Just Writing

Because We Can

| Marie Griffith

I’m skipping Monday School today so I can share what my friends and I did over the weekend.

We ran the Nashville Sprint Spartan Race on Saturday and the Nashville Super on Sunday. Those are my fifth and sixth Spartan races but the first time I’ve done Spartan races two days in a row.

The heat and humidity took it out of us early on Saturday. By the end of the four miler all of us were wiped out, but we finished and felt good about our race.

It was cooler with a light on-and-off rain Sunday. The heat wasn’t an issue but the soreness and blisters from the day before made some of the obstacles even harder. We finished the eight miles faster than anticipated.

My niece and her friend ran with us on Saturday. According to them, this won’t be their last. They enjoyed the intense challenge of it all. My niece said the best part of the race was realizing she could do more than she thought possible.

The same thing happened to me. When I finished my first Spartan Race I was in awe of what I’d accomplished. I was thankful for the camaraderie on the course and the shared experience of training and racing with friends.

Training together, working toward a common goal, and cheering one another on for months prior to a race makes the race even better. Those shared experiences have a way of bringing you closer. When we see each other trudging up a steep hill in 90 degree heat carrying a bucket full of rocks or giving it our all at the atlas carry, we see and appreciate the grit in each other. When a teammate climbs the the rope or heaves the Hercules hoist to the top with sheer determination, the physical strength is evident but we see her inner strength too. It’s a beautiful thing.

I’m no elite athlete. Not even close. I’m only determined to use and take care of this wonderfully complex gift called my body, as much as I can, for as long as I can, however I can in pursuit of health. It’s the only body I’ll ever have. So I move it and it’s more fun with friends and goals.

This weekend we met a brain cancer beater, a two time heart attack survivor, several people fighting diabetes, and a 70 year old grandmother who told me “my body’s going to ache anyway, might as well ache doing this.” Each racer has a unique story and a different reason for being on the course. All of us feel the same sense of accomplishment when we cross the finish line.

Maybe you’ve never heard of Spartan Races, so you Google it and you decide it’s not for you. There are so many ways to move your body. Dancing lessons, walks in the park, Frisbee golf, hiking, skating, gardening, biking, mud runs. The number of ways to move is endless.

Find something that looks fun and try it. Even if it looks impossible at first. Try it. If you’ve been inactive for a while, take a walk at the park. Build up distance slowly, then try the Couch to 5K app. You’ll surprise yourself.

I did and I’m going to keep at it.

If you want more information about Spartan Races and how we’ve trained, let me know. I’d be glad to share our secrets and encourage you on your way to a Spartan Race or better health in general.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looked After

| Marie Griffith

I lingered too long with my coffee yesterday morning. I planned an Independence Day run in my favorite park but didn’t start as early as intended. Orange cones already lined the street into the park to guide the throngs of firework watchers showing up to stake their claim to the best spots. I maneuvered my car through some of the cones to park in my usual space.

My run started better than expected and I felt good despite the heat. There were more people out and about at the park. Biking, walking, running, or preparing for their picnics. I ran through neighborhoods, around the school, then back to the park.

My run still felt okay but I was hot. I ran on the edge of a parking lot when I nodded to an older gentlemen driving a golf cart. He stopped the cart and motioned to me. I noticed he wore a cap with the park name on it. I wondered if he was an employee.

I walked to the cart and the man asked how long I’d been running. I answered him, then he asked how far I had to go. I told him, “three more miles to reach my goal.”

I must have looked overheated and thirsty. He handed me an ice cold water bottle from his cooler and told me to take it with me. Then he told me to take it slow. I opened the water bottle and drank fast. He looked concerned. I thanked him and turned to walk away. He said, “wait I’m not finished yet.”

He spread a small towel in his lap, filled the middle of it with handfuls of ice, and pulled the corners of the towel up around the ice. He put the “ice bag” behind his neck, on top of his head, under his chin, on his wrists and told me to do the same to cool off. I stood there with the bag behind my neck as he told me to be careful. He warned me of the heat again and I had a fleeting sense of familiarity.

He mentioned how he planned to celebrate later with his family and beamed when he talked about his grand children.

I thanked him again, reached to shake his hand, and asked his name. His eyes brightened, he shook my hand, told me his name, then asked mine.

Before he drove away, he said, “Marie, glad to know you.”

It wasn’t until this morning I discerned the familiarity.

The man on the golf cart reminded me of my father. Not his appearance, but the things he said and how he said them. His makeshift ice bag and demonstration of its most effective use. His going above and beyond in his care about such a small thing as me being too hot.

