Fear-Less

Sitting with our coffee the other morning, looking out over the hillside below, I finally said it out loud. “I’m scared about my knee replacement surgery.”

From what I’ve learned, there’s good reason to be at least a little scared. Of the surgery itself, (think saws cutting through bones) not to mention the sometimes rough road to recovery. The work required to rehab even though it’s painful, to regain mobility, range of motion, strength and stamina are nothing to sneeze at.

Up until now however, I’ve banked on all the other things I’m feeling about it: That while not looking forward to it, I’m glad I’m getting it done while I’m still “young”. That I’m grateful for the clarity about my decision to proceed, and for a loving guy to walk me through it, literally and figuratively. That I’m committed to taking the pain meds until I don’t need them, and confident that I’ll be better off for having it done.

Heck yeah. Let’s do this thing.

But afraid? Scared? I haven’t wanted to think about my fear, face it, or feel it. Until that morning on the hillside with the sun cresting the ridge. “I’m scared about my knee replacement surgery.” I couldn’t believe how good it felt to finally say those words out loud. To myself, and to the man I trust with my whole heart, and now with my soon-to-be new knee. Come to find out that naming it out loud actually took some of the fear out of it.

There’s a children’s book that our daughter reads to our grandson. It’s about courage and being brave and how we can’t be those things without first being scared. Fear, it turns out, is the doorway to courage. Being scared is the first step to bravery.

Deciding to get a new knee feels like a brave choice. And being scared is part of the bargain.

My fear had been there all along, quietly waiting for me to finally look her in the face and call her by name, knowing that once I did, I could get on with being brave. I won’t be surprised if she rides shotgun with me for a while, as I suspect that I’ll need to continue to be courageous even when I’d rather not. Thankfully, fear will be there to help me out.

Climbing A Mountain

Do you think you two have another climb up Mt. Adams in you?

Because if you do, we want to do it with you.

Translation: We want to get up there with you while you still can.

That conversation last year with our niece and her husband started it all. Tom and I had to think about it, given that we’re not spring chickens anymore. On our morning walk the next day we decided that while we might not have multiple more climbs in us, we probably had at least one. With that in mind we opened the idea up to the rest of the generation behind us, and in the end, three couples threw their hats and hiking boots into the Mt. Adams 2022 ring.

We’ve been training for it for a year, readying ourselves to be strong enough to make the 12.2 mile trek to the 12,281’ summit. Over the course of that climb we would gain 6600 ft of elevation.

However.

You can train all you want and still not make it to the top.

Different obstacles got in the way for different people. Some of the hardest work we did was internal. Can I do this? What if I can’t. How can it be this hard? What if I slow everyone else down? Will I be able to overcome my fear of heights? What if I get altitude sickness? What if my old injury flairs up? What if I’m the weakest link?

In the end we had to come up against those fears, which is what happens in life on and off the mountain. Eventually we have to face them in order to be free of them.

The first day we hiked for eight hours, most of it on soft snow, with 40+ pound packs on our backs. It was a harder, longer day than any of us had anticipated, and as the sun dropped lower in the sky we began to give out. The altitude was having its way with some of us, and it was clear we needed to make camp soon. Apparently my speech was getting very slow, nausea and serious dehydration arrived on our scene, and I knew we were in trouble when Tom couldn’t seem to figure out how to put up our tent.

We found ourselves on a rocky outcrop with just enough room for four tents. Except for the ground beneath our tents, we had to maneuver over uneven boulders and rocks that were just a sprained ankle, broken leg, or worse waiting to happen. The temperature dropped, the light grew dim, and the wind came up. I was reminded, in the way that only nature can illuminate, that we are always hovering between life and death. We are so much smaller than we like to think in the big scheme of things. It’s good to be reminded of that now and then, lest I take myself and my brief presence on the planet too seriously.

