Blind Hog Finds Acorn

On the way to church on Sunday we drove south on Mur-Len past the old Dillon’s (now Price Chopper) and the beautiful row of pin oaks that lines the street there next to the store. I relayed the story to my family how four years ago in October I was running along there one morning when plop, out of the sky fell an acorn that bounced off the sidewalk in front of me. I caught it in natural running motion without even a hitch in my stride. That run was after the 2005 Twin Cities Marathon which was something of a debacle for me.

By the time I got to TCM my hamstring had been acting up for a month or more and race day was windy! As we came around a few little lakes during the middle part of the course bearing straight into the predominately east wind I knew I was used up by mile 16. When you’re feeling bad at mile 16 of a marathon it is going to be a long morning. By the end I had taken several walk breaks and came in with one of my slowest times. Aside from the wind it was a cool and beautiful fall morning throughout, and the finish in St. Paul was wonderful even though the race itself had been a brutal slog.

So two or three weeks later when the acorn bounced perfectly into my hand I wondered if in some way there might be in it a reassuring message from the Lord. My dad always says that every blind hog finds and acorn now and then. Could every injured runner now and again find the grace for healing and another good race? April 2006 finally came around and the Lord granted me the strength to finally, on my third attempt, run a good race in Boston – and not only a good race but a personal best at that. In Boston. Nice acorn. Thank you, Jesus.

Which brings us back around to the present. I have been struggling in life and running for a good couple of years now. A nasty hamstring injury kept me out of Boston in ’08. Worse than that I missed Boston in ’09 because of a torn ACL and the subsequent reconstructive surgery. Also lost a couple of jobs roughly in that stretch of time. A lot of stuff just has not seemed to go right. Nevertheless, God has provided employment and a new baby girl from Ethiopia. She alone is the most amazing gift and her coming to us is like a breath of fresh life into our family. Still, on the running front, I am sad. My knee recovery is going very slowly and I am sad that fall is here and I am not gearing up for a marathon as I have done every fall for the last 6 years. But as God’s grace would have it, I have a wife who really listens to me and hears my heart.

She spent Sunday afternoon out praying and reading her Bible. She said she really needed a spiritual re-charge and some time alone, and with a new baby in the house I really understand that. But besides just re-charging herself, she came home with a present for me! She brought me a running book. And she passed on to me another running book. She said she listened to my story about the acorn and she knew how much I was missing running. (I mean running hard runs and long runs, not the little 4 milers that I am now constrained to doing no more than 4 times per week). She understood.

I am going to read these books for sure. One is about a runner who survived the genocide in Burundi that spilled over from Rwanda back in 1994. The other is about a guy who loves running and writing but never had the guts for a long time to really strike out as a writer. The books, even if they turn out to be terrible (which I doubt), represent an acorn that bounced right up into my hand. Who gets to have a wife like this? I am thinking, almost nobody. I am blessed indeed.

Over 43 now, with the clock ticking, and due to my knee my body unable to train at the high level I would like to, I am now stuck with wondering if my fastest marathon is now behind me forever, and that’s a bit hard to swallow. But maybe, just maybe, might I again find the grace for healing for one more great race? God knows. The rest of us will have to stay tuned.

For those who have ears to hear

How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Hebrews 2:3.

This verse that I read as part of Bible study with a friend intersected for me with a passage I was studying on my own. In Luke 16 Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. As it turns out Lazarus ends up in heaven while the rich man who lived a life all about his own comfort ends up in hell. From hell the distressed rich man pleads that Lazarus be sent back from the dead to warn his brothers so they will not suffer the same end. Abraham answers him that they have the bible already – they should pay attention to it! Knowing his brothers will not repent at the plain message of the Scriptures he says that his brothers will listen if someone returns from the dead to warn them. But the sad ending of Jesus’ parable is that no, in fact, they will not change their ways even if someone rises from the dead and comes to them.

