.  It's a hard lesson, a difficult idea.  Precious freedom.

Thank you, God, for our children.  For their safety, for their innocence, for their questions, for their humanity.  Help them to grow and mature in you.  Thank you for precious freedom.