It was Dad who saw to our wounds when we were stung by yellow jackets or scraped our knees. He did the mean stuff. He dabbed our cuts with iodine or squeezed our splinters to the surface to pull them out with tweezers, and told us to stop whining about it.

As he aged, his care became more tender. More advice and prayers than tending wounds. Moving things or fixing broken ones. Letting us borrow what was his and always helping when he saw a need. Sometimes he helped before I knew I needed help.

Dad looked after us.

I finished my run. I took the man’s advice and slowed down, and it may be the reason I finished. I think it was another one of those times I needed help and didn’t know it.

 

Photo by Arleen wiese on Unsplash

 

Full House

| Marie Griffith

I’ll share what’s been on my mind all day, although I’m not sure it qualifies as Monday School.

Yesterday, we celebrated Father’s Day with the grill going outside and the sound of the U.S. Open in the background on the inside. That’s the way we celebrated Father’s Day when Dad was here. I always thought Dad should get a break from the grill on Father’s Day, but he didn’t see it that way.

Now my husband mans the grill for all the other dads and when he’s finished with that, flips the channel back and forth from golf to rodeo.

We laugh and talk around the table. The uncles tease the little ones and the boys throw the football in the yard. The kids play tag and climb the rope swing and we pose for pictures in front of the prettiest tree.

Here we are, in the same house, all these years later, celebrating the important days much like we used to. Our house was full on Christmas and Mother’s Day and some other days too. It will be full again soon. Same love, new generation.

Good people, good food, good times.

And all I could think about was grace…..God’s boundless, beautiful grace.

 

Photo by Aral Tasher on Unsplash

 

 

Big Shot

| Marie Griffith

My husband and I recently visited the city where I went to high school. The city has changed a lot and I looked forward to my Saturday run so I could see some of the new sights. One of the most interesting was an outdoor art exhibition at The Hunter Museum of American Art. I stopped my run to take a photo of this horse standing near two cerulean painted trees.

Minutes later into my run I had a sense of familiarity. I almost missed it because I was dodging pedestrians and watching traffic, but it hit me. I was on the same street where I would park my car and run into the court house to turn in documents for the attorney I worked for in high school. I hadn’t thought about that in years.

One of my teachers helped me get the job. She arranged for me to leave school early each day to work at the attorney’s office. Although I’d worked at a school supply store for a brief time before it, I consider my job with the attorney my first real job.

Sometimes I felt like a big shot, answering phones and filing papers, typing important documents and driving downtown to file dockets at the courthouse.

I was seventeen.

Maybe we all feel like big shots at seventeen.

Lines

Glad You’re Here

| Marie Griffith

Some of my friends and I ran in a Warrior Dash today. The hills, rocky terrain, mud, and obstacles challenged us, and one of us cheered from the sidelines. I know that was its own kind of challenge. But today was not about the race as much as it was about being together.

We started training in 2016 to make our bodies stronger. We continued into 2017 because we realized getting stronger together was a lot more fun. Our workouts did our bodies good, but it did our hearts good too.

Long runs are a great time for long talks. Sometimes sweating it out can lead to crying it out. And laughing while attempting a perfectly executed bear crawl is just good for the soul.

My daughter’s friend asked me why I race. The medal is nice, the crazy warrior hat is fun and I like working hard to get to the finish line.

But more than anything, today was about friendship.

It was about us saying to one another, “I’m glad you’re here!”

“We don’t really make friends, they make us.”
Bob Goff

The Hard Parts

| Marie Griffith

It’s a hard place to be when nothing goes as planned. When everything falls apart. When all your expectations are unmet.

I expected the first day of our backpacking trip to be cold but not icy. I expected the hike to be difficult but not treacherous. I expected good conversation around a blazing fire the first night in camp. Instead, the icy wind storm forced us to set up and enter our tents early where we ate our dinners alone and tried to stay warm and dry. The long night was made longer as the storm continued through the dark morning hours. The wind howled, trees crashed to the ground, mice scurried around our tents, and we turned over and over in our sleeping bags. The morning brought relief from the storm, but ice covered everything.

It was so cold we didn’t want to move out of our sleeping bags, but we ate breakfast and began the long process of taking down tents and repacking our packs. Some in our group left because of sickness or injury but some more of us thought of quitting. Some of us wanted a toilet, a warm bed, and just not to be on the adventure any longer.

Maybe more of us than I knew wanted to leave the trail, but we stayed with it. We hiked through one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. The frozen forest was other-wordly. Two or so hours into our hike we were out of the ice and ascending the mountain where the sun shone bright on our faces. We ate our lunches on rocks warmed by the sun, then we climbed Little Hump and Big Hump Mountains.

