Don't Flush Yet

Like sitting on the toilet in the morning after an evening buffet of Indian food dinner, I'm not sure how this is going to come out. As much as I enjoy a solid purge of personal information, I also realize that I need to pick my audience and I'm pretty sure that letting my private life splash into the bowl of cyberspace doesn't come without some dirty consequences. However, my reason for sharing my life with others is to build community and sometimes all it takes for a bond to form is to have one person take the plunge.

Within the last three weeks, doctors have found two different types of cancer cells in my body (two different areas). That's the only part that sucks, because the good news is that both types are completely treatable. But what if I had walked out of the doctor's office today with a diagnosis of malignant melanoma? Would I be sitting in my room right now, scowling at the cat fur stuck to the edge of my chair? No. But the thing is, is that I didn't get that diagnosis. 

So how should I live from this moment on? How do I not let myself get caught up in the "what ifs?" and yet, and yet maintain the understanding that each day of my life is a gift? I need to somehow find that balance between being thankful for my life and respecting it. Accepting grace, but not abusing its generosity. Today is a gift, not an entitlement. Life doesn't owe me anything and in fact, life might very well smack me upside the head every once in a while and leave me bleeding in a fucking ditch.

I know what I do want though, and that is to live life and love fully. If I get stuck in the land of what ifs then I will feel the pinch of its roped-in limitations. I vow to move forward with a soft heart, a respectful attitude toward the fragile gift of life, and a fearless dedication to love well.

Take my hand! I washed them, I promise.

Reinvention

Most people struggle with establishing new habits and patterns. I often get asked how I am able to be so dedicated to my sport and although I have always attributed the consistency of my training to my tendency to be neurotic and obsessive, most of the time I'm really just not sure how I do it.

We watched the movie "Argo" last night and I loved the part where Ben Affleck was pleading with the American hostages to become like their new fake Canadian identities so much that they start thinking like them. They aren't to merely play the part but to BE the part. I think what it is for me is that running has become a part of my identity which really forces me to keep it up. I don't go for a run so that I can act like a runner; I go for a run because I AM a runner.

If you want to be clean and organized then you need to become known for being clean and organized. You need to go out somewhere and meet new people and then you need your old friends to raise their eyebrows at you and ask, "do your new friends know how clean and organized you are?" and then roll their eyes and smile.

I don't have a hard time keeping up my running habits because running is who I am. I am Suzy the Runner. I don't ever think about giving up brushing my teeth because I am Suzy Who Brushes Her Teeth. However, I am having a hard time keeping up the discipline of writing because it's still new to me, and I haven't yet fully taken it on as my identity. But I need to! Suzy the Mother. Suzy the Runner. Suzy the Writer.

It helps to say things out loud to people, like "I am healthy" and "I am a runner" and "I am a writer." Never underestimate the power of assertion. Do whatever you need to do to convince yourself and everyone else that you are this new person. Don't just spill your latte on your new running shoes to get them dirty and used... run in them!

Let There Be Light

I had a health scare a couple of weeks ago, and all I feel like saying is that it shocked me into submission. Humbled by my smallness, by my inability to control everything despite all my efforts to dictate the course of my life, I sank to my knees in surrender. We aren't entitled to our next vacation time or our next meal or even our next breath. Life is a gift, and we should treat it as such.

My boys learned an acronym at summer camp last year: YOLO (You Only Live Once). I guess the ideology behind this is to put aside all fear and resentment and resignation and live the way we are meant to live: with courage and love and connection. All in, balls out.

It's similar to how we like to "live like it's our last day." This mindset promotes gratitude and perspective, changing the way we look at our mundane day-to-dayness. However, what if we all got a little cryptic and lived like everyone else is dying? I know, kind-of disturbing, but think about it! The light of compassion would dissipate the cloud of hurt and resentment that often stand between us.

Let that person fully come to mind. It shouldn't be hard to think of someone as people hurt people; it's what we do best. Now imagine that person terminally ill. Every occasion here on earth is their last. Would we once again reject their attendance at Christmas dinner? Would we roll our eyes at their quirky behaviour? Would we turn down the volume dial on their life so as to not impose on our own song and dance?

I doubt it. 

A hearse passed me running about a year ago, followed by a line of grieving friends and family and I respectfully stopped running, stood still on the side of the road and waited until they had all passed by. If I can let go of my own agenda for a complete stranger then I better be able to do so for a loved one. Let's turn up the music and dance to the harmony we make.

Process

I'm almost done the raw draft for the piece that I am submitting for the writing contest. I'm sitting at a coffee shop feeling light like being underwater, carried along by the waves of my memories and feelings as I grope around my life experiences. I lost myself for a moment here on the couch and snapped back to reality to find a big juicy tear rolling down my cheek and cookie crumbs on my shirt.

Can I press the publish button now, or is it too soon?

Gut it Out

I ran in my first race this morning since the 10k I ran back in June and boy oh boy, do I feel it. I'm not exactly sure how I got that out of shape in such a short amount of time, but apparently it's possible. It was at the 5k marker where I felt like I was dragging my right leg behind me like a freshly-killed deer carcass and when I hit the 10k signage I was a solid 3 minutes behind schedule. At that point my eyes started darting around in search of an escape route but I must have slipped into a delusional running-coma because I kept going.

