Old Dog, New Tricks, Part 2

Editor’s Note:  In my writing, I’ll be referencing the book, “Same Kind of Different as Me”, which has also been made into a movie.  If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, and plan to, spoiler alert, I will be divulging the plot and storyline, which may ruin it for you.  Stop reading now if that is the case.

I recently read a post on Facebook from a friend, and it was from someone that they knew that had gone through a moment in a grocery store that triggered a flood of emotions for that person.  She had lived in the area previously, been married, raised a family, and subsequently got divorced.  When she entered the grocery store, it all came rushing back to her, and she couldn’t contain her emotions.  The experience, the memories of her family life, were just too much.

 This emotional story came to roost for me in a bit of a different way, but still, very emotional all the same.  Our Adult Education class has been reading and discussing “Same Kind of Different as Me”, and as I sat alone one Saturday, catching up on all of my reading while Laurel was gone for the day, I found a story that hit just a little too close to home. 

“God of salvation
You chased down my heart
Through all of my failure and pride”

It’s a true story of a couple in Texas, who gradually grow into affluence.  As they grow wealthier, and find the better things in life, the husband, Ron, gradually strays, and has an affair.  When his wife, Deborah, finds out, instead of kicking him out, divorcing him and taking him to the cleaners, she first wants to talk to the other woman.  She does, and surprisingly, she tells the other woman she forgives her.  Next, she tells Ron their lives have to change, and she introduces him to helping out at the local homeless shelter.  While Ron struggles with being around the “lesser of us”, Deborah embraces it and eventually wins over all she works with at the shelter, including a very angry and sometimes violent African-American man, Denver, who has led a terrible life and been homeless for many years.  Eventually, Ron becomes a little more comfortable, and he and Denver somehow become friends, but it wasn’t without a great deal of trials along the way.  Sadly Deborah contracts cancer, and eventually dies, but her legacy lives on through the friendship of Ron and Denver, and the homeless shelter built in her name to honor all that she had done.

As best I could, I just summarized a beautiful story with many emotional upheavals into one paragraph, missing many critical parts along the way, but hopefully, you get the picture.  While the story isn’t exactly the same as ours, as noted, it hit way too close to home.  As I’ve noted in previous blogs, I left Laurel for a while way back when we were around 30 years old.  I left her, I left Megan and Kelly, and I moved into a tiny one bedroom apartment all to myself.  Somehow, Laurel never gave up, as much as I gave up, she never did.  As much as she should have kicked me to the curb, divorced me and took me to the cleaners, she didn’t.  She believed in us, she believed in our marriage, and she held on strong until I eventually came to my senses. 

“Hold my heart, don’t let it bleed no more

Sometimes forgiveness is like a man at war”

While I wish I could say that somehow we have a beautiful story to tell about helping out the homeless, and me befriending someone like Denver, that is not a part of the story unfortunately.  What hit me when I was reading the book was when it got to the part about Deborah getting cancer.  You see, all of my life, I’ve lived in fear, I’ve feared that just like Laurel’s two sisters, Kathy and Karen, Laurel would someday fall to cancer, and I would lose her much too soon.  I’ve always lived with the thought that I was willing to give her up, and when I realized how crazy, how stupid I was, God would come in and take her away from me.  Each time she would go for a physical or exam, and she would say that they saw something and wanted to do further tests, panic would ensue, and I’d ask her if she could get an appointment sooner, I couldn’t stand the worry.  As Laurel would point out to me, “Worrying isn’t going to do any good”, I’d say, “OK, you’re right, but that still doesn’t help.”

"Your love has called my name

What do I have to fear?

What do I have to fear?"

  

So as I sat there reading that Saturday afternoon, I burst into tears, and I cried.  And I cried.  And I cried.  I felt badly for our two dogs, Little Bit and Daisy, because they had no idea what was going on.  They kept trying to comfort me, but it was no use, I was seeing my life flash before me, and I probably cried more than I’ve cried since my Dad died in 2013.  I couldn’t let go of my past failures, the pain I inflicted on Laurel, how I treated her, what I put her through.  I’ve never been able to forgive myself for that.  I couldn’t let go of my “perceived” future when I was going to lose Laurel, just like Ron lost Deborah.  I was caught between the inability to forgive myself for my past and fearing my future.  Wow, where the Hell do you go from here?

“And as You speak
A hundred billion failures disappear”

While there have been times in my life that I would have simply accepted this is just who I am, and would have quoted one of my favorite cartoon characters, Popeye, and said “I yam what I yam, and that’s all I yam”, this year has given me a new sense of optimism that I can be so much more. 

I look back to the challenge that our Pastor, Chris Henry, gave us for Lent on “A Clearing Season” and the journey I went on.  I explored myself, I explored my religion and faith, I sunk to the depths of Hell, driving myself into a state of depression, but I pulled myself out and garnered so many great insights and new visions of my life and the lives around me.  I grew and changed during that Lenten Journey, and I am so thankful for that.

