More Agony, Same Teeth
Posted: October 4, 2011 Filed under: Life's Observations | Tags: dentists, healthcare, oral surgery, smiling Leave a comment
Or, rather, same tooth – the infamous #27. Don’t know what number has been assigned to your teeth? Neither did I until I got to spend so much quality time talking about this particular tooth with various dental professionals. A lot has happened since The Agony of the Teeth and if you go back an re-read the post there is a little clue that all was not well in my final paragraph about the pain being worse after the root canal than it was before. I’m happy to report that the only real agony I’m experiencing these days is to my pocketbook and even that is more a nuisance than actual suffering. In fact, at this point this post feels a little more like it should be called, “middle class white woman whines about toothache,” but for inquiring minds here is the story…
After returning from Hawaii in March, I felt better, but not what you would call great. I was still living on ibuprofen and a few weeks after the procedure when it didn’t seem like I was improving, I called the dentist but they reported that sometimes it can take a long time to fully recover. It was a rough few weeks at work, but eventually the pain faded into the background and I moved on with my life. It was still kind of awkward to sleep on that side of my face, but I just adjusted the way I held the pillow and kind of figured that would be the new normal. Fast forward to June and I did the Seattle Rock N Roll Half-Marathon with my friend Sandy Hickey. Sandy is a photo-taking maniac and she took roughly 1 million pictures of the two of us at every stage of the race. As I was looking over them at the time I noticed that the same side of my mouth as the root canal was crooked in every picture (you can see two of the pictures in my half-marathon recap). I emailed the photos to the dentist and asked if that was something I should be worry about, and he suggested I come to see him, oh, say, right away. He took x-rays and I knew immediately that all was not right. There was a very brief, almost imperceptible, pause and for that moment all the sound (and oxygen) were sucked out of the room. I like to call it the “oh shit pause” which is the brief moment when the medical professional takes a quick breath and prepares to face the patient. When he came back around to my side of the chair, I already knew bad news was coming. That bad news was that there was ‘something’ there, a lesion (dentist-speak for they have no idea what the hell it is) and he referred me to an oral surgeon.
Off to the surgeon I go where they take another x-ray. The technician announces that he’s sure I’ll need a CT scan, then proceeds to take my blood pressure where he remarks that it is a little high. Maybe in his universe CT scans are no big deal, but in my world, that is something scary that only happens on TV shows like House (and if you watch that show you know bad stuff always happens in the CT and MRI machines). I meet the surgeon and he shows me the “thing” on the x-ray and says (surprise, surprise) that I need a CT scan. Another referral, this time to radiology. The upshot is that it could be a variety of things, but regardless it has to come out, and good ‘ol #27 is at risk for having to be removed altogether, but we’re all optimistic so we’ll leave it (for now). On August 26, I had minor surgery and had what turned out to be a garden variety cyst removed. Ironically, the recovery from the surgery was much easier than the root canal. I did not need anything other than ibuprofen for the pain, and even that was minimal. Eating was a challenge with the stitches, but aside from one ill-fated attempt to eat a grape, I managed quite well on chocolate shakes and mashed potatoes. Today, I am pain free. My jaw is still a little stiff and I do still use my modified pillow sleeping position, but there is a lot of work going on in there as the hole left behind heals itself and it will take a few months for everything to go completely back to normal. My smile is much improved if not exactly symmetrical just yet. The surgeon told me to come back and see him in 6 months (March 2012) and if all goes well, it will be a boring visit and we can officially stop obsessing over #27.
I recently went back to my regular dentist for my 6-month check (amazing to think this whole process has been going on for that long) and of course I had to cap it all off with a couple of cavities, so I got to see him two days in a row. The dentist remarked I must really love him since I come to see him so much and I told him, nothing personal, but I didn’t want to see him again until next year thank-you-very-much.