My massage therapist Brent and I were chatting about how it actually helps to keep moving in a race if we can sort-of "go to sleep" while we run. It sounds absurd, but there's this mindset that we can have where we relax the face and shoulders and then let our eyelids droop in a catatonic state of moving meditation. The heart rate decreases and we kinda just shuffle along while we preserve the pathetic remnants of our energy for the last bit of the race. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we get rudely awakened by an emergent stomach burbling or a hamstring pull. I guess it worked for me today in that I stayed in that race, but there's only so many tricks the mind can pull on the body. With 5k left, my body gave my mind the middle finger.

I hate over-killing the parallels between running and life but don't we all have those moments where we realize we slipped into a life-coma? When all we can do is hang in there until we can pass through that stage and finish it already and yet with every footfall we anxiously anticipate the impending doom of the emotional equivalent of diarrhea cramps? It's not pretty, but sometimes it's all we can do, and that's okay. This does pass, it will end, and if we need an ambulance to get us there quicker then so be it. I just hope they have nitrous oxide hooked up in the back by the stretcher.

Love Train

Love is putting together Ikea furniture. Love is lacing up ice skates. Love is finding the best chip in the bag and handing it over with glee.

Love is in the gap between letting go and squeezing tight. It anoints the space between the I can and the you can't. Love is the painful heat that refines us and love is in the blanket that soothes us.

Love doesn't deny the existence of pain, it is IN the pain. It grows us. Love is in the flames that lick our ankles pushing us forward and it's in the oxygen we breathe to fuel us. It throws us and catches us. Even if we were to crash onto a deserted island, empty and alone, we would die with our memories of love dancing in our eyes.

Throughout our lifetime we will get to that unavoidable fork in the tracks where we either choose love or reject love, and I choose love. Take me for a ride, shape me, refine me, do with me what you will, but I choose love.

Katie

My dad told me yesterday that he loves reading my blogs but that he finds them a bit cranial. I'm rather surprised at the possibility of having a cranial output of anything other than coffee sludge and hydrogenated oil, but I guess miracles can happen. But for today, dad, this one is for you.

Every cold and flu season, Jake and I get plugged ears. Some people get the constant sniffles or a tickly cough but Jake and I become deaf as doornails and as a result, our conversations around here can be quite entertaining.

I was getting ready to roast a chicken the other night and I was stuffing it with a lemon and some rosemary. The kids love hanging around the kitchen while I cook because there is always some sort of excitement. Last time I put a roast in the oven, the smoke detector went off. One time I BBQ-ed burgers and they caught on fire and stayed aflame even after I had transferred them to a plate. Good times.

So the kids are all loitering around the kitchen watching me stuff the bird and I swear that this is what Jake and I heard Katie say: "why are you stuffing a lemon up that bastard's bum?" And if you could see this sweet girl with her blonde ringlets and kissable lips and doe eyes, saying something like that, you'd die laughing just as much as we did.

One night we were all sitting around the table having dinner and we were discussing Lance Armstrong, how he was able to have kids after having testicular cancer. Very maturely, we talked about he had his sperm frozen for the future before his testicles were removed. Katie, however, had had enough. All of a sudden she pushed her chair away from the table, stood up and yelled "I HATE TESTICLES!" and stomped up the stairs to her room, slammed the door, reopened it, and slammed it again for punctuation.

I love that girl. I must have done something right.

Love is My Religion

 Creation

Move toward me and taste

The texture of my eyes inside you

Lap up my heaviness so that

I might feel light and small

Find me with your spirit 

Before your body does

Use my oil to quench yourself

But leave yourself with me

Lie down with me inside

The quake and play

My body like a violin to sing

Out the freedom of my heart

With my hair in your mouth

On my breasts with your hands

Reach deeply into places

Untouched by humanity

Heal my childlike yearning 

With your love-salve fingers

And your liquid eyes pushing

Into me beyond reach

I am aware of my desire like

The urgency of childbirth

There's servant power in your blood

That no one holds but you

I wrote that poem about 4 years ago after I had given up on the God I had grown up with in all its limited relational capacity. I know that it might make God-believers squirm, but maybe it's good to broaden our ideas of who God is to us, you know? Maybe it's time we stop making him smaller than he is.

He is in the locked gaze between my child and I while we lick our ice cream in the summer heat. He is in the rain dripping off the end of my nose, mixing with my tears, being rubbed on my shirt, clinging to my cold skin. He is in the smell of the familiar scent of a lover’s shirt, pressed against my face, breathed deeply in, spreading to my fingers and toes. He is because he is, and he just is. The more we try to define God, the harder it is for us pathetical mortals to reach him.

