"Double Booked" OR "The Plate-Spinner"

I used to hate winter. I self-diagnosed myself with Seasonal Affective Disorder a long time ago. And yes, it's occurred to me that the winter depresses me simply because I believe winter should depress me. But I think it's simply the cold, the dark mornings, the dark evenings, and the gray sky that doesn't budge for three months.

But, as I've gotten older (and gotten in better shape), I find myself liking winter more and more. Winter, I've found, has some of the best running weather of the year.  

Yes, running in the morning is out because of the extreme cold (or at least the perceived extreme cold), but I can run pretty much any other time of the day. I'm never forced to stay inside because of rain. In fact, when it starts snowing, that's when I want to lace up my shoes and get out the door.

But, although I've grown to somewhat like winter in the last few years, I'm never sad to see it go.

The weather for the last week has been downright phenomenal. Sunny. Mild. The sound of birdsongs in the air again. It feels like spring is right around the corner. And that means, for me...

RACE SEASON.

This spring's race season looked to be the same as almost every year past. The Shamrock Shuffle 3K in downtown Lexington. Run The Bluegrass Half Marathon at Keeneland. Derby Festival Mini-Marathon in Louisville. And, of course, The Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati, Ohio. My standard spring races, and all my favorites.

It's also Lent, which is one of my favorite times of the year.

For those of you who don't know, Lent is the forty days (not including Sundays) leading up to Easter. It begins on Ash Wednesday and, of course, ends on Easter. It's celebrated in remembrance of the forty days before Jesus' crucifixion, when he returned to Jerusalem one last time to preach and teach, even though he knew it would lead to his death.

Growing up, I was never a big observer of Lent (actually, I was never a big observer of anything in church). Even when I got older and started growing in my relationship with Christ, Lent still seemed like something only for Catholics. But a few years ago I went to my first Ash Wednesday service, and it really struck me just how significant Lent should be to a Christian's life.

It's tradition to give up something during Lent. Not necessarily something bad, but something you could do without for forty days (not counting Sundays) in order to grow closer to God.

Hillary and I decided to give up social media during Lent. In addition, we also decided to take on a book study. We began reading Breathe, by Priscilla Shrirer. The book is about what it means to live a life with God's Sabbath in mind. Not necessarily living for Sundays; simply living life with a margin of rest around it. It's about knowing what things steal our contentment, our peace,  and our rest and keep us from living life.

Ironically, we've had a hard time keeping up with it.

It seems like the more we try to eliminate things from our lives to make room for time with God, the more we encounter things that simply have to be done. And yes, it feels like a trick of the Devil, trying to suck away our time with our Creator, but I'll be darned if it's not effective. It's not like I can just decide not to grade tests, or create lesson plans, or do all the other little non-classroom things I have to do for my teaching job. And Hillary can't simply stop seeing patients, or stop completing long, irksome charts for those patients. Couple that with time with the kids, time to maintain our own relationship, cooking dinner every night, and various other commitments, it feels like every minute of our days are spent simply preparing for the next day. Just so we can wake up the next morning and do the whole cycle over again.

I want to let some things go. But how?

Yesterday, I was writing all my spring races on a Runner's World calendar my brother, Aaron, and his wife got me for Christmas. I was thrilled to find that two of the races I had signed up for were actually pre-written on the calendar!

But I was less thrilled to see them on the same weekend.

The Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati and the Derby Festival Half in Louisville. It didn't even occur to me to check, because the two have NEVER been on the same weekend in the past. The Derby Fest is always the weekend before the Kentucky Derby (thus, the last weekend in April). And the Flying Pig is always the first weekend in May. Consecutive weeks.

Not this year. This year, May 1st is on a Sunday. The stars have aligned in such a way that must choose between two of my favorite races. I'm double-booked.

Neither of these races are bad. In fact, they're both great races, and the proceeds for each go to great causes. But I simply can't do them both. I'm going to have to make a choice.

It seems that God's trying to teach me a lesson. It's no coincidence that this perfectly mirrors my current dilemma about making quiet time for Him.

Like one of the races, something is going to have to go. Maybe I have to change the way I'm thinking about my lesson planning. Maybe I have to look for other ways I waste time (although, objectively, I can't see what else I could cut and still maintain sanity). Maybe He'll simply give me some grand revelation about the whole thing, I'll find the answer I'm looking for, and it'll be so simple that I won't believe I didn't realize it in the first place.

