Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

health & fitness

#winning and the measure of success

Sometimes life is so ridiculous I can’t help but laugh. And shake my head in wonder.

I’m focusing on “intention” as a word for the year, and this weekend I learned that sometimes intention can be a negative thing.

A few weeks ago, we signed up as a family to run a 5K at a state park that has some significance in our family. Last year, my husband and our daughter ran it on a Sunday afternoon that felt more like February than April.

The race last year.

This year, we wanted to run it all together because more of us are fit and able. We took a practice run as a family a few Sundays ago, attempting 2 miles and that went well enough that we made the commitment to run the race. Our plan was to start together and let our kids tell us when they needed to walk and when they wanted to run.

About 15 minutes before the race this year

Race day was a perfectly beautiful spring day with temperatures close to the 70s. We were there to enjoy nature and each other’s company and to run/walk through the woods. 

We had said we would try to run the first mile all together and then branch off if needed, but the heat and humidity got the best of our daughter and she needed to walk after about 3/4 of a mile. My husband and our son kept going while I stayed with my daughter. We walked. And walked. And walked some more. And with every step, I was becoming a horribly selfish person in my head.

I hadn’t come to walk the race. I had come to run it, and I was frustrated that I couldn’t give it my best effort, even though I knew going in that I wasn’t going to come close to a personal best time or anything like that. I was also annoyed because my son seems to be a natural athlete. He hadn’t even trained for a 5K and he was talking about how he might win a medal for his age group. The male half of our party disappeared quickly ahead of us while I tried to strike a balance between compassion for my daughter’s aches and pains and encouragement to keep going. (She is 11 and I’m not always sure which complaints are genuine and which ones are overdramatized because of hormones and other changes.)

I can be a competitive person, and when older people walking dogs passed us, I had trouble keeping my frustration to myself. I did not want to wound my daughter emotionally by saying something I didn’t mean because I was wounded inside. The urge is hard to resist but I think I managed to keep my tone as neutral as possible.

We walked a good portion of the mile between 1 and 2, jogging a bit before we got to the water stop just before mile 2. I had my phone with me and was casually tracking the time. It was more than 25 minutes when we got to mile 2 and the battle in my head began again. Part of the reason I run is to challenge myself and to stretch what I think my limits are. I wasn’t feeling terribly stretched, and the more we walked the more I realized that my real reason for wanting to run this race was to prove that the last year of training and running had been worth something. Something tangible. With numbers.

At the very least, I wanted to come close to or beat my time from the Thanksgiving 5K. Especially since as far as running races goes, 2019 has been a disappointment.

It wasn’t looking good, and my daughter wouldn’t stop talking. I wanted to run, and I was “stuck” walking.

—

Less than a week earlier, our family was huddled together, a gusty wind at our back, sitting in lawn chairs in a field in the rural middle of our country watching lacrosse. Our son started playing this spring, and it is our first experience as parents with youth sports. (It is also our introduction to lacrosse. I still have a lot to learn.)

With youth sports, I have heard horror stories of demanding coaches and overbearing parents (not from this team or sport, but in general), and I have, in some ways, been dreading the competitive nature of youth sports. As I mentioned before, I am competitive and sometimes it presents as fierce loyalty. Think mama bear. (Or mama llama as I saw depicted in a meme recently: Typically chill but if you try to mess with my kids, I might spit or kick.)

That night, our son scored his first ever goal in a game. I have enjoyed watching him learn this sport and practice drills and try new things (like being goalie!) and make new friends. It is the kind of stretching activity I recommend for everyone and don’t do enough of myself. When he carried the lacrosse ball near the goal and shot and missed the first time, my disappointment was loud. I was not disappointed inhim but for him because he likes to do well at the things he does.

So when he got the ball right back and took a shot that WENT IN THE GOAL, Phil and I were ecstatic and tears pricked my eyes. I did not love my son more because he scored a goal and it is not my sole measure of his success, but I know what that meant to him. I was happy for him.

They lost the game, and I told him that you could play a great game and still lose. And that scoring a goal was not the only measure of whether he’d had a good game.

—

This is part of what I was thinking about as I ran through the woods. That, and I was looking for the cabin where my husband and I had stayed for a weekend to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. That was seven years ago now, but at the time, celebrating five years of marriage was a huge milestone. At the time, I wasn’t sure if we’d still be celebrating our tenth anniversary or beyond. This year, it will be 12 years, and I am still in awe of the journey.

