I learned how to run from my Dad.
He was not a runner.
My earliest memories include watching him stretch, then crouch down to do push ups and sit ups as soon as he got out of bed. He kept a set of free weights laying around the house, available to anyone who might want to start curling. After dinner each night, he would take my three brothers and my scrappy scrawny self out to play tackle football. I would hear the "hut hut hike" and take off running. Whether I got a touchdown or not, I can still hear my Father saying "Wow, you are a fast runner."
Sometimes he would take us to the school across the street to play baseball. When I would hit the ball and start running to first, second, third base, then home, my father would say something like "Wow, you are such a fast runner!"
He would also take us to the basketball court to shoot hoops. Sometimes, I made a basket, more often not, but the comment that still rings in my ears is just this: "You are a fast runner."
And so that is who I was from my earliest memories.
My Junior High attempts at softball, basketball, and track and field on the school girl's teams left me not only bored to tears, but also showed me that I was not actually good at sports. This was not the same game I had grown up playing with my father and brothers. School sports teams involved playing with other girls who didn't actually want me on their team, because they cared about winning. I was expected to inhabit an ages old, uncomfortable uniform that smelled like that unique team uniform scent. I can best describe it as the scent of ancient musty determination.
In high school, I didn't even try. Sports were boring.
But something shifted after I had been in Junior college for a year or two. I guess it took no longer living with my parents for the seed that my father probably didn't realize he had planted and watered to begin to germinate and grow. My friend Vicki and I looked at each other one day and said "Let's go for a run. It will be good for us." So we put on shoes and we ran. One mile? Two? Thus began my lifetime habit of running. At first, Vicki and I would run together several times a week. We changed our routes and distances. Eventually, Vicki gave up running, but I never did. Though I was never actually "fast," over time, I built up endurance, muscle tone, hill climbs, and I called myself "a runner."
Years of marriage, babies, transtions and life later, my running has changed, but I have never given it up. "My mom is a runner," you might hear my children say if you ask them to describe their Mom to you. Rarely, my older kids might actually join me for a run. I think they all will, eventually, because that is the nature of a seed whispered down the mysterious portal of generations.
My father is now dying. He has been dying in pieces for over a decade, and each new illness makes me wonder if this time will finally be the last time. He is currently in the hospital once again battling pneumonia. Each labored breath hits a little too close to my heart.
I imagine that how it will happen, whenever it happens, is that his rattly lungs will inhale their last batch of oxygen, then he will open his eyes and see Jesus standing there, and he will run faster than he ever could before, surprised and delighted at the freedom of no longer being confined to a pain filled body, full speed ahead into the arms of Jesus. Jesus will catch him and say "Well done, good and faithful servant. You ran your race well. Enter into your rest."