The three day, two night backpacking trip far exceeded my expectations and turned out to be one of the most difficult, joyful, and memorable adventures for me. The hard parts of the trip made the good parts really good.

It’s like that with most anything, isn’t it? The challenges of a thing make the finish that much sweeter. We’re made stronger by the challenges. We learn more from difficult situations and we find out what we can really do.

The hard parts are worth it.

Unlikely

Buttercup

| Marie Griffith

It felt like an unusually long winter. The damp chill in the air mixed with the persistent gloomy skies caused me to yearn for spring more than I have in years. After Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow, I counted the days and looked for signs of the warmer, sunnier days of spring.

One early morning work day in late February, I noticed this daffodil in full bloom. We’ve always called them buttercups. But these aren’t buttercups at all. I thought my grandmother called them by that name but she was a master gardener and would have known the difference.

However I came to know them as buttercups is uncertain but I know spring is right around the corner when I see these sunny colored blooms popping up from the earth.

A glimpse of the good to come helped me get through the rest of winter.

 

I am going to pay attention to the spring.
I am going to look around at all the flowers,
and look up at the hectic trees.
I am going to close my eyes and listen.   

 Anne Lamott

Rise/Set

This Time Tomorrow

| Marie Griffith

As a young girl, I did this thing when I looked forward to something and especially when I dreaded something. I’m unsure why, but the time passed better when I did it.

The day before the fifth grade spelling bee I said to myself, “This time tomorrow I’ll be spelling these words.”

A week before my family’s move to Chattanooga, “This time next week we’ll live in a new house.”

A few days before an oral presentation in my senior English class, “This time next week my presentation will be over.”

I still do this. All the time.

IMG_20180311_140856434_HDRBefore a job interview. Training for a race. Preparing a speech. Looking forward to a trip. Writing my book. It’s just this thing I do.

I’m doing it now.

This time tomorrow I’ve hiked five miles, set up our camp, and I’m sitting around a fire with friends and family. This will be my first backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail. It’s a three day, two night adventure. We’ve been preparing for weeks for the trip and I anticipate it will be everything I expect and then some.

We’ve gathered our gear, practiced the tent set up, and some of us hiked on Sunday to get the feel of carrying our loaded backpacks. The closer it gets the more excited I get.IMG_6312

The weather says we’ll be hiking and camping in snow. What beauty awaits us!

This time tomorrow……..

 

Making Headway

| Marie Griffith

I’ve been running for over three years now. I went from believing I could never run to…….well……running. I’m not sure I’m any good at it. I’ve never experienced the “runner’s high” I hear about unless you count how I feel when I’m finished with a run. I’m elated after a run. Because it’s over.

And on my last runs, I felt as if I’ve never ran in my life. It was awful the entire time. Maybe it was because I woke up late and skipped parts of my routine. I rushed out the door before I finished my first cup of coffee because I was determined to get the run in before I had to be in the office. Within the first quarter mile I knew. My legs ached and my lungs burned more than usual, so I slowed my pace. The slower pace only prolonged the misery. The run never got better. I almost quit halfway through my goal, then I thought about quitting the rest of the time. But I finished.

When I read what Jesus thought when he saw his disciples in a boat on the sea it reminded me of my run and our lives.

“And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.”  Mark 6:48

I can think of no better words to describe the hard parts of my journey. My running journey, the married one, the parenting one, my working and writing ones and the most important journey – the following Jesus one.

Making headway painfully.

Of course, it’s not always like that. There are days when it’s easy. Or easier. Good run days happen. I don’t let the bad run days stop me from working to get better at it.

It’s the same way on the other journeys. I can’t let the hard days of my marriage make me forget the good days. I don’t let the days when I feel uninspired to write any words prevent me from continuing my blog or steal my dream of publishing a book. On the days my parental decision making is less than wise I try to remember all the times it wasn’t.

And on the journey that matters the most…the one that affects all my other ones, I’m learning as I go. There are days I’ve let pride rule my heart, or acted selfishly. I’ve ignored what Jesus said about loving my neighbor or failed to do something good I know I should have done. But it happens less than it used to. I’m learning. Slowly at times. Painfully sometimes. But I’m moving forward and I’m never alone.

Jesus said, “Take heart, it is I”.  Mark 6:50

He sees. He knows when it’s painful and slow. And He’s there giving me the courage to keep at it.

I stumble…..but I’m making headway.