In my typical style, I have been anxious to share my woes with anyone and everyone, but in what must be a cosmic lesson of some sort, every time I have started to talk about it I discover that the person I’m with has suffered injuries or surgeries far more extensive or serious than me. In what has to be one of my most classic foot-in mouth blunders, I was blathering on to my hair dresser about how I had maxed out my dental insurance and was having to pay the rest out of pocket. I caught myself and commented that she must not even have dental insurance and she told me, in fact, she has no health insurance at all. I won’t rant about healthcare in America. Okay, maybe just a teeny rant – I don’t have all (any of) the answers to how to manage healthcare, but there is something that somehow seems fundamentally wrong with the notion that on top of having to cope with whatever medical ailment you have, the uninsured have to also cope with how they will pay for their care, or if they can actually afford to get any.
No vacation for you…
Posted: September 28, 2011 Filed under: Leadership, Life's Observations | Tags: happiness, leadership, vacation, work-life balance Leave a commentBecause I work in Social Media and because I am kind of a dork for articles about leadership-type stuff, I follow the Harvard Business Review blog and found this little gem on how Work and Vacation Should Go Together.The author, Ron Ashkenas, suggests perhaps we should accept the fact that folks spend time working when they are theoretically off the clock or even when they are on vacation:
Maybe we need to accept the fact that the sharp demarcation between work and home is a thing of the past, and that the new normal is a life that integrates home and work more seamlessly.
I will confess I tend to check my work emails in the evening and it’s not unusual that I’ll wrap up a project after I get home, but I have to draw the line when it comes to my vacations. I am a vacation junky. I use my vacation time as fast as I can earn it. I love to travel and I’m as likely to take a Friday off to take a quick weekend trip when the airfares are good as I am to take a week off and run to Hawaii for the same reason. I cherish that time away and part of what makes it special is that it is MY time. I work hard and long the rest of the days, so why would I want to pollute my chance to take a break with a conference call?
Ashkenas goes on to say
…we can stop feeling guilty about scheduling calls during our vacations or checking our emails at night
How about not feeling guilty and also not scheduling calls during vacations? I believe this kind of thinking sets a dangerous precedent that we are so important that work can’t survive without us. That simply is not true. If you have someone to back you up, good documentation, and a well-oiled team that you trust; they actually hum along just fine without you – they might even get a few extra things done when you’re gone. Or maybe they have to scratch their heads and puzzle a little over how to solve a problem in your absence. But is that such a horrible thing – for your team to have to stretch and challenge themselves?
Some people fear the mountain of work that will await them when they get back if they don’t check in while they are gone. I will tell you a little secret from someone who does not check even one email when I am on vacation. Emails do pile up, but with an out of office reply that informs people you are out, not checking email, and where they can get help, there is a point of diminishing returns. Somewhere in the middle of being gone, people stop emailing you because they already know you aren’t there and/or how to get the answers they need. Mostly what I am doing when I get back and am facing the mountain is deleting or filing emails that have already been dealt with – maybe that does take an investment of time when I first return to the office, but it’s a good way to catch up on what I missed and the small amount of time it takes to do the email clean-up far outweighs the cost of trying to field all those emails while you are out of the office.
Also, for me as a leader and a manager within my company, I believe my actions send as loud or louder a message than anything I say. If I spend all my time on vacation checking in, checking email, attempting to “integrate” my work and my vacation, then I am sending a message loud and clear to my people that they aren’t allowed to take real vacations either. In Go Ahead, Take that Break, author Whitney Johnson says it well when she notes:
We may think we’re being responsive, even impressive, when we send work-related e-mails at midnight, on the weekend, or vacation, but those who work for us will see us as establishing a norm. If you will take some real down-time without the constant tug of technology or a to-do list absorbing your thoughts, you will give your employees permission to do the same.
There seems to be some sentiment in American work culture these days that says if we stop for even a moment to take a break that we will lose all our momentum and spend all our time scrambling to catch back up to ourselves. I think that is frankly poppycock and comes from some place of fear, not reason. It’s been shown time and time again that periods of rest actually make us more productive. Instead of integration of our work and our rest, I think we need to reclaim our ability to stop and smell the flowers once in awhile. And in the camp of an oldy, but a goody, No one ever said on their deathbed,”I wish I had spent more time in the office.”