The lane leading to the cabin looked familiar. I took a picture as my daughter and I walked, remembering that weekend and its importance to our marriage and our family. That weekend all those years ago was the reason we were running the 5K this year, in a long and winding road kind of way.

I was still feeling grumpy and frustrated by the way the race was turning out for us, and I kept trying to turn my thoughts in a different direction. Between miles and 2 and 3 we finally went back to running a little bit, and we could start to hear the cheering from the other side of the lake for those who had finished. I wondered if our guys had finished and what their time had been.

We walked over a bridge that had open slats. It freaked my daughter out to run across it. But we did run across the dam of the lake, then walked a bit more and started running again when the end was in sight. Our guys were there waiting for us to finish, yelling our names. We pushed to finish hard and fast as the clock ticked toward 42 minutes.

Forty. Two. Minutes. A full four minutes slower than my last 5K and my slowest 5K time in the history of my 5K running. (Okay, who’s being dramatic now?) I gave my husband a look that caused him concern but when I assured him I felt fine physically, he gave me a bit of space. We got water and a cookie and a banana and walked around. Our son reported their time to us: it was in the 35 minutes range. I tried to cool off, both my body and my thoughts. I needed to get out what I was feeling, but I didn’t want to say anything that would hurt my daughter’s feelings. 

Because how I was feeling wasn’t her fault.

I managed to tell him a few snippets of what I was feeling. I released some of the big feelings by focusing on the other runners. On nature. We watched a bald eagle soar over the treeline across the lake. I reminded myself that finishing a 5K is a major accomplishment no matter the time.

We had decided to stick around for the awards in a show of solidarity. Last year when the temperatures were too close to freezing to be comfortable, we stayed but were mostly miserable. This year, it was just an excuse to spend more time outside in the park. Our daughter’s age group came up first and when she realized she only missed the third place time by a couple of minutes, she smiled this huge smile: “I was so close!” Not for the first time, I wished I had her attitude.

The top times for some of the other female age groups disheartened me. I’ve seen the top times in several races and I don’t think I’ll ever get to that point. I’m just not a fast runner, and I certainly wasn’t for this race.

So when they called my age group, 40-44, and the first place finisher’s time was 40 minutes and some change, I’m sure the shock on my face was evident. And when the announcer called second place and I heard my first name followed by a jumbling of my last name (it’s not his fault), I received my medal with continued shock.

“Phil, how did that happen?” I said as I walked back toward our family.

“Good job, Mom!” the kids said.

Maybe I should have felt excited but mostly I felt terrible. Because I had spent the entire race whining internally about how I couldn’t give my best effort because my daughter needed me to stick with her, and in the end, I got a medal anyway. (My husband also placed second in his age group and his time was not nearly his best time, either. Why is the world so weird?)

#winning

—

“God has a sense of humor.”

I said this out loud as I looked at the medal, still shaking my head in disbelief. I don’t know always know what I believe about God’s involvement in our personal and daily activities but I had to wonder if He was watching me that whole time I was running with the kind of a grin that knows a secret but can’t tell yet.

Say what?

I got a medal just for showing up to the race. I could have walked the whole thing and still gotten a medal for my age group because there were only two awards given to females between the ages of 40 and 44 and I was the second of the two. For all the fun we as a society make of participation trophies and everyone winning, I have to admit that I felt special even knowing that it wasn’t my best effort that got me the award.

This, I think, is the lesson God is trying to get through to me right now.

I am an achiever. A high achiever. I want results, especially ones I can measure. I say I’m not a numbers person but I totally am when it comes to how successful I feel. I track my word counts daily and monthly so I can feel accomplished as a writer. (This is not a bad thing, per se, but quantity and quality are rarely the same thing.) I think that the more people who participate in something I’m leading means it’s more successful as a venture. Less people=less popular=less successful.

And I still believe that my best efforts will be rewarded. In school that meant if I studied enough and did all my homework, I would get As and that would mean I was successful. (I graduated second in my high school class. Ask me how that has helped me get further in life.) I have measured success by income and square footage. I still do sometimes.

It is a horrible way to live life.

Numbers don’t always tell the whole story, and they certainly aren’t the only markers for success.

Nor are they the only criteria for reward.

Can you imagine receiving an award just for showing up? It’s almost mind-boggling in our western work-hard culture. We don’t like it when people get rewarded for minimal effort. (People who heard Jesus speak didn’t like it much either. See the parable of the workers in the vineyard.)