To me this parable makes the point of Hebrews 2:3 even more poignant. God has in fact demonstrated His love for sinners by sending His own Son to be punished in their place, and He has in fact sent Him back to us from the dead. Any greater or more surprising plan that God could have come up with to communicate His love to us and deal with our wickedness I cannot conceive. We needed a heart transplant and God gave us His Son’s own beating heart at the cost of His life, but many refuse and some even despise His love and generosity. Indeed, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

Cool Jesus

I was reading someone’s blog today and noticed that she referred to God as “The Chief,” and it made me wonder about her motivations. Others had criticized her last post and she was playing the irrefutable divine inspiration card; The Chief had told her to write her last post. How can you argue with that! But more than what she had to say I was curious about her use of the word Chief. I suppose there is nothing wrong with that word – it certainly conveys some proper sense of divinity – but why not, as millions of English-speaking Christians have said for at least 500 years, Lord?

I don’t know but highly suspect that it might have had something to do with, at all costs, wanting not to sound in any way like a 1970’s born-again Southern Baptist. That would be the nadir of uncoolness, and The Chief forbid that she should ever sound like a church lady. And this got me to thinking again about something that has been bothering me lately, why does it seem that many of this generation’s Christians are obsessed with being cool, even to the point of inventing a “cool Jesus”? I think I know for the most part the answer to that question, but I’ll postpone that for a post on another day. For now, here are some things that have bugged me about the emerging cool Christian movement.

First of all, we have to be missional (yes, I guess this is now a cool English word…) and this means that we have to target people where they are, but it seems like maybe God is really only interested in cool people, so that helps narrow the scope of our missionalness. We must shoot almost exclusively for young twenty-somethings who are turned off to the last generation’s Christianity (probably because it was so uncool), consider themselves socially aware, have swallowed hook, line and sinker everything their public school upbringing has fed them about abortion, homosexuality, evolution and politics, are college educated, live in a loft in the city (not the uncool suburbs, and certainly not extremely uncool rural America), like alternative modern music but also consider 1930’s jazz and probably the Beatles to be very cool, and are natty dressers.

Knowing the target demographic, our church marketing departments can now really hone their foci. (Hey, I was a math guy, so I actually knew the proper plural for focus without looking it up. Anyway, I digress…). Hey, wait a minute, since when did churches have marketing departments? (I think the answer to that is since maybe about only 1990, but sorry, I digress again – maybe that should be another post). Anyway this all has serious ramifications for worship and preaching and fellowship and evangelism and everything! But I think the thing that bugs me the most often, though not necessarily the most deeply, is where this need for coolness has taken church language.

The standard line is that old churchy language is jargon and inaccessible to most “seekers.” So it must be changed. But I ask you, to your standard unchurched or non-Christian person, is “fellowship” really that much more weird than “doing life together”? I don’t think so. Although I know this is now the really cool term that is supposed to describe Christians spending time together, learning from each other and bearing one another’s burdens, I have to say that the phrase “doing life together” really just creeps me out. And honestly, I strongly suspect that your average 40-year-old factory worker probably feels exactly the same way, but I admit that our well dressed and highly educated urban dweller may not agree. The factory worker is not in our target demographic anyway.

Well, that is probably enough of that rant, but I am going to close with one more Christian coolness observation that really made my blood boil. The first time I heard Todd Agnew’s “My Jesus”, I carefully followed the lyrics and thought it was a good, challenging song, but then here he came, Agnew’s cool Jesus, the one who Todd was pretty sure would “prefer Beale Street (a center of really cool Blues clubs in Memphis) to the stained glass crowd.” I don’t know what this cool Blues-loving and organ-music despising Jesus really has to do with the poor-loving Jesus we had been hearing about in the rest of the song, but at that point I was finished with it. I personally don’t care for the old organ music and the “stained-glass” style of worship that I grew up with, but I have this thought for Mr. Agnew. How dare you. My nearly 80-year-old mother has lived her whole life for Jesus Christ, loving Him with her whole heart and singing uncool stained-glass style songs from her heart to God. I have never known her to care one bit about appearing “cool” to man, and I think she understands way better most of us what the REAL Jesus meant in John 17:14. Shame on you, Todd. Your cool Christianity disrespects this past generation of believers.

Cool Christianity confuses the message of the gospel with new and unnecessary jargon. Cool Christianity is a contradiction. We should stop trying to be cool and instead hold out grace and truth as our Lord did.