St. Augustine of Hippo says, “If you think you understand, it isn’t God.” It's like we keep tucking him back into the limits of our minds like a slip under a dress. If we hold him back then we will miss the ice cream, the sweat, the scent of the lover's shirt. Many people think that God-lovers shouldn't sit in pubs or have sex standing up but then we won't get to eat and drink and dance and laugh with him, and sex becomes one-dimensional. I want God inside of humanity, not just among us. I want him to pass between the locked gaze of me and my children while we lick our ice cream. I want him in the rain and in my tears. I want him stuck to my shirt, clinging to my cold skin. I want him to be in the scent of my lover's shirt, pressed against my face, breathed deeply in, spreading to my fingers and toes. 

I didn't grow up that way. I was scared of the intensity of the God I didn't intimately know. But later on I realized that if I was going to interact with him that I wanted to let go of my limited ideas of who he was and let him be who he is. I like it better this way. I don't want to know him out of fear, but out of desire, and that is what love is to me.

Labelicular Landslide

I'm supposed to be writing a 7 page piece to submit in a writing contest. It's due on May 1st (ironic, if you know me at all, and that's all I will say about that) and so far I have done about 1/4 of a page.

It's supposed to be a Christian biography, but the dude in charge of this dealio doesn't want it to be the sticky sweet "la-tee-da" story where Jimmy was born into a three story house and lost his house key once and in the stress of it all, found Jesus and Cheese-Whiz. They want messy, real-life stories of bed-wetting and redemption, dirty feet and raw eyes, the stories that make religious people squirm and God-seekers exhale with hope. Enter Suzy.

I struggle with labels. I'd always recoil at the terms, "ADHD" and "Christian" and "depressed" because all of a sudden there are limits to where we can roam in our growth. However, I also understand that there needs to be some sort of order in the chaos. When a child is diagnosed with ADHD then an order of events unfold so that the child can get the help they need to be the best they can be. But if we use a label as a crutch, then we limit our own growth.

So I guess I have to struggle with the term "Christian" if I want to submit a Christian biography, but I quite like the idea because it underlines my life story. I believe "by life" in that I don't sit back in my comfy chair (oh, I wish I had a comfy chair!) and believe in some sort of distant super power but I get up and move forward and get messy while I search and grow and learn and develop my beliefs by living them out in relationships with others and with God.

I struggle with my beliefs, and I'm quite certain that God can handle that. If Cheese-Whiz is edible, then anything is possible. 

Broccoli

I used to be known for the hate-on that I had for broccoli although I must admit that it was more of a rebellious hate like the way I hated skirts and hair curlers and the colour pink. Broccoli is "the right thing to do" if you want to be healthy just as wearing pink is the "right thing to do" if you have girl parts.

My aunty Sharon comes into the physio clinic every week when I'm there and I love seeing her name on the day sheets. Her voice and her smile are clean and right and she always has this perfumey smell that I remember from when I was little and these things about her comfort me like a familiar blanket.

She tilted her head and looked straight into me this morning and asked, "how are you doing today, Sue?" and yet she already knew I was having a rough go. I shared my struggles with her, I told her about my heartaches and my tough decisions about life and love and she nodded in agreement and affirmed that she believed that I am able to make the right decisions about it all. I told her that sometimes life is like broccoli. That some choices we make are really quite unpleasant and not in the least bit satisfying or enjoyable but that at some level we are able to acknowledge the fact that choking down the damn broccoli is sometimes just the right thing to do.

We don't understand it all now, but we will one day. Broccoli fuels our cells and gives them life and allows them to breathe.

Wicked gas is just a bonus.

Lilies

I love much and therefore I lose much, but to me, it's worth the risk.

I once stood in front of my cabin at summer camp and with my heart in my hands, I offered myself to love. I didn't have much to offer back then. I was empty and small and needy as I stood there in the dirt patch with my hair blowing into my mouth, my eyes open and hungry. But I gave all I had. He dropped my heart into the dirt and walked away.

Between then and now I fed my soul and healed my wounds and became whole. I can stand on that same dirt patch with my heart in my scarred hands with my hair blowing into my mouth but this time there are lilies between my toes, wrapping themselves around my legs. My eyes are open and full, my feet planted firmly in who I am. Once again I give my love.

I lost myself once, when I was small and needy. I won't lose myself again not because I am hardened and jaded but because I am strong like the sky: you might not be able to see my strength but it's always there, being breathed into and out of my heart. I have much love to give and therefore much love to lose. My dear friend quoted this to me yesterday: "Life is like photography: we develop from our negatives."

Lilies grow where dirt once was.

Game On

Today I played in my first soccer game since 1998. My last game was the day before my very first marathon. I was convinced that today's game would be before my very first coronary. Surprisingly, I hung in there despite sporadic threats from my quads, however, it was pretty obvious out there that I am not a sprinter. My arms and hair were errrrywhere.

I've been a solo athlete for 14 years. When my nose runs, I blow it into my sleeve because nobody is around to get grossed out. When I fail miserably during a race there's nobody else to blame but me. But when I played in the game today I had to give and go with my teammates. I had to not be self-absorbed not out of choice but out of necessity. We trusted and depended on each other.

It still didn't stop me from lifting up my jersey and blowing my nose into it.