Do I know just how overweight I am?
Posted: September 27, 2011 Filed under: Life's Observations, Weight Management | Tags: being overweight, journeys, making changes, weight loss 1 CommentFor me, truthfully, the answer is often no, I don’t really realize it much of the time. I am generally happy and healthy, I am an active person who does the things that are important to me (like a marathon in 2010). I have a husband who thinks I am beautiful and sexy regardless of my size. I have a good community of friends. I have a job that I enjoy and where I am professionally well-respected. My “numbers” are good – as in I don’t have high blood pressure, or high blood sugar, my cholesterol is perhaps a little high but I don’t take any medications for anything. Generally speaking, I can function pretty well in a bubble of oblivion about my weight. Most of the time.
But there are reminders that burst that bubble. After I went north of the 200lb mark, I pretty much quit 
standing on the scale, so there is one rather scary number I already know is not good, but I still don’t want to face. Anytime I have to buy clothes, I am painfully aware of my current weight. Any remaining delusion about my size or the size of the clothes was lost now that I can only fit into Women’s sizes. I saw a cute marathon jacket at the pre-race Expo in June, but their largest size was still too small. I didn’t like buying jeans or pants back when I wore a size 12, and now that those digits are reversed the experience is mostly an exercise in self-humiliation. Photographs are another touchy subject and when I look at them I am often shocked by what I see and wonder if that is really what I look like “in real life.”
And while my numbers are technically good, there have been impacts on my health. I have a chronic hip joint injury from that infamous marathon I did and while my weight may or may not have contributed to the injury, I know that my recovery would have been greatly improved by losing weight. I also have occasional issues with indigestion that didn’t exist when I was thinner that I am quite confident are weight-related.
I am constantly thinking that I am going to start a new diet, go back to Weight Watchers, start journaling, start this or start that. Just this week, I was looking for some paper to jot down a note for work and I found a page in the back of my notebook that I had written almost exactly a year ago. On it, in writing, were the same goals I told myself this weekend that I was going to commit myself to – being more active, eating smaller portions, eating more vegetables, and eating less sweets and junk food. And I even had some specific milestones to hold myself accountable. Why didn’t I follow through? I don’t really know. I could point to any number of changes in my life that may have triggered the initial downfall, but the slide seems to now have a life of its own. I was particularly moved by the sentiments expressed by Kara Curtis in One Woman’s Struggle to Shed Weight, and Shame:
“It’s a very schizophrenic relationship we have with obesity,” Curtis says. “I understand it as addiction, but then there’s also this other piece of me that knows that there is a lack of willingness on my part. So really, who’s to blame for that?”
I have been successful in losing weight in the past and so I know I have the tools to repeat that success again in the future. I am not sure what will turn the tide for me from contemplation into action, and perhaps this post will be a small step in the right direction. Or at least it’s a reminder that I still care enough – to care about trying.
Put your blog where your mouth is – or stop talking about it and just blog already…
Posted: September 26, 2011 Filed under: Life's Observations | Tags: blogging, Social Media, writer's block 1 Comment
I follow Seth Godin’s Blog and sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don’t, but I couldn’t really argue much with his recent post on Talker’s block. The basic premise of the article is captured in the first two sentences:
No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.
Seth maintains that because talking all the time is a habit and a regular occurrence, so we get good at it through all that practice, and we also don’t worry so much about it coming back to haunt us. So he says the cure for writer’s block is to practice-practice-practice and aim at being better, not being perfect:
Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.
As fate would have it (maybe there is a muse afterall??), I also happen to be reading Roger Ebert’s book, Life Itself. I highlighted a phrase from the book where Roger receives some writing advice in the beginning of his career as a reporter:
One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end.