“If you gladly chose surrender so will I”

I have continued to explore my worship through my running, as bad as it has been lately, but it hasn’t changed my focus on listening to contemporary Christian music, and finding so many nuggets of inspiration to live my day by.  I’ve interspersed some of the lines throughout this post, some of the ones that give me the greatest inspiration.  And it’s not just on the run that I get and keep that inspiration, throughout the day, I hear these lines running through my mind, and it helps me stay in focus. 

I started yoga this year, and it has been an incredibly uplifting and sobering activity for me.  I’m learning so much about myself and so much about what I can do, and what I can’t do.  While I’m still such a novice, I’ve only been doing it for five months or so, I look forward to it each time, and grow a little more each time.  Don’t get me wrong, there are times that I think I’m progressing, and times I think I’m regressing, at least in my stretching or balance, but I’m always growing in my focus, and my desire to keep coming back to see how I can improve.  As I’ve noted, I will probably never be very good at this, but it has been one of the best activities I’ve ever taken up in my life.  I’m surrounded by so many inspirational people, both teachers and students, that just make me feel good each time I go there.  Why in the world would I not want to do this?

"If You can calm the raging sea

You can calm the storm in me"

  

Finally, the entire church year has been amazing for me.  Through the Lenten Journey, through our Adult Education class, through the services, the music, the sermons, I’ve been inspired, and I’ve grown.  I’ve been lucky, I’ve been blessed through the years to hear some great sermons from great ministers, but the sermons I’ve heard at Shallowford this year from Chris Henry, Catherine Foster, and Bradley Kibler have been outstanding, particularly during Lent.  I have to go back to one (seriously, how do I choose just one?) where Chris Henry said, “But making space for renewal of the soul is not like adding another item to the to-do list.  Caring for the soul is a gift we give ourselves, not an obligation we begrudgingly meet… It involves setting priorities and holding ourselves accountable and sometimes, it means stretching ourselves beyond the comfortable.”  But with all of the great sermons like this, the eloquent weaving of stories together, taking Biblical passages and bringing them into focus in our everyday lives, Chris hit me with the Christmas sermon, with a simple story of Linus from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and the words the angel spoke, and I needed to hear – Fear Not. 

Those tiny two words, repeated by a tiny cartoon character many years ago, brought into focus once again, what has held me back for so many years.  Stuck agonizing over my past failures, fearing what the future holds in store, wanting to take control from God, which I know is ludicrous and makes no sense, and those two words brought it all back into focus for me.  I can’t change the past, and in so many ways, I wouldn’t.  While I have some huge black marks on me from my past, I also have thousands or millions of things of beauty that define my past.  I can’t control the future, and quite frankly, I’m pretty sure that God has a better idea of what my future should look like than I do.  I need to learn to accept that.  I need to stay in the present, be the best me in the present, which will help me be a better person in the future.

One last thing and then I’m done.  Let me tell you a story about my hamstrings.  Stay with me here, there’s a point to this.  As I related in my last post, “Old Dog, New Tricks”, yoga is really, really hard for me.  For many reasons, but the worst is my hamstrings.  I’ve spent 57 years not stretching them, and while I could wallow in the fact that I’ve never stretched myself beyond the comfortable, and letting that define me, I’m giving it my best to do something about it.  The one yoga class, Brooke said, “You need to stretch your hamstrings at least 90 seconds at a time just to maintain your flexibility.”  I actually started laughing.  I thought to myself, I have to do this for 90 seconds just to maintain zero flexibility?  Then the one time, Megan was working on my hamstrings, and she said, “Your hamstrings are really confused.”  Well of course they are, they’ve gone 57 years without any stretching, they are rebelling and saying, what in the world are you trying to do to us?  As I was in a stretch the other night, my hamstrings began yelling at me once again, my legs started shaking uncontrollably, as my hamstrings went on strike and wouldn’t take anymore punishment.  I just started laughing.  As I looked up, Dani smiled and said, “It’s OK, you’re good.”  No I’m not, but with the help of some great teachers I will be, or I’ll be content with where I can be.  Believe me, I’m not quitting, and next time, I’ll go back at it again, and see what my hamstrings are willing to do.  But I can’t change the past, I can only control the present, and I’m not going to worry what the future brings.  If someday, I work myself up to say, 2-3% flexibility in my hamstrings, that’s great, but I’m just going to keep on doing the best I can and not worry about the future.

So am I saying that just like with my hamstrings, I’m not going to wallow in my past failures, not going to worry about the future and just live in the present?  Sadly, no, I’m not there yet.  But I’m getting better.  While I’m not one to ever give myself much credit for anything, I’ve grown this year.  I’ve actually gotten better.  As I always say, I’m a work in progress.  I am committed to be a better me in the present, and I hope that leads to a better me in the future. 

“Thy Will Be Done”

“And what does the Lord require of you?  But to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God”

“But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”

“I Can Do Hard Things”

“Fear Not”

While it’s impossible to distill down a year of learning, growing and inspiration into a few simple phrases, these are some of the ones that have captured me this year.  As I close out the year, this blog post, my blog posts for the year, I wish you the best, and I promise to do my best to give you my best in 2018 and beyond.