Every Day I'm Hustlin'

 r so it seems these days.  I swear, it's so much harder to find time to THINK, much less ACT on anything, even stopping to get gas, these days. My life has become way too hectic. I'm not sure how I got here, but I know I have to Slow It Down if I ever hope to regain control of it.

Yesterday is a great example of what I've been dealing with lately. I had two things I wanted to accomplish yesterday before I got home: I wanted to go get a run in (yes, RUN), and I had to drop a dish off at a friend's house on my way home. That was it. I told Keith I'd be home around 5:30-6:00pm, at the latest. Somehow during the day, that exploded into an hour-long run, followed by the pet store, the home building store, the grocery store, the gas station, and THEN my friend's house. I did manage to consolidate some of it down to a stop at Wally World (gawd I despise that place!!!), and I put my friend off until tomorrow.  But even just that put me getting home after 7pm. Day Officially Gone.

Despite all that, I'm very proud that I did NOT try to short-change myself by shortening my run. I call it a run...but what it was was Week One, Day One of Runkeeper's beginner 5k training plan. It was only supposed to be a 1.5 mile walk (or very slow run), but since my fastest run right now IS very slow, I tried to walk at a very fast pace. I was feeling pretty good yesterday, though, and since the trail I was on was very shady, and at least partly downhill, I decided to trot along as much as I could for as long as I could. That turned out to be a little over a quarter of a mile, which I was ecstatic about.  I may have been able to go a little farther, but my shade ran out as the trail crossed the interstate over a bridge that had full...and brutal...exposure to the sun. 

I decided to walk a ways.

At the 1 mile marker, I turned around, and headed back, running any parts that were shady and down hill. Not sure there was much of that, actually, but by the time I hit cool-down, I was very sure that I could not and SHOULD not have run any more than I did. My hip was yelling pretty fiercely that I had done it a serious injustice, and for the first time in a good while, I was pouring sweat. 

It felt so good to be out there again...not just walking in my work clothes, but actually putting on my sweats, tying up my hair, inserting my earbuds, cranking up my tunes and going all in...it was amazing.  It didn't hurt that I'd been fantasizing (yes, really) about hitting the trail again.  I have missed this part of my life so much, it's unreal.  I can't wait until I can really get out and run again... a whole, entire, several-miles long run. 

Pure bliss.

I know that this is one day of my life.  And I know that to get where I want to be, I'm going to have to string a whole lot of these kinds of days together.  But you have to start somewhere, and for me, that was yesterday.  I'd be lying if I said I don't have Grand Plans right now...visions of future race bling are dancing in my head as I type...but right now, I'm just going to be happy to finish Week One, Day Two...which will happen tomorrow. 

I'm back to an 'every other day' schedule, right now.  It will mean some major adjustments, but I think even Keith can acknowledge how important it is for me to regain continuity and consistency right now if I'm going to gain any traction to dig myself out of this hole I've been in for so long.  It will come. I believe in myself enough to know that it will. Now, I just need to believe that I'm worth investing the time in more than everything else in my life that always seems to take precedence over what I need.  Therein lies the challenge.

 

Hey, Wait Up

Iron Mountain

I love to hike. It sounds like a simple statement, but it wasn’t always the case.

The first time I went hiking I was around 13. We moved from the middle of Georgia to the coast of North Carolina and my best friend, Mary-Ann, took me on a trip with her parents. I was so excited to have been invited it didn’t really matter to me where we were going or what we’d be doing when we got there. It was the first time I’d ever felt chosen. So, I didn’t take in the fact I was meant to walk for miles and cart my chubby, out of shape, asthmatic carcass up a mountain. So, imagine my surprise when I stepped onto the dirt path and realized what I had gotten myself into. My legs were aching, my lungs were on fire, and I was self-conscious and miserable the entire time.

The three of them, on the other hand, looked like it was the easiest thing in the world- they barely had the decency to sweat.

The more I struggled, the more smiley and encouraging they got, which felt sadistic and patronizing even though I know they were only trying to be supportive and motivate me. I was dragging behind them like an anchor that fell from a boat. I started to get angry with myself because I couldn’t enjoy this, I couldn’t be happy with them. The first time someone ever wanted to include me in something and I was blowing it. I wanted to cry. I wanted to sit down in a nest of dirty roots and bawl like a baby because this was really hard. Every time the path tilted up in the slightest degree, a wave of dread washed over me.