—

What does it mean to be successful?

I don’t have a clue anymore. Sometimes it means showing up. Sometimes it means giving your best effort. Sometimes it means winning. Sometimes it makes no sense at all.

I’m still shaking my head, laughing at the ridiculousness of it all while also feeling a small amount of pride that I can say I won a medal for a second place finish in a 5K.

Maybe success is whatever you want it to be, despite what others say.

New Eyes

“You don’t need the ‘b’ word yet,” my optometrist said to me after she’d finished examining my eyes. I could hear the emphasis on the yet. It–bifocals–was one of my fears going into the appointment. I hadn’t had my eyes checked in probably six years and I knew I was suffering from headaches and eye strain. That my vision had deteriorated, I was not surprised.

How much clearer I could see with a new prescription–that was practically shocking.

Why hadn’t I done this sooner?

The answer to that question is a reflection of my personality. When it comes to making appointments, I drag my feet. I like my schedule, and I don’t like disruptions–even good ones. The process of making a phone call and talking to a person to make an appointment is often exhausting, especially if the date or times I had in mind don’t work. (Online appointment scheduling thrills me, and if I can make an appointment for the next time while I’m standing in front of the scheduler at the end of my appointment, that’s good, too.) 

Another challenge is choosing where to go. My insurance benefits don’t include my eyes, and there are dozens of choices when it comes to optometrists. I opted for Costco because it’s close to work and my house and because they could schedule me for the time I wanted. (Apparently 2 o’clock is a popular time to take lunch if you’re an optometrist.)

Any kind of medical appointment makes me nervous because I’ve usually spent far too long consulting Doctor Google about what my symptoms might mean. I need to leave it to the professionals because it’s never as grim as the Internet would lead me to believe. (This applies to so many things, but I won’t follow that bunny trail.) 

While I waited for my eyes to dilate, I tried on dozens of frames. This is the hardest part for me because it takes time for me to get used to a new look, and I’m never totally confident about what looks good on me. (Sometimes I ask my tween daughter for fashion advice.)  I boldly tried some dark frames but quickly ruled them out because that is not the look for me. I settled on a couple that I thought could work and then I went back in for the rest of the exam. I learned about floaters and why I have them and how they’re just a part of my life to get used to. And she told me what to look out for and to come back in if I experienced anything like that.

I was in good hands with this optometrist, and our personalities clicked somewhat. I don’t know if it’s an age thing, but more and more I want to have a positive relationship with the medical provider I’m seeing, not just a business-like transaction. This experience was more the former, and when I had decided on a pair of frames and paid, I couldn’t wait until I got to bring home my new eyes.

Photo by Bud Helisson on Unsplash

—

How we see the world fascinates me because we all see it differently but none of us can literally see through someone else’s eyes. And none of us really knows what the world looks like for someone else.

I mean this literally, of course, but also in another sense.

The same week I got my eyes checked, my husband and I got our personalities checked. Sort of.

If you’ve been around this online space for more than a couple of months, you’ll know that I’ve latched on to the Enneagram as a way to understand myself and how I operate in the world better. I still have so much to learn about myself.

This most recent foray, though, was not about the Enneagram, although having some knowledge of that tool helped me. Before Christmasl, my husband and I took two online leadership surveys, I guess you’d call them–the Grip-Birkman, by name–as a next step in helping us figure out some things for the future. After taking the assessments, we scheduled a meeting with our coach who is also a friend, and our schedules finally worked out so we could talk about what these results meant.

It was like an exam for my heart and mind. The tests are self-revealing based on questions we’ve answered and the picture shown by the results is like putting on a new pair of glasses. Suddenly, I could see some things more clearly about the words I say and the way I behave in certain situations. And I got a glimpse of how my husband operates in the world.

None of these revelations came as a shock. They made sense to me. But sometimes it takes someone else to help us see what we already know about ourselves.

—

It’s disorienting to put on a new pair of glasses. As the edges sharpen, the change takes some getting used to.

After picking up my new glasses and letting the optical employee adjust them to my face, I walked out of Costco feeling unsteady on my feet and like I was seeing the world anew. Maybe I shouldn’t have worn them home immediately, but Costco is close to my house and I wanted to get used to them right away. Now, I have an entire snow day to let my vision adjust, and if I have a headache, so be it.

Sometimes we don’t know how poor our eyesight has been until we see with new eyes. Adjusting takes time.

