Walk don't run.

Today I went for a walk. I put on my running shoes and headed off into the glory of a joyously warm September morning. One of those bright and beautiful days that promises summer warmth but with just a taste of freshness in the air. Around the neighborhood I trotted, my ears firmly filled with the sounds of my gospel-themed playlist. Feeling uplifted in spirit, and my eyes feasting on the beginnings of a New England Fall amongst the local foliage, I walked for five, ten, fifteen, minutes and more. I watched as the distance on my fancy i-phone app increased and I breathed in a sense of accomplishment as I crossed streets, cut thru the cemetery and meandered thru the neighborhood.

For the past few months I haven't been able to do this. My runners have been on the shelf in the mudroom. I've driven round the neighborhood rather than traveling a la pied for short distances. Since the spring  I've experienced the inconvenience of continual tingling sensations and muscle spasms in my legs and feet. I get tired when I try to work out. And after many blood tests, MRI's, CT Scans and numerous trips to Dr's, I'm none the wiser as to why. And neither are they. I'm thankful that I know I don't have a disease, and  I don't have something growing where it shouldn't be, and everything is allegedly working inside of me just as it should be. But in the mornings after fractured hours of sleep, and when I need to take a nap at 2 in the afternoon just before it's time to get the kids, what I don't have is a sense of peace about feeling slightly incapacitated. And my overall perspective is that it's simply not fair to feel like this when I have so many things to do and places to be.

Today felt like a great day and I felt an urge to try and get back into the swing of  walking. An article I read online talked about keeping active and keeping your muscles stretched. So why not?

As I walked along the side of Main Street, a man of about 30 years of age 'drove' by me in his motorized wheelchair. He wasn't driving along in the gutter but about 3 feet into the lane, avoiding the bumps and debris that could stop him short. He was unshaven, slightly disheveled, and 'tatty' looking. He stopped, thinking I needed to cross in front of him, but I waved him through, and on he went.

About 20 feet further on, he stopped. His shoe had come off and was lying in the middle of the traffic lane. He turned his chair around, and looked at me for help. I ran over to him, beckoned the traffic to come around me, and picked up his shoe. I don't know what I expected next. Perhaps I thought that he was going to bend down and put it on his foot. Maybe I thought he would raise his leg high so that I didn't have to kneel on the asphalt in the road. For a second I probably imagined he was going to stand up from his chair and get the shoe from me. But in a split second by looking at his face, I realized that I was his only help to recover his shoe and restore some self esteem. His legs and feet did not work.

I held the shoe in my hand and gently picked up his cold, slightly swollen foot. And it was obvious that this shoe wasn't going to fit his foot easily. Do I force it? Should I just give it to him and let him take it away to someone that could help? Or do I leave it hanging half off because he won't know the difference after all. He can't feel it.

Thankfully, I got the shoe to fit, and stood up. The cars were driving slowly round us still. 'Please can you tie my shoes?' the man asked. I obliged, asking if there was anything else he needed. He said no, followed by a thanks, and off he moved ahead of me.  I stood back on the pavement and needed a couple of minutes to compose myself. It was truly the most unusual thing I have encountered whilst out walking. As he drove off I felt a thunderbolt of emotion hit my chest. Intense sadness that this man was so incapacitated. A sense of thankfulness that I was there at that moment when no other pedestrians were. And a large measure of guilt that I had lost a sense of perspective about my own situation.

Tonight my 8 year old daughter cried when I told her the story. She cried out of sadness for his situation. And together we said a prayer for this man. I told her that I had also cried earlier in the day.

We know that we're told to love one another, and to take care of the poor, the sick and the downtrodden, but I hadn't expected an opportunity to land right in front of me on Main Street. It wasn't expected, I wasn't prepared, and to be honest, it felt uncomfortable and weird to be holding a lame man's foot in my hand in the middle of the road.

And I guess I cried at the guilt of my response to this, the most.



 

The Ultimate Road Trip

Like most parents battling the tail end of a harsh New England winter, I scoured a local freebie parents newspaper to check out local events and happenings as the February vacation approached. In between articles providing foolproof methods to get kids to eat more veggies, and highlighting first signs of depression in a pre-teen, I was struck by how many advertisements it contained. Not only tempting offers to purchase delightful designer children’s items, or to investigate wonderful sounding educational institutions for my kids. It was stacked with adverts for programs and services which could improve, nurture, and train my child beyond recognition and into super-human perfection. Around thirty classes which could help them improve their grades. At least twenty programs or institutions which would evaluate their mental health problems, psychological well-being and improve their self-confidence. More than forty five programs to make them the best dancers, artists, athletes, or chess players they could wish to be.