Count My Blessings

One should really do this sort of exercise more often. Helps put a stop to the whining. :-)

The many ways people blessed us through our adoption journey:

Two baby showers
A thoughtful picture frame with a nice note to hold the place of our daughter’s picture during our long wait for referral
Two doctor friends’ expert opinions on critical matters
Free piano lessons for one of our sons to help with costs
An unexpected significant cash gift from a friend to help with travel
Pastor pulling us aside Sunday before our trip for a prayer
Pastor joyfully announcing our return to the whole congregation in the middle of his sermon!
Many folks who contributed in one way or another to our adoption paperwork!
My sister buying us new very nice car seat
Neighbor who mowed our lawn
Friends who took care of our cat
Long-time friend who took care of our stupid dog
A bunch of my coworkers surprised us with a nice card and generous contributions that took care of that first trip to Costco for diapers and formula!
Various friends giving us a crib,
……. a running stroller,
……..their daughter’s clothes
Literally dozens of folks who have spoken words of blessing to us about our adoption and about little Lulit after we got her
The wonderful people at our agency (CHI) who guided us through the process with love and skill
Whoever put up the “Welcome Home, Lulit” banner, streamers and balloons
Three sons of mine who have prayed for Lulit for 2+ years and engulfed her with love
My beautiful wife who envisioned our family expanding through adoption

New Flower

Yep, it's a bummer that I tore my ACL last winter. It's a bummer that it knocked me out of the Boston Marathon again this year. It's a bummer that I missed Boston in 2008 to a pulled hamstring. It's a bummer that I can't yet run any further than 6 or 7 miles at a time (although under a glass half full philosophy that is most definitely NOT really a bummer). And it is a bummer that I probably won't be able to run a fall marathon because there just isn't enough time to get more healed up and then to build up. Looking further back over the last two to three years it's a bummer that I was treated grossly unfairly in a job and had to leave it and lost another one to an unfortunate business development. And there were other significant family events that caused me and my little family tremendous grief over that time frame.

But then there's this. And I learn again that I am the richest man in the world.

Now THAT is hunting

This blog is supposed to be very selfishly all about the life of me. I don’t care if anyone ever reads it or not. It is really more of a diary. But, the events of this evening were so remarkable that they must be recorded somewhere. This seems as good a place as any.

Remember the old line from Karate Kid? “The man who can catch a fly with chopsticks can do anything.” I have a corollary to that statement:

The boy who can kill a rabbit with a baseball can also probably do anything.

Josiah was out at baseball practice and Kay was out with a friend this evening while Wyatt and I were here in the house. He was playing Nintendo, and I was figuring out if there is any way to download the old arcade game “Joust” to run on our PC. Bursting into this quiet and calm was the third born, the lightning bolt, the blonde maverick of the family announcing excitedly that “we” had finally got a bunny! Wyatt went running outside to see what was going on, and I stayed at my post. I assumed that Cade must have caught a baby bunny, which is not too uncommon an event in the Springtime around this house.

A couple minutes later Cade and Wyatt came running back into the house and explained that Cade had “got” the bunny with a baseball.

“You got a rabbit with a baseball?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“You killed a rabbit with a baseball?” I asked.

“Yeah, Dad! Come out and see. I got as close as I thought I could and then my instinct told me that I better not get any closer or he would run away, so I just threw the ball at him.”

“I have to see this.” I replied, finding my own pulse quickening, somewhat excited by the exceedingly unlikely event that had apparently transpired. I went out with Cade to look. Wyatt told us he didn’t want to look at the poor bunny any more. It kinda bummed him out. I understand that and respect that he felt that way. I used to feel that way sometimes when I was a kid out hunting and I killed a pheasant or a quail – particularly when I had to break its neck to finish it off. I got over that over the years for the most part, but Wyatt has not been around hunting nearly as much as I had been by his age. That’s OK. Cade did not seem fazed at all, however.

So, outside I went, marching across Mr. Paul’s yard in my socks, getting them wet because the ground was still wet from the snowstorm last weekend and the heavy frost this morning. On the far side of the neighbor’s driveway, there it was, sure as shootin’, an adult rabbit lying there and looking quite, uh, asleep.