I have been thinking about coming back to this blog for quite a while now, and have also thought up a couple of good post ideas, but never managed to actually do anything with all that great thinking. It amazes me how often what I need to get going again, on whatever it is I’m procrastinating about at the moment, is often SHOUTING at me if I only open my eyes and ears and pay attention. Clearly, the message I needed to hear was ‘just shut-up and write in your blog already.” So, here I am back in the saddle writing and trying to do my best to suck less.
For those of you willing to go along for the ride – in the immortal words of Bette Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”
image courtesy of Aura983 via Creative Commons.
Seattle Rock N Roll Half-Marathon recap (in half the words)
Posted: July 19, 2011 Filed under: Life's Observations 2 CommentsCommon courtesy is that after your friends, family, and one very kind-hearted stranger donate their hard
-earned money to a fabulous charity, on behalf of your hare-brained and ongoing compulsion to do endurance events for reasons unknown, that you tie up all the loose ends and tell them how the event actually went down. For all they know at this point, maybe I didn’t even show up… In case anyone is getting nervous at this point, I did show up and successfully put in my 13.1 miles. And just in case you missed me talking about it ad naseum, here is a picture of my walking buddy Sandy and me with our finisher medals.
Last year I wrote the world’s longest recap and recounted every moment of those life-changing 26.2 miles. This year I was thinking maybe I would go a different way and in half the words (or less) share a few select moments that stood out.
My walking buddy, Sandy, and I planned to walk together but also both agreed that the event is ultimately a personal experience. So, in that light, if one of us had to stop off for a pit stop the other one would keep going and hopefully we would catch up. Around mile 5, Sandy cut off to take advantage of reasonably short port-a-potty lines (Side note, these events have notoriously long lines – two years before at another half-marathon I watched hundreds of runners go by me while I waited impatiently in line…). As agreed, I kept going. I did slow down to a more casual pace, thinking she would easily catch up to me, but eventually I realized that wasn’t going to happen, so I picked back up the pace and figured I was on my own. Then nature knocked on my door, and I ducked off the trail to a park restroom about a mile later. When I got back to the course, Sandy was about 20 feet ahead of me, as if we had planned it that way. We stayed together the rest of the way along the course and over the finish line. This may not seem like much, but when you are sharing an event with over 25,000 other people, reconnecting like that is far from a given.
The other moment that stands out for me was around Mile 12. We bumped into Coach Siri and it is always very motivational to see the coaches. For whatever reason, it always puts a little extra pep in my step. After the requisite Sandy photo op, we headed to the viaduct where the race splits and the half marathon goes left towards the finish line and the full marathon turns right for another 12 miles. I was getting tired and my hips were sore, but I experienced a brief moment of pure joy that I was able to go left and did not have to continue on for another 12 miles (in case you think my math is wrong, the courses do not match each other exactly). In fact, I may have enjoyed that moment more than actually crossing the finish line. As monumental as my marathon experience was last year, I was really VERY happy not to be doing it again this year.
I got to the finish line and after chatting with my other TNT teammates, Brian took me home where I practically dove head first into an ice bath (the only time this season that Brian got the pleasure of recreating “Lyda on the rocks”). I was never in imminent danger of being booted off the course like I had been last year and enjoyed Sandy’s company as well as seeing the bands and cheerleaders. This being my third time at this event, the course was familiar, and I felt a quiet sense of satisfaction in accomplishing my training goal. I was mildly disappointed to finish in just over 4 hours when I had hoped to come in just under that, but as my new non-stranger friend, Steve Bralla, reminded me – whatever time I finished in I would have wished it would have been faster, or my form better, or… So the best we can do is to find a way to be comfortable with not ever really being fully satisfied in our performance, which ironically is the very thing that drives our success in the first place.
Finally, if I haven’t expressed it adequately already, THANK YOU to everyone who has so generously supported me in this effort. I literally could not do this without your help and the fact that so many of you have stepped up more than once makes me even that much more and I am humbled by your donations on my behalf.