I personally hope He goes for the grand revelation. When it comes to discernment, I'm pretty dense.

Until that happens, I'll keep spinning the plates.

"Basketball Rage" OR "Obedience, First"

The Kentucky Wildcats basketball game is over. My blood pressure is returning to normal. I said some unkind things about Bill Self, Jay Bilas, and the Kansas Jayhawks in general. I might have gotten into flame wars on Twitter and Facebook. All in all, a whole plethora of shameful behavior on my part, no matter what happened in the game.

So now, the game is over, and no amount of complaining or whining is going to change that. I'm already thinking about what I'm going to do at school on Monday. I'm thinking about my grandfather, still in the final stages on Alzheimers, whom I saw for the first time in over a year today. Real life is starting to set in again, as the intensity of sports begins to fade.

And yeah, as I think about my atrocious behavior during the game, it makes me ashamed. It makes me hope that those who know me, and who know I claim to follow Jesus, never see me during a UK basketball game. Actually, scratch that: It makes me hope they've never seen me during a UK basketball game, AND it makes me hope I'll be able to keep myself under control for the next game.

For someone who claims to follow Christ, I find myself having a lot of "I hope no one I go to church with saw that" moments. But at least I find myself in good company. Even those who followed Jesus full-time, in the flesh had things in their life they'd hope people not see. Not because it reflects badly on them, because it reflects badly on their Master.

Unfortunately, we're not treated to much of their personal stories. All these men where human, just like me. They lost their cool, sometimes. They got frustrated. They felt cheated. Did they struggle, like I struggle?

I can' help but feel short-changed as I read the stories of some of the most significant characters in scripture. Even people who played a huge role in the ministry of Jesus, who were in his innermost circle of friends, are maddeningly glossed over in biblical history.

Take Matthew, for instance.

We know next to nothing about Matthew except that he was a tax collector, and that he was a Jew. To a certain extent this is enough, because so much is implied. As Jewish collector of Roman taxes, Matthew is a traitor. A pariah. Probably enviable only to the lepers, social outcasts themselves. But there is still so much of the author missing from the Gospel that bears his name.

What was Matthew's life like before Jesus called him to leave everything and follow Him? Had he been looking for an excuse to quit his job? I like to believe he had been, because I can't imagine the taunts and ridicule he dealt with from his fellow Jews when they had to come to him, one of their people, and pay taxed to the foreign force occupying their holy city. And the tax collectors had a reputation of being crooks; was Matthew included in them? Did he have days where he resisted skimming a little off the top, trying to show his countrymen that he was still one of them? Where there days, after he could no longer take the jeering, that he stole an extra portion for himself, feeling he deserved it for having to put up with such torment?

Did he worship God? Could he even show his face in the Temple?

In my experience, Jesus rarely sends only one person to work on the heart of someone He wishes to save. How many other people had tried to soften Matthew's heart? How many times had he been invited to return to the Temple, only to refuse because he was afraid of the cries of 'hypocrite' and 'sell-out' and 'traitor'?

What did he see in the face of Jesus that awakened his soul? No one simply gets up and leaves a job, especially one for which the government could bring down the full force of the law upon you for abandoning your post. Yet he saw something, heard something, in Jesus' simple phrase of, "Follow me," that set his heart afire, telling him:

"This is the moment you've been waiting for. Now is the time."

After Matthew started following Jesus, did he have doubts? Regrets? Moments when he did something, or said something that cast Jesus in a bad light? Did Jesus ever have to pull him aside and say, "Look, if you're going to say you're my follower, you have to stop saying things like that."

Did he still see the same spark in the face of Jesus that caused him to want to follow him in the first place, even months and years later?

Yeah, this seems like a lot of questions to ask, this late on a Saturday night, after such an emotionally exhausting basketball game. But this is sort of what happens when I come down from a "sports high." Reality becomes so much more stark and bright. I have to face the words I yelled at the television, my cell phone, which was thrown across the room right before halftime, and re-read my tweets and Facebook posts to make sure I didn't actually type all the expletives that were going through my head.

I wonder how it was so easy for Matthew to leave behind everything - his old self, his old job, his old preconceived notions about God and faith and religion - and boldly go forth and follow Christ. And I wonder why my vocabulary from my 'old self' always seems to come out when a basketball game's officiating is less than fair. All it took was one phrase from Jesus, and Matthew leaves behind his oldness for Jesus' newness. How did he do it?