“It’s dead, Dad. Wyatt and I poked it and stuff, and it didn’t move at all.”

I moved it a little with my foot. Indeed. Dead as a post.

“Wow, Cade, that is amazing. How did you get him again with the baseball?”

He explained that he had chased a couple of bunnies a couple of times around the yard when one stopped but another one ran on away. He accused the other rabbit of “chickening out.” [All things considered, can’t say I blame it!] Anyway, he said when he first started chasing the rabbits around the yards he had acquired a couple of baseballs from the trunk of my car so he would be ready, just in case. And sure enough….

“Dad, I got as close to him as I could and my instinct told me that if I got any closer he would run away so I threw the baseball at him. When I hit him it kinda flipped him over, and then he sorta laid there for a little bit and kinda moved his legs a little bit but that was it.”

It was getting close to time to load up Wyatt and Cade to go pick up Josiah at baseball practice. I offered to clean the rabbit so we could eat him, an offer that Cade first turned down but then upon further reflection enthusiastically accepted. We were out of time for the moment because we had to go get Josiah, so Cade put the bunny in the back yard fort while we went to get Josiah. I figured there it had a good chance of avoiding detection by the neighborhood cats – including our cat – and maybe we could get back to cleaning it upon our return.

When we got home Cade let me know that he still really wanted me to clean that rabbit so we could eat him. I got my small hunting knife and met the boy on the driveway with the bunny. As we were preparing for our work, however, Cade got another little ego booster – like he needed one – that postponed us for a few more minutes.

As Maverick’s little luck would have it one of the neighborhood moms was driving by with a couple of his classmates, James and Brandon. As they were going by, they saw Cade holding the rabbit by the hind feet and they begged James’ mom to stop. “What is that Cade is holding?!?”, they asked her. “Can we stop and see?!?” They begged her. She stopped so they could see.

James and Brandon stood in eight-year-old awe of the dead rabbit in Cade’s right hand. They listened in rapt attention to the Cade’s re-telling of the story of how he had done it in. Meanwhile, I made my way to the mom in the SUV and began to explain the subject cautiously.

“I don’t know how you feel about hunting and such things,” I started.

“Oh, please!” She immediately interrupted. “I have boys!”

I explained that Cade had killed that rabbit with a baseball and that I had never seen anything like it. I have to say that I admire that woman. She really did seem to understand the nature of boys. She congratulated Cade on his hunting prowess, gave the two boys in her charge a couple more minutes to stand in awe, summoned them back into the SUV and drove away. But I am afraid that as the story spreads through the elementary school there may be boys carrying baseballs throughout the neighborhood for weeks now, hoping to duplicate the feat of my little blonde Maverick.

After Cade’s admirers saddled up and drove away we got down to the business at hand. The light was starting to fade by now and we needed to get that carcass taken care of. I give Cade credit. He hung in there and helped me with the whole process of skinning, gutting and cleaning, and he didn’t complain at all. I was pleased he had the opportunity to exercise good hunting ethics; we will make good use of that rabbit and will not wantonly waste it. It was a good lesson for him, and I felt blessed to be a part of it with him.

Of course, from my point of view there had to be some bragging. Maybe he shouldn’t brag, but I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t brag a little. I made calls to Dad and my brother, Tim, informing them that for all of their hunting accomplishments they had been overshadowed in one stroke by an eight-year-old little boy. I know how many rocks and balls I have thrown at squirrels and rabbits over the years, mostly without ever getting even close, and I was 100% confident that nobody else in my family had ever taken game with a baseball or any other hand thrown projectile. Clearly, Cade had outdone several generations of Heikes hunters in one stroke with his mighty right arm! You go boy. You are one of a kind, and your Dad loves you for everything you are and everything you are gifted with.

I guess we shall find out shortly how suburban rabbit tastes!

By the way, for the random visitor that might happen to stumble upon this obscure corner of the internet, every word of the above story is absolutely true.

Non-Zero Log Entry

Dear Diary,

Today I have something to tell you that I think I can tell you only. Well, some of my hard-core running buddies might get it. Todd the Ultra Man, Nick the Natural and Trevin the Undertaker would understand probably. But my Orthopedic Surgeon, my Physical Therapist and definitely my Wife would not get it at all and might call me an April Fool.