I don’t object to any of these in theory, and daresay if I were drowning in dollars, my seven year old would be bouncing from dance studio to pottery class then trampolining across town to a cupcake-making session at a local bakery. And if my teen was battling an eating disorder, I’d be desperately finding ways to help them beyond what my bank balance could manage. Because I’d do anything for my child. What I find hard to process is how important this has become in our culture and how we put our trust into hour-long sessions of participation and evaluation to ensure our child is going to be the fulfilled person that we want them to be. Physical, emotional, and social well-being can seemingly be taken care off with a check book and a willing parent with a mini-van. But what about our child’s spiritual training? I don’t see any three-by-three inch paragraph promising to ‘train up your child in the way he/she should go’ for a monthly fee. And what exactly does that mean?

We all heard last year's interview with a Hollywood Dad as he condemned a well-known Media Empire and its ‘people’ for the destruction of his famous daughter and ultimately his family. What I saw was a glossy admission of his fairly catastrophic failure as a father. And perhaps more sadly, his open declaration that any faith they had been shaken because of his lack of judgment. As I put down my parent info paper, I questioned myself. When did we start putting our hope in coaches, experts and managers to raise up our kids rather than in the creator God who gave them to us in the first place? And why should their spiritual journey towards Jesus receive much less attention and coaching from their parents than their earthly journey towards recognizable achievements? Secular research suggests that a child’s moral compass is set by the time they are nine years old. If that doesn’t scare the bejeebers out of most parents I don’t know what should. Personally I think that there’s a whole lot more that my kids need guidance with than a sense of right or wrong and it’s going to take a lot more than 9 years to work on it. I pray, however, that their spiritual compass will be set towards Jesus a lot sooner.

During our last Christmas vacation, we squeezed in a brief lunch visit with some old friends. The kind who you do not see for a long time, but when you do it is as if you were never apart. They’d been hosting guests for a couple of nights. We arrived early and as the guests hadn’t left yet, we shook hands and introduced ourselves as they packed up their belongings and corralled their children. This smart, forty-ish couple had four beautiful children ranging from a toddler to a 12 year old. The father, a successful business man who gave off an air of authority in all his mannerisms, stepped into his expensive, shinning, powerful chariot of a vehicle and swept out the driveway. Mom loaded the four kids into her large, expensive and very practical SUV. She strapped them in, and dealt with whines and complaints about who was sitting in the front, and then got out of the driver’s seat to retrieve something from the house. Smiled, waved, and left about five minutes after her husband with the usual melee and noise that accompanies most journeys when the kids just left somewhere that they didn’t want to leave.

I questioned our friends about whether this was normal practice; did Dad distance himself from the practicality of driving in the family vehicle on a regular basis? Why did they both come in separate cars in the first place? And wouldn’t it have been nice if he’d taken his (only) son with him in his car? Oh yes, came the reply. He’s loves his kids, but he just doesn’t do the hands-on stuff. He provides well for the family but leaves the practical details to his wife. It’s just not his thing. And they live about 5 miles away.

I know that as parents of the Christian faith it is tempting to be like that father and leave the practice of leading our kids towards faith in Jesus to someone or something else. Think figuratively of that mom as any Sunday morning kids program, a Vacation Bible camp, Bible story DVD or worship cd. They play a huge and important part in our kids’ lives and are driving them towards where they need to be spiritually; safely, with a bunch of friends, and with some fun on the way. But there will be days when ‘Mom’ needs to take time away or hand off to a third party to watch her kids for a time. And who knows who that will be. Hopefully not the ‘people’ of a certain media empire. It’s important that we’re all in the same vehicle when it comes to our kid’s journey of faith. I don’t want to keep looking in my rear view mirror to see how my kids are progressing separately in a different vehicle. I don’t want to meet them back at the house and ask them how their drive was. I want to enjoy the view out of the same windshield and the sunroof, seeing the same things as they do. I want to hear them ask questions about driving and navigation from a childlike perspective. Just in the same way that I want to re-learn from them how delightful a child-like faith in Jesus can be.

Road trips are exciting. You never know what you’re going to see out of the car window as you clock up mile after mile. There’s an anticipation of reaching your goal by a certain time. The landscape can be breathtaking. They can also be tiring and frustrating and the car can be a complete mess when you’re riding together for a long period of time. Sometimes we can take the long way around and there are times when we’ll go in the wrong direction. But we will get to our final destination with careful navigation. If we share the driving with someone else we can often be there ahead of schedule.  


As parents, it’s our responsibility to be the driving force in our kids’ faith journey towards Jesus. We can definitely use some help with the navigation and driving, and it’s important for our faith community to take a responsibility for loving and leading our kids in that direction. But our children learn most from us, and as we reflect Jesus in our own lives they’ll be able to discover something greater than any class, program or therapist can ever offer them. A God who knows them by name, who loves them just as they are and who cares about every detail of their young lives.

No check book required and mini-vans are entirely optional.