I guess I will recount one other memory. As many of you know, I walked this event in memory of my friend Gil, who lost his battle with Leukemia a couple of years ago. Gil was, well, a weird dude and life was rarely dull or normal if you spent any amount of time with him. He was not a runner and probably would have found a half-marathon a rather mundane event. Later that day, Brian and I were driving back from the store and we encountered a group of people in bright multi-colored body suits that covered their heads and even down to their fingers, riding old fashioned bicycles (with bells and baskets on the front) across the intersection. This was nowhere near the race course and was hours after the event finished, and it had to be one of the most random things I had seen all day (or any other day for that matter). It was frankly a rather Fellini-esque moment. I could not help but think of Gil and smile.
Image courtesy of prayitno
Life is too short to be anything other than absurd
Posted: July 16, 2011 Filed under: Life's Observations | Tags: happiness, journeys, relationships Leave a commentI cannot get enough of this video and post on The Bloggess of Jenny Lawson talking about taking happiness into your own hands. It’s only 6 minutes long and soooo well worth the time, so please go check it out and then, well, go and start your own zombie apocalypse.
I will confess I wish I could be more outrageous like Jenny, but the reality is that I am more like the group of folks she mentions who sit on the sidelines and observe. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of people who walk on the weird side and I have been told that my sense of what is funny can be rather random and eclectic. I also have an unusually large collection of Brian holding martini glass pictures on my cell phone that I’m fond of sending to people after I’ve had a martini or two, but that’s generally about as crazy as I get. Fortunately for Brian, I am not going to go out and buy a 5 foot tall metal chicken to put on our doorstep or start a Twitter campaign against William Shatner, but this will certainly make me stop and think before I choose work over fun. It will encourage me to choose going out with my friends over staying in because I already (or still…) have my PJ’s on, and it will reinforce my belief that we have the ability to choose whether we are laughing or crying at life’s slings and arrows.
One other point I will make is in regards to her recounting the story of giving gift cards to the first 20 people who asked on her blog, and then having her readers – total strangers – volunteer to gift card #21, 22, and on up to $45,000 worth of donations. I too have been blown away by the kindness of strangers. I only had 1 in my case, but as I shared in The world would be a better place if more people said thank you, the generosity of someone I had never met resulted in a $100 donation to LLS on my behalf.
As a card carrying member of the glass half-full club, in spite of all the darkness and pain, people are pretty amazing – and don’t we all have the right to be furiously happy?
image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/people/bfurnace/
Why Endurance Events? Why not..??
Posted: June 12, 2011 Filed under: Running, Team in Training | Tags: endurance events, Half Marathon, Leukemia and Lymphoma, Running, Seattle Rock N Roll, Team in Training, Walking Leave a commentThe training season is coming to a close. We’re in the tapering phase where we rest and heal our bodies in preparation for the big day. On June 25 I will walk 13.1 miles in Seattle’s Rock N Roll Half Marathon. I haven’t posted much this season and I knew going into the training that walking a half marathon would be a far different experience than running my first ever marathon. For starters, I have already completed a couple of half marathons, including the Seattle Rock N Roll Half back in 09, so I pretty much know what to expect. And last year was so monumental for me in accomplishing one of my lifetime goals, that this season has been a much quieter, calmer experience.
Many runners experience post-marathon blues after they complete their first (or fastest or Boston or…) marathon. I did not have this experience after my marathon – mostly I was filled with a tremendous sense of gratitude and the enduring knowledge that we are all capable of fulfilling any goal we set our hearts and minds to. However, I will confess to feeling a little melancholy as I approach this year’s event. I guess it’s a little like climbing Mt. Rainier after having summitted Mr. Everest. Maybe it is because the anticipation is gone. The fear that you don’t know the outcome mixed with the excitement that you are really doing it is not present. You still have to train and work for it because nobody wakes up one morning and says I think I’ll stroll up to the summit of Mt. Rainier today, but it’s just not the same. Honestly, I feel a little ambivalent and even a little jealous as I watch my teammates fill with excitement over their first time at “the show.” Oh, it’s not stick my leg out and trip them jealousy. It’s more wistful and nostalgic and it brings back memories of when I was in their shoes.