A few weeks ago Brian (PT) told me that I could probably start doing some jogging at 8 weeks post op (i.e., TODAY), and I latched onto that statement like a starved Rottweiler latches onto a Kansas City Strip. Well, as the date was approaching last week I conferred with Dan (Surgeon) who told me that I should wait until about week 12 but conceded that running does not put too much stress on the ACL. I sorta hinted that maybe if I went real slow and not very long on a very stable soft surface maybe it would be OK. He said that he "shouldn't probably give me too much rope," but did sorta wink and nod... Brian told me yesterday to please wait until week 10 and not to start until I could do it the first time with him helping me.

Well, tonight instead of only swimming I did a little triathlon: 900 yards swim, 20 minutes on the stationary bike, and then after some walking about 1/2 mile "run." I guess it was more of a jog, and it wasn't pretty, but... it felt good to "run" again. Very good. And for the first time in over 2 months I can put an entry in the running log. Thank God.

Sin to Listen to Jackson Browne?

It occurred to me the other day as I found “The Pretender” CD in my car’s console that it would feel good to settle down into its melancholy spirit as I was going down the road (“lookin’down the road, I don’t know where I been”), because it would well match my mood of the last few weeks (“Sometimes I lie awake at night and wonder where the years have gone. They have all passed under sleep’s dark and silent gate”). Several months into a project manager role for which I am very grateful yet simultaneously not very satisfied by I seem to be having mid-life crisis issues hitting me at the same time as my ACL rehab (“Oh God, this is some shape I’m in”). So besides being very depressed about not running and missing Boston again this year because of screwing up my knee I can’t seem to escape some of these feelings I am having that are telling me that I am a very disappointing underachiever (“who started out so young and strong only to surrender”).

Unfortunately, these feelings seem to be at odds with 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Ironically, I felt the Lord gave me this verse to reflect on just a couple of weeks before I tore up my knee! Although old Jackson Browne sometimes does help me get in touch with some of my darker feelings that I might otherwise be suppressing, the downside of too big a dose of Mr. Browne is that it can lead me quickly down a path of wallowing. As I have been thinking about this little fact the last couple of days while, mind you, enjoying “The Pretender” cover to cover a few times, I came across a verse in my Bible this morning as I have been starting my way through Mark. Jesus said, “Take care what you listen to.”

I think maybe I will put away “The Pretender” for a while and focus on other messages.

“Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender.”

“Take my hand and lead me to the hole in your garden wall and pull me through.”

Beginning a Comeback?

Today the ACL rehab really began for me, finally. I have been in PT for 5 weeks now, religiously doing my stretches and my exercises to try to regain flexibility and strength in the joint, but all the time since that fateful basketball game on January 26 the cardiovascular engine that I have been building and tuning up for several years has been wasting away from disuse. But tonight Kay and I and the younger boys went to the gym and spent an hour in the pool. I spent probably 30 minutes of that doing real cardio activity, swimming laps, something I generally hate to do, but it got my heart beating and my lungs blowing, and that felt like a million bucks. The epithet that Luke and Tim gave me about my swimming, “leg dragger,” reflects how poorly I do it, but at least tonight it was good to feel that wholesome out-of-breath feeling. My knee did pretty well! I intentionally tried to keep it fairly straight and kick from my hips, which is better form anyway as I understand it, and it worked pretty well. I think the plan now will be to try to get a swim in at least three or four times a week at least until I can start “jogging” again. Of course, probably even when I can start “jogging” I won’t be able to put enough stress on my cardio system to do any good. I may have to keep swimming for a while and overlap that with the beginning phase of my running recovery. But at least it feels like the beginning of a comeback.

Hmmm? How to start at this.

So, this is kind of odd. A good friend of mine suggested I start "blogging" as an outlet for some pent up feelings I have been experiencing lately due to a number of life circumstances. I don't know if anything I write here will benefit anyone else or for that matter if anyone else will ever read a single word I write on this thing. Maybe it will help me to get some thoughts down "on pixels" anyway. Well, that's a start.