Thoughts about September 2011

My thoughts are all a jumble.  After about four months of spiritual struggle I now feel like I am mostly at peace with the state of my body.  The surgery is now behind me and there is no way to know my running future without going there, but that’s going to be a slow one-day-at-a-time kind of thing.  I feel like I am mostly at peace with God’s will for my life in this regard and mostly surrendered under His mighty hand.  In faithfulness He afflicted me.  May His lovingkindness now comfort me.  I hope He restores my fortunes, but if he does not I will continue to move through the grieving and accept it.  In the end I might end up weighing 300 pounds if I can’t ever run at my best again.  Maybe not.  I don’t know. 

Not running (not walking without crutches!) kinda bites.  I actually feel remarkably well for only being 6 days post op, and I’m in pretty good shape, although I’m sure a little bit is slipping away every day.  I feel like I could go out and rip a 4:50 mile, but that would be unwise!  I already miss it a lot.

Meanwhile, God bless me, I have been filled with joy watching my boy run.  He’s had a couple of great races and a couple not as good, but just watching him race on cross country courses has been a balm for my soul.  He is beautiful to watch.  I appreciate his healthy knees and his slender form covering the ground, and I find his determined face amazing as the wind parts his dishwater blonde hair.  Right now he has absolutely no idea what he is capable of as a runner.  I guess I don’t either, but he seems to love it and I know that if he feels joy from it then the sky is the limit.  It’s funny.  I want, deeply from the bottom of my soul, for him to run well and to continue to improve and to stand out on his team and in competition, but if he doesn’t I am totally okay with that, too.  Really.  After his couple of races where he didn’t perform as well as he had hoped I was disappointed, but disappointed for him because I empathized with him that he had not met his goals. There has been no part of me that has in any way felt disappointed in him. 

So, I feel I am in a healthy, “good dad” place with respect to his running.  I am fully invested as his most passionate fan, biggest supporter and occasional advisor, but I am not pushing him.  I don’t want to push not only because that’s what’s best for him, but I also don’t want to in the sense that I don’t feel the desire to do so.  Literally, it’s all good.  He could soar this year and end up at State, and I would be as proud as I could possibly be.  Or, he could flounder and end up running the rest of the season on the JV team.  Either way or any way in between, I’ll be proud of him as long as he is having fun at it.  Either way, I am having the time of my life watching him run, and if it worked this way in God’s economy (which it doesn’t) then I would definitely trade what’s left of my middle-age running career for his youthful rise in the sport.  You fall in love with your kids when they are born, and then you just keep falling in love with them over and over again through the years.  How rich is that?