Sometimes we don’t know how much we’ve gotten used to our poor eyesight until we change how we see.

I don’t think I’m talking about glasses anymore.

How we perceive the world–events that happen, other people’s circumstances, what it means to be “normal”–is unique to our experiences of the world. Sometimes, that means our vision is poor, or at the very least, short-sighted. And we need someone to help us see better.

Photo by Edi Libedinsky on Unsplash

Sometimes it’s from a book or a personal interaction. Other times it’s via social media or another kind of media like a documentary or television show.

Just like there is no denying that I have literal vision limitations, I need to recognize that my metaphorical vision also has limitations. I cannot see the whole world clearly from my own head. I need to know what and how others see the world to expand my sight. Sometimes, I need a new pair of glasses.

This has not always been easy. When you start to see with new eyes, you realize how much there is to see.

The example that comes to mind is race. I am a white woman who grew up in the Midwest. I have limited vision when it comes to race, and if I’m honest with myself, I have biases and prejudices that I constantly have to acknowledge and work to undo. My “eyes” need to adjust to the world as it is, not the world as I see it.

I need to see with new eyes. And there’s always something new to see.

Sometimes it shakes what I thought was steady ground. A recent example:

I have not been in favor of a wall between the United States and Mexico primarily because of my volunteer work with refugees and asylum seekers from other countries. I have met people in real life who have fled their home countries, and I have learned facts about the immigration process and statistics. Keeping out people who are in desperate need of help is not in line with my understanding of how I live out my faith. (I know we might disagree on this. I’m saying it anyway.)

I consider myself educated on this topic.

My kids and I have recently enjoyed the show “Nailed It!” on Netflix, and when I saw that there was going to be a season of “Nailed It! Mexico,” I was excited to watch. I wasn’t sure what to expect–if we would have to read subtitles for the entire show (not a problem) or if it would be dubbed over in English (it is). What has surprised me the most is how much the contestants resemble people I might see in my neighborhood.

It is easy for someone who lives more than a thousand miles from the border with Mexico to make assumptions about the people who live in that country. (The same could be said of just about any country I haven’t actually visited, including Canada.) When there is constant talk of keeping “those people” out (who may or may not be from Mexico, I realize) or assumptions that “Mexicans” are all just farm laborers in our country, there’s a narrow perspective of what life is like in that country. What I see on “Nailed It! Mexico” are people with regular jobs and dreams, just like people here. They have families and live in cities and like to travel.

None of this should surprise me.

I’ve also realized that describing people from Mexico as “brown” isn’t accurate as a whole.

I have so much work to do inside of myself.

—

Why am I telling you these things?

I’m not exactly sure. I’m certainly not comfortable confessing my sins of prejudice, bias and ignorance publicly, but I also know the power of saying things out loud and committing to change.

Maybe I just want you to know that it’s okay to not have perfect vision. That it’s okay to need “corrective lenses” when it comes to experiences and circumstances and issues that are affecting other people.

Photo by David Travis on Unsplash

I know I can’t make you go to the eye doctor. I can’t make you put on corrective lenses. Not if you don’t want to.

At the very least, I just want you to consider that the way you see the world is not the same as the person nearest to you. And it definitely isn’t the same as the person furthest from you.

Learning about myself and how I see the world and how that’s different from how other people see the world has been an invaluable practice. It starts with me. The better I know myself, the more I can become a healthy person. That benefits everyone I come into contact with. And the more I’m willing to listen and understand others’ perspectives, the better, as well.

That’s the good news.

If there’s any bad news, it’s that it takes work and the best results occur with other people involved. Especially those with more experience or professional training.

That can be the hardest part. At least, it is for me. Exposing weaknesses, or what I see as weaknesses, to someone else is uncomfortable until I remember that we all have them in different ways. Maybe you aren’t on the verge of needing bifocals because your eyes are so terrible. Maybe you don’t have a need to be appreciated (that one was kind of ouchy for me). But you have something else about you that makes you who you are. 

And none of it is bad or wrong. 

It’s just you.

Maybe that’s actually the hardest part. Accepting who you are when you feel like who you are is somehow wrong or ugly or broken. 

That’s not the point of any exam. Well, maybe a medical exam because something isn’t working the way it should be. But that’s the spirit behind the kinds of exams that explore your inner life, as well. It can be painful, at first, to “diagnose” yourself but if the goal is to function more fully and wholly, then the work is worth it.

Trust me, I know. And I’m still learning.