Seeking answers, I opened my Bible. Almost immediately, I found a page of commentary from Dietrich Bonhoeffer regarding the calling of Matthew and Jesus' simple phrase of "Follow me."

This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct and accountable authority of Jesus. There is no need of any preliminaries, and no other consequence but obedience to the call. Because JESUS IS THE CHRIST, He has authority to call and demand obedience to His word. Jesus summons men to follow him, not as a teacher or a pattern of a good life, but as the CHRIST, the SON OF GOD. 

In this short text Jesus Christ and his claim are proclaimed to men. Not a word of praise is given to the disciple for his decision to follow Christ. We are not expected to contemplate Matthew, but only HE WHO CALLS, and his absolute authority

According to our text, there is no road to faith and discipleship, no other road; only the call of Jesus. 

After reading that, I realized that my focus was on the wrong person. Matthew's life isn't explained in painstaking detail because it simply doesn't matter, in the grand scheme of things. It doesn't matter if he had doubts or fears or wanted to quit. What mattered was that he chose to follow Jesus. He was willing to open his heart to the call for Someone greater than himself, and Jesus spoke straight to that.

If I find myself wondering how Matthew so easily ditched his old life and started following, I need to change my focus: from Matthew, to the One who called Matthew.

Because to a heart attuned with Christ, open to His call, no matter where it may lead, nothing else really matters. Not why the other disciples started following. Not basketball scores, now committed to collecting dust in history books. Not fears or doubts or worries or slipping into old habits.

All that matters is obedience to the One who calls us, and to His word. Because with that, everything else that matters slips right into place. And everything that doesn't matter simply disappears.

If I can't understand why Matthew chose to follow Jesus at that simple phrase, the fault lies with me, not him. 

"Wearing Down", OR "Adjusting"

This is my first blog post in quite a while. Nearly five months, in fact. And I didn't actually realize just how long it had been until I typed the words.

Of course, I'll blame my lack of writing on the fact that I haven't had a laptop in a number of months.  I recently changed jobs, leaving behind a teaching job I loved at a school I loved. My previous laptop belonged to the school I'd been employed with for the last three years, and I had to return it to them.

So if the job was so great, you may be asking, why did you leave it? 

Simply? I felt called to do so.

The old job was a thirty-minute commute, one way, every day. The distance was putting a strain on Hillary, since she was solely responsible for picking up and dropping off the kids and the dog every morning to the places they had to be. That, and I wasn't making it home to my family until 5:30 or 6:00 every night, and I felt like I was missing out on valuable time. So I applied for a teaching job in the county in which we live, the school system in which my two stepchildren are enrolled. The same school system which didn't hire me last year, though I applied for multiple positions.

I was offered a job at a middle school less than two miles from my house. So I took it.

The year has been amazing. I love my students, I love my co-workers, and I love finally living and teaching in the same count, for the first time in nine years. I love investing in a community in which I am an active member.

But this is, after all, a blog about running. So it's time I got to writing about running.

At the beginning of August, I found myself nursing a hamstring injury which sidelined me for two weeks. I had been ignoring it since the first week in April, trying to convince myself that running through the pain was the best medicine. Turns out, it wasn't. When I finally saw a doctor at the beginning of August, he told me to take it easy for two weeks, and he prescribed some stretched to engage in when I returned to running.

 So,  I begrudgingly took it easy for two weeks. Two weeks that, it seems, have set me back YEARS in my running ability.

Even now, being back to running for nearly two months, I feel slower and more out of shape than I ever have. I run out of energy quicker. I feel the usual running aches and pains sooner. I feel worse when I finish. And my stupid hamstring STILL hurts.

Am I just... getting old?

Yes, I've officially been a dad for more than a year now, but it feels more cemented in reality this year than it did last. Maybe it comes from being recognized in the community as "Faith and Zoe's dad". Maybe it's because I can actually pick up Faith from her after school program at a decent hour, and actually spend real time with her. But "Dad" feels like a deeper part of my soul now than it ever has. And I could not be happier.

But does this mean I have to get "old", too? Is my body suddenly wearing down quicker, just because I feel older than I ever have? I'm not yet thirty three. Guys twenty and thirty years older than me are beating the pants off of my best marathon time. So what's the matter with me?

