Eloping: The Clinical Term

I’ve often mentioned my work in past posts. We recently welcomed a new resident to the house, which, if I’m doing my addition correctly means we now have three residents. Unlike my good friends, Lacey and Bill, the newest man, let’s call him Jonah, can walk. Actually, he has no trouble walking at all. Sometimes he walks when we’d prefer he not… like at 11:00pm when the rest of the world is sleeping.

Jonah grows quite anxious when he can’t control his surroundings. Often the word, “no” sets him off. If you say, “no” to him, he’ll start to nod quickly and say “yes” over and over again. He communicates in sign language and short phrases, so his hands vent his frustration, he starts to pace, and he sweats so much that his hair drips. Eventually, he backs away and marches out the door.  Previously, this has upset me. I’ve been clueless as to how to convince him to return home. Recently, though, I had a breakthrough. 

The other day I went out for a run.  I’ve been known to run everywhere, at all hours of the night. If I’m on vacation, I explore new terrain. If it’s 2:00am and I can’t sleep, I strap on the shoes, figuring that no one else will be out…because wandering the streets at that time would be stupid.

Jonah left the house around 9:30pm yesterday. I grabbed my phone and followed him out, angry. After awhile, the anger subsided and boredom set in. I have no patience for boredom. If you flip through the gospels, you won’t find Jesus bored… quiet, yes, alone, yes, but bored? No. So I wandered over to Jonah and began to talk. He told me to go, then turned his back to me. I walked around to face him. He turned his back. I walked around him again, still talking. He laid down in the parking lot and rested his head on a curb.  I sat on the curb.  He covered his eyes with his hands so I couldn’t see him. I asked him if he was trying to get a tan.

Jesus love is perfect. There’s no way to express this without sounding cliché, so I won’t try. According to C.S. Lewis, “Hell is when the Lord gives us exactly what we want.” Naturally, I don’t want what the Lord wants for me. He makes a request, and I sit on the curb, demanding freedom to do as I please.

Jonah spread his arms out on the cement as if to make a snow angel. He nodded his head and began to smile. “Jonah, this is your problem! This is why you’re so white! You do all your tanning at night when the sun is down. If you want to get tan, you need to lay out during the day!” He stayed still. After a few moments he smiled again and nodded his head, “Yea, me.”

Fortunately for most of us, the Lord is patient, and persistent. We can run from Him time and time again, and He waits. We probably do things that make just about as much sense as tanning at night. We loaf around and waste time, and then we run further.

After awhile, my tone grew more serious, “Jonah, are we friends?”  He sat up, looked at me, and nodded. Then he stood up and walked back to the house. I watched him walking from the curb. I’m constantly running from Jesus’ love… and His love is perfect. How much more would Jonah run from my completely flawed attempt at love?    

So after work, I strap on my shoes and head out to run. He asks me to love people, especially the people that I myself would prefer not to love. Then He waits for my response. 

The Ultra

There’s a specific group of runners who come together every so often. They’re an unassuming group, humble in their simplicity. Looking at them from the outside, one may notice that they look a little out of sorts—hair a little too long, beat-up clothes, often in barefoot shoes or sandals—other than this they look pretty normal. Most carry water bottles in both hands and stash bananas in their fanny packs. They don’t carry Ipods or cell phones, and they’re not connected to heart rate monitors or GPS units. The sun begins to rise as the runners take off.

These runners don’t surge to the front of the pack. The trail forces them to run single file, which is preferable so as not to start too quickly and die later. We run, 75 of us, silently. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is stimulation enough without speech. Besides, we’ll need a laugh later this afternoon— to remind us that we love what we’re doing. So we run, hopping over stones, weaving around trees, climbing up boulders. They hike quickly up steep inclines, again, one at a time, and begin to run as they hit the top. One man stops to pull an older one up the face of a large boulder. It’s his dad’s birthday. His dad died last year and he’s hoping to run strong for his mom. Two ladies stop to take off their shoes and shake the sand out of their socks. One smiles as I continue the run, “Hey, don’t be shy to stop and admire at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. This race is one of the beautiful ones…and we have thirty more miles to worry about speed.”  One of the fellas wearing sandals stubs his toes. He rubs dirt in the wound to clot the blood and continues on. Later, a 65-year-old lady will dig a band-aid and some disinfectant out of her fanny pack, which he takes with repetitive thanks.

Every five to seven miles we stop to refuel, volunteers and family members hand out water, granola bars, and chocolate milk.  While refueling, the runners stretch and delve into the lives of the others. Small talk seems trivial after traversing 20 miles together. These runners often ask the questions with no clear explanations…mostly “why” questions. One man designs office furniture. He’d like to run a vegan restaurant one day. A couple of old ladies, maybe 75, both lost their husbands last year. Running together carried them through. I told them that I’m not a birder, but I’ve been searching for this bird, the Hermit Thrush, all summer, simply because Walt Whitman used it in, “When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” Whitman requests the Hermit sing for him as he can’t summon the words. It reminds me of Luke 19:40 when Jesus speaks of the disciples, “I tell you, if they keep quiet the stones will cry out.” Sometimes, knowing that God, if He wanted, could easily override my stumbling words and actions with His creation allows a greater freedom to live for Him without the fear of bringing Him humiliation. So I like to listen for this ever-elusive bird, Whitman’s chosen speaker—the one that he asks to cover his bumbling’s.

As we near the end of the run, the sun has risen and begun to set again over the surrounding lakes. We’re sheltered by the small Michigan mountains, nothing compared to most mountain ranges, but they’re our own little challenge, and the peaks have served to take our breath away more than a few times. The runners pour each other water and un-stash the remaining bananas, splitting the leftovers with runner opposite. Then, after the race, they slip into their cars, and set off in different directions, wishing one another good health, and hoping to meet again, sometime in the future when they reappear in some other woodsy area to, once again, traverse the landscape, quietly, one-by-one.

5:30am actually exists?!

     It's 5:30am on Saturday morning. I'm awake, voluntarily, and awaiting the start of my first ultramarathon.  I signed up for the 50-miler, though the website now claims it's actually 51-- apparently after 26.2 miles, a little extra mileage doesn't really matter-- but you'd better not short us Mister (49...ppph)!

   So, how does one prepare for a 50- miler? According to my research, you run 4 to 8 miles Tuesday through Thursday of most weeks. You take Friday off. Saturday you run 3-5 hours. Sunday you run 2-3 hours. Monday off. This will keep you fresh while still mocking the amount of time you'll be on your feet during the ultra.

  Now you're asking how I trained? I ran 6-15 miles most days, 0 miles some days, and threw in the occasional 25-30 miler, while quoting Pilgrims Progress when ascending the Hill of Difficulty and searching the trails for the ever-elusive Hermit Thrush mentioned in Walt Whitman's When Lilac's Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. The bird lives just north of my home in the summer, where I often run the trails and listen for it's haunting melody.

More on that tonight or tomorrow morning. I've got to run! Literally! And when I say literally, I mean literally and not "not literally true but used for emphasis or to express strong feeling"*!


*the new google definition for literally...is not literally. Sounds like an oxymoron to me, but who am I to contradict society!? Or pop culture for that matter!? In fact, I firmly believe that someday, one will be able to answer the question, "How are you?" with the word, "Good" and society will consider it grammatically sound. I move to start this process now! How are you today?