I don’t remember the trees, or the air, or the animals, or the laughing, or the view when we reached the top, or even if we did. That’s been something I’ve regretted all my life. I don’t remember anything but shame and struggle, much like my life up to that point. 

Stone Mountain

The next time I went hiking was a few years later.

I was with my family, back in Georgia, and we were hiking up Stone Mountain. Everyone was buzzing with excitement where as I was just praying it was easy, that it wouldn’t take long, and anxiety was draped around my shoulders like a freezing cold blanket. Each step was more difficult than the one before and I could feel the weight of my body pulling me back towards the start. I leaned forward, pushing against it like a fish swimming against the current. How long had we been climbing? Hours? Days? 

The heat smothered us relentlessly and my sweaty skin was gritty from the dirt of the trail. There was no relief, no choice but to push through the pain. The last part of the hike was a steep crawl up bald granite, my calves felt like molten lava and my lungs felt like a pressure cooker about to explode. My body was screaming at me to quit, but, for some reason, my heart was dismissing that entirely. I didn’t want to stop. I just wanted to get out of this all consuming misery, this agony. I thought about my old friend Mary-Ann and how I missed an adventure because I couldn’t cope. The same thing was happening all over again. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, both hands gripping the stone beneath me. Then, something incredible happened…

I gave up.

Not physically, that would be a horrible story to tell you... mentally, I stopped caring. Weird, right? I didn’t stop hurting. I just accepted it. I stopped focusing on it and I noticed a gust of wind was caressing my skin, filling my shirt like the sails of a boat. The sensation shot a bolt of electricity through me and I climbed the rock like I was chasing the breeze. Suddenly, I was almost to the top. I heard my cousin laughing at something and turned just in time to see her smiling up at me. That’s right. Up. I had passed her. I was still struggling, still burning, still aching, but I could see the city in the distance, the faint skyline of Atlanta sitting like a trophy among the trees… and clouds… and birds. I walked slowly around the summit for a long time thinking, “This is it. This is my peace.. and it's the one thing I thought I hated."

The more I focused on my goal and the good things around me, the less I noticed the struggle.

Roan Mountain

On the way back down the mountain, having made a significant breakthrough, I merrily bounded along the path almost at a run, when I passed a young couple on their way to the top. The man looked up at me and frowned, “I wish I had that much energy.” I laughed and almost shouted back, “You do! It’s in there! You just have to find it!”

Everything seemed so much clearer... so much easier.

Now, pushing through a hike always feels like pushing through life- it gives me peace when I’ve reached the goal and it teaches me patience and endurance along the way. I’m over twice the age I was when I first climbed Stone Mountain and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve climbed it since. It’s actually one of the easiest hikes I’ve taken (I've scaled a freakin' volcano!) and I use the lesson I learned from it for my life, as well as on the trails- Sometimes the path is narrow, or rocky, or hidden, or straight up. Sometimes it’s hot, or painful, or tiring, or hard, but keep moving and don’t miss the beauty of where you are or where you’re going.

Quitting is easy. You can walk away at any time, but don’t keep dreaming about the summit if you’re willing to give it up.

I'm still chubby and asthmatic, but I don't let things like that hold me back. In fact, it’s funny how unyielding I can be, how unwilling to stop or to settle, once I have the vision of the summit in my mind, once I feel the wind on my face, and how often I find myself having to sit and wait for other people to catch up, but like I said, I love to hike. 

Blood Mountain


Checkout Jescole's blog- Wholeness for the Broken 

Treading Water (originally posted on my daughter's blog Wholeness for the Broken)

grew up in the middle of downtown Atlanta. As a result, I had very little experience with pools, or swimming in general. Occasionally, a neighbor would take me with their kids to a neighborhood pool they knew about, and we’d splash around in the shallow end, and play underwater a little, thinking we were really doing something. We were. We were having fun. 