My brain is trying to attribute it to the fact that I have only been able to do short runs lately (running in the morning is very doable, but my school starts so early that I can never go long). I guess I'll find out next weekend. I'm running the Iron Horse Half Marathon in Midway, Kentucky, just a few miles from our home. Maybe I'll break my old half marathon time. Maybe I'll simply finish feeling good. Or maybe I'll be hobbling around like a lamed animal after eight miles.

The problem is... I'm not sure what I'll do with myself if it's the latter.

Monday, 8/5/13: The Real Role of Rest *OR* Race Crazy

It's been a week since my last post, and I've only done one run since then.  I didn't bother recording it because it was nothing special (under 5 miles, crappy pace).  But this morning I decided to tackle a long run.  The first one in more than a week. And I was very pleased with the results!

Start time: ~6:20 (I slept in this morning)
Start temperature: 58 degrees F
Distance: 13.07 miles
Time: 1:55:58
Pace: 8:52 min/mile
Food before run: 1 cup shredded wheat (unsweetened), topped off with milk.

First and foremost:  YOWZA! Look at that pace! I was like lightning this morning!

Before I toot my own horn further, there are many factors that are probably contributing to that pace.

1.) First (and probably foremost), the app I use to record my runs auto-pauses whenever I'm stationary.  So whenever I had to wait at a crosswalk and got a few seconds of much-needed rest, the timer wasn't actually counting.  I guess you'll have to take my word that I didn't stop every mile and refresh myself with a rest, all the while cheating my running app.  If I was going to cheat on my runs, why bother running in the first place?

2.)  This summer has been Lexington's most mild summer in many, many years.  Last year, I would have never seen a morning in August at 57 degrees.

3.)  It had been four days since I last ran.  Not fighting fatigue or injury, I was able to push myself this morning.

4.)  I ate a little before my run (I haven't done that pretty much all summer), and I refueled with Sport Beans during the run.

I took this picture during a crosswalk stop.  

And I think it's time for me to break up with Sport Beans. I first reviewed the product in this post, and said their nasty flavor was the primary factor that kept me from going whole hog on them.  This package boasted "assorted" flavors, which makes sense, because every one of them tasted like ass.  Sorry, Sport Beans, but for my money, I can find a product that does your job just as well while tasting much better.  

And, come on... a resealable package?  Who's going to reseal a measly one-ounce package?  

On another note, I've signed up for several races this fall!  

August 10:  I've signed up for BOTH Warrior Dash Versailles and A Midsummer Night's Run. The former will be my third Warrior Dash; but in that race, new locations always bring new challenges. The latter is Lexington's premier annual 5k, celebrating their 28th year.  I'm running these races with my dear friend Hillary (her blog can be found here) and a few friends from church. Pictures from both races will be posted!  

October 20:  Last year I swore I'd never do another Tough Mudder. I guess I'll never learn, because I signed up for it again. If you're running and you'd like to join my team, send me a message!  I'll gladly give the team name and the password for you to join!  

December 7:  What would fall be without a half marathon? The Christmas on the Country Music Highway Half Marathon will be my smallest race (the website says its limited to 300 participants!), but it's also the most affordable half I have ever done. I registered last week for $40.00!  

March 29, 2014: Yes, I know it's still months away, but I can't say enough about the Run the Bluegrass Half Marathon.  This will be my fourth year in the race, and what started out as a small race is growing into a renown celebration of all that central Kentucky has to offer to the global running community. I am always impressed with this race.  If you can make it in before the race sells out (they sold more than 10% of their spots in the first four days of open registration), I highly recommend it! 

Yeah, I know... there aren't any full marathons on my race schedule.  I'm actually waiting for registration to open for the 2014 Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon to open!  Runner's World magazine has toted this race as one of the most fun in the entire country.  I can think of no better place to try to beat my old, embarrassing marathon time of 5:13:39. I'll keep you posted, dear reader! 

UPDATE: Results from Miles for Missions Project!  

If you've read some of my earlier posts, you know that I participated in a project called 'Miles for Missions', in which I raised money to buy school supplies for needy kids by running during the month of July.  Unfortunately, I didn't hit my goal of 100 miles for the month (only hit 90.33). Fortunately, my sponsors were very generous, and I was still able to raise $231.85 for needy kids!  Thanks so much to all who donated so generously!