So, why did I come back? I have proven to myself twice now that I can train for and successfully run a half marathon on my own. I don’t need Team in Training to complete this event and, frankly, I don’t need to prove to myself that I can do this at all. I could have stayed home and had a pleasant spring sleeping in on Saturday mornings. On the other hand, I can’t imagine myself not being here, not being part of this group. For one thing, there is still that pesky blood cancer that insidiously takes the lives of young people far too soon (and I include my 41 years young friend Gil in that group). Training with a purpose, training as a way to do something more than just 13.1 or 26.2 miles, is one way I can leave a positive ‘footprint’ in this world. Secondly, training in a group, with people cheering and supporting you, is far more rewarding than training alone – even if the act of running or walking is ultimately a personal one.
But that doesn’t really answer the question of why do endurance events. I’m not sure I actually know the answer. For 
whatever reason, they are simply in my blood. Or maybe I have a bit of George Mallory’s “because it was there” sensibilities. I have 2 weeks to go before completing this year’s event and I’m already asking myself what I think I might like to do next. I just finished reading Marshall Ulrich’s Running on Empty (thanks Mark Maraia for the recommendation), which lead me to watch Running the Sahara on Netflix, about 3 men who run across the Sahara desert. Brian left the room mid-way through because it was too hard for him to watch how these men abused their bodies, but I could not peel my eyes away. I have zero desire to run 2 marathons a day for 111 days in a row (in the desert no less), but do I walk another marathon? Maybe next year I could run the half? Dare I even consider walking an ultra event? There are no definitive plans at this point and I promised Brian the summer for the two of us to be active together, but come this fall I am sure I will get that unexplainable itch, tie up my laces, and go out on the trail again, chasing the next mountain – big or small.
Is Team in Training ruining marathons?
Posted: April 16, 2011 Filed under: Running, Team in Training | Tags: Boston Marathon, Leukemia and Lymphoma, Marathon, Running, Team in Training Leave a comment
Photo courtesy of Larry Johnson
Here we go again with yet another article talking about how all us average marathoners are ruining the sport for the ‘real’ runners. I was intrigued by this NPR article written by Asma Khalid, Marathons, Once Special, Are Now Crowded because it features an athlete, Rachel Couchenour, training for her first marathon with Team in Training:
After a sorority sister was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Couchenour decided to join the charity running group Team in Training. The organization raises money for leukemia and lymphoma research.
The article goes on to describe how Team in Training has had a hand in the growth of marathons:
“These training programs are the pipeline for this growth,” says Ryan Lamppa of the research group Running USA.
“They can take that new runner from unfit to finish a marathon in 3 to 6 months,” he says. “They opened up the sport to mainstream America.”
So far, so good. Team in Training is a great organization that takes people from zero to 26.2 miles and at the same time raises money to fight blood cancer. The article also talks about how more and more people are qualifying for the Boston Marathon as a result of these efforts, but it loses me when it gets to this comment about the dilution of the sport:
And while the folks who host the Boston Marathon are also happy that more people are running, they worry that as mainstream American joins the race, amateurs will dilute Boston’s prestige — especially if the fastest runners are locked out because they miss the sign-up.
The Boston Marathon requires athletes to run qualifying times which are no small feat to accomplish. If I wanted to qualify, I would have to run a qualifying event in 3 hours and 50 minutes. Given that it took me just over 7 hours to finish the last marathon I ran, I don’t think anyone in Boston has to worry about me ruining their race.
As I understand it, the article is saying that too many people are qualifying for this prestige event. In other words, groups like Team in Training are training their runners too well? They make them such fast runners that they are taking up all the slots at the Boston Marathon? If you actually qualify for the event, how does that make you unworthy to share the route with other “real” runners?