When I got a little older, I went to spend the summer with an older cousin. She was a teacher, and needed a couple of days to finish up before summer vacation began, so she asked me if I could swim. Naturally, I said yes…what kid doesn’t love the thought of spending the day at the pool, even if it’s by yourself? (In those days, there was no ‘stranger danger’. We went all over the place by ourselves.) Once there, however, the shallow end quickly lost its appeal when I saw all the ‘big’ kids going to the other end and jumping off the diving board.

I should inject here that I had zero experience with diving boards. I had never been in a pool that had one. Ever.

What fun, I thought, never stopping to think that they were jumping into very deep water. And when I followed after them, I almost drowned. The lifeguard, bless him, jumped in with his glasses on to save me. I never mentioned it to anyone for fear I’d never be allowed to go swimming again.

My life changed pretty drastically as I transitioned into my teen years. I lost my mother. My dad remarried. We moved to the ‘burbs. I gained a whole new family. And I began to be exposed to many things I’d only heard or read about…one of which was how the ‘other’ half lived. One of my new Aunts and Uncles lived within walking distance from our house, and they built a pool in their back yard. Not just a blow-up, either…a full Olympic-sized in-ground pool.

With a diving board.

Previous experience taught me to stay in the shallow, and because by this time I was freely admitting that I could NOT swim, no one pushed me to venture out. One day, I was goofing around, pushing my new mom around in an inner tube, and accidentally strayed too close to the deep end. My foot slipped on the slope, and I went down. Panic ensued, and although it was a very tense few minutes, my mom was able to save me from my own foolishness. I spent a very long time after that wearing the Ski Belt of Shame. It mortified me that nobody trusted me to be in the pool without it, but that ski belt helped me learn something incredibly valuable…how to tread water.

Treading water is a learned skill, just like swimming. It helps you hold your place, to hold your head above the water. You don’t go anywhere, you are not traveling, you just…survive. All life forms innately know how to die, but we must be taught how to survive the events that seek to deprive us of our existence, either by experience or example. Even more importantly, we must also be taught how to thrive. Any fool can drown, but you must be taught to hold your own when life is trying to pull you under. And if you really want to get somewhere in life…to thrive…then you’ve got to learn how to swim.

Too often in my life, I’ve come close to drowning, literally and metaphorically, but somehow I’ve managed to keep my head above water. There is no shame in that…it’s why I’m still here. I’m very proud of that skill, even more in some ways than I am of being able to swim. Swimming is great, no doubt (and yes, I did finally learn how), but there are days when it’s all you can do just to tread water. It’s in those days…those moments, when you feel like the undertow is doing its best to suck you under, that you know that treading water may be absolutely the most valuable skill you will ever learn.

Life has provided me many teachers in many forms…nasty divorces, custody battles, financial difficulties, deaths, incarcerations…you name it. Through it all, the skill of treading water enabled me to get through it when others may have drowned. The older I get, the more I have realized how valuable it is to be able to do that, and how very much I have taken that skill for granted in the past. Not everyone has that skill…but I do.

More recently, I have finally really begun to learn the skill of thriving. Not only can I hold my head above water, I can also actively swim toward shore to get out of the water entirely. I can be safe. I can be secure. And I can effect my own rescue, without waiting for someone to come and save me.

Learning this skill is still very much a work in progress. I am continuously practicing that skill to improve it on a daily basis. It takes a lot of hard work to pull yourself out of the water, especially if you’ve been treading for a long time. Treading is exhausting work. Swimming is both more tiring and more freeing at the same time. Two years ago, I began the work of learning how to thrive in earnest. I was making huge progress, and had the shore in sight.

Last year, the undertow caught me, and tried very hard to suck me back out to sea. Someone less skilled in treading water may have drowned. But Michael Phelps has nothing on me. I am a Champion Water Treader, and I am very proud of that fact.

Now that I’ve caught my breath, I am beginning the process of once again swimming toward shore. I’ve got my eye on a nice little lighthouse in the distance, so I am striking out toward that. It may take me a while to get there, but that’s ok. I’ve got nothing but time, and with every stroke I take, my skill is getting stronger.

Dory…I’m coming for you.

 (You can find Wholeness for the Broken here.)