I understand that the Boston Marathon is a prestige event and I am in awe of the very few people I know who have qualified. And I am more than okay with events that have entry requirements. There are plenty of fun events for the athletes at my end of the spectrum. And to be sure the organizers of this event have a capacity problem on their hands and I don’t pretend to have all the answers to that, but can we at least agree that if you can meet the requirements to participate, that you should have just as much opportunity to be there as anyone else. If that is not acceptable, then change the requirements, but don’t blame the people who did what you asked.
The discipline of sacrifice (or why I like to give stuff up for Lent)
Posted: April 10, 2011 Filed under: Faith | Tags: faith, journeys, Lent, sacrifice 2 CommentsAbout 10 years ago I started observing Lent. I am not Catholic and was certainly wasn’t raised with the tradition. Perhaps it is no accident that I took up running somewhere along the same time, but I can’t really say why I took up Lent other than that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Like running, once I started, it became a part of me and something I look forward to. In fact, the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter is my favorite time in the liturgical year. Some folks choose to take on a discipline during Lent and it seems a lot of protestants are uncomfortable with the notion giving things up (or maybe it is our American consumer-based sensibilities that are conflicted?). I, for one, always choose to give up something. Usually sometime in January, sometimes earlier, it just comes to me what I need to give up that particular year. One time it was cheese and chocolate, one year it was pasta, another time alcohol, and this year it was going out to restaurants. My dear friend Cynthia railed a bit on those folks who choose to use Lent as some kind of excuse to go on a diet or get in shape – kind of a second chance window for New Year’s resolutions gone awry. It has never been about that for me. I give up things that have become distractions, but that are ultimately still pleasures I don’t want to remove altogether (the thought of a life with no cheese and no chocolate barely seems worth living…). For me an important element of the sacrifice, of wandering through my own wilderness, is knowing that there is an end. The sun will come out again, the Son of Man will rise again, balance will be restored.
Lent follows the same cycle for me each year. In the beginning I am energized and actually excited to get started. This year I pulled out cook books and made meal plans and thought about how healthy it was to be eating home cooked meals. There were some twinges as I had to reschedule a lunch date with a friend, but I figured I would just invite people over and visions of all the dinner parties I would host danced in my head. The middle bit is where it starts to be a burden. It’s not horrible, but the novelty has worn off and I am honestly mostly just going through the motions. This is the part where I realize there will be no dinner parties and I remember the reason I wasn’t pouring over cook books and making meal plans before – I’m not really that interested in cooking. But I keep plugging away for reasons unknown or maybe simply because I am just too stubborn to give up and quit. Towards the end of Lent, or rather when the end is in sight, I begin to cherish whatever it was I gave up. I close my eyes and the vision now is filled with good friends around the table of a fine restaurant enjoying each other and the meal before us. It is both harder and more satisfying. This is also usually when the temptations become the strongest. A colleague Russell wanted to convert our weekly meeting to a working lunch. He offered to pay and suggested since we would be talking business that it wouldn’t count as going out for ‘fun.’ My friend Francis tried to give me a coupon for a free pizza and argued that since we could get the pizza and eat it at home that wasn’t technically “going out to eat.” The temptation here was not the offer of lunch or pizza, but rather the guilt I felt for inconveniencing someone else who wanted to go out and turning down a generous offer. Why should others have to be bothered by the choices I made, but in both cases I declined and simply sat with the guilt and disappointment.
We have all faced times of darkness and wilderness in our lives. Giving up Pizza Hut for 40 days hardly compares to the pain and loss anyone who has been on this planet for any length of time inevitably experiences, my own pain included. But observing Lent reminds me that we can persevere in the darkness, and that the light does come back. I can’t speak for the spiritual journey of those who choose to take on a new discipline, or for those who don’t observe at all, as I believe we all have our own paths to follow. But for me the beauty of the season is directly linked to the sacrifice of wandering in the wilderness – as if being lost is part of the journey of finding my way again.
See Lyda Run 