At times like these, the best of who we are shows up. Those of us who could, took over for those of us who couldn’t, because that is what love does. While we had worked to get our bodies strong, in the end it was our hearts and our love and commitment to one another that got us up there.

The summit awaited us in the morning.

For the last year we have imagined ourselves at the top, each of us believing that we could do this hard thing. Together, eight of us were going to summit Mt. Adams on Friday, July 15th, 2022.

In the end four did.

I wasn’t one of them.

Stay tuned.

I’m dedicating the next few posts to what I learned by not summiting a mountain.

Being Brave

“Here’s a secret that not many people know. Fear and bravery are partners. You can’t be brave without first being afraid.”
— From A Boy Like You by Frank Murphy

There is no accounting for fear.

The tiniest of things can trigger the biggest of fears. Take a spider for instance.

For reasons beyond reason, one of these eight-legged arachnids flood my otherwise fierce daughter with the kind of fear that once landed her on her kitchen counter for three hours as she waited for her boyfriend to return home and hunt down the long gone culprit.

That was years ago.

Fast forward to this morning. Her dad and I were sitting on the porch with our coffee when she tried to reach us on FaceTime. I didn’t answer, thinking I would call back in a little while. When a phone call immediately followed, my spidey sense kicked in and I picked up. A Black Widow spider was crawling up the side of her kitchen counter. Blinded by fear, she couldn’t see the forest for the trees. That same boyfriend is now her husband, and it has always been his job to deal with the inevitable spider. A tough situation when he is gone on a business trip. I mean a girl can only stay on a kitchen counter for so long.

Her: (Shaking) There’s a Black Widow climbing up the side of the counter and I don’t know what to do.

Me: Get a roll of pater towels. The whole roll.

Her: (Shaking) I don’t think I can do it.

Me: Yes. You can.

Her: (Still shaking) OK

Me: Get close to it, and smash it with the roll of paper towels.

Her: (Still shaking) OK…It’s done.

As those words came out of her mouth standing in her kitchen a hundred miles away, a herd of elk burst out of the pine woods and across our snow covered field. Heads held high, their steamy breath creating little clouds in the air, we’ve been waiting for a rare closeup glimpse of them all winter. They chose that precise moment to show up. The moment when her seedling of courage burst out of an old-growth fear.

Her: (No longer shaking) I did it!

This is a fear that has gripped her for years. This morning she loosened its grasp and will never be the same again. That’s what happens when we choose to be brave. Sometimes a herd of elk even shows up to celebrate.

IMG_3586.jpeg

The Scream

Ducking my head to walk underneath the small fort we built for the little people in our lives, I dropped to the ground to see if I could add another pushup to my tally. It was raining, and the ground underneath the fort was dry. Standing up, one more pushup under my belt, I headed back out into the rain. Because I was wearing my Seahawks Super Bowl Champs hat I didn’t see the low board ahead of me and walked right into it. I hit my head. HARD. I hate hitting my head.

The next thing I knew, I was bent over, screaming at the top of my lungs. I screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until I couldn’t. It’s a good thing our closest neighbors are a ways away, or they might have called the local sheriff to come investigate.

All I can say is that it felt really, really, really good to scream. It felt like a mixture of rage and fear, and a few other emotions that must have been lodged pretty deep inside for awhile.

I guess I just needed to scream.

There is a lot to be angry and fearful about right now. So many things out of our control. So many things that need to be addressed and fixed and repaired and built and changed, and most of us feel pretty powerless to do anything about it. Whenever we feel powerless, rage and fear aren’t far behind, and those emotions need to come out somewhere. For me, it was a guttural scream, bending over underneath a fort out in the pine trees.

Sometimes I guess we just need to scream. And then stand up and get back to work loving and helping the people and the world within our reach.

pexels-pixabay-55814.jpeg

Fruitful

Let’s just put this one to rest—life is hard. No two ways about it. While it isn’t necessarily hard all the time or every day, over the long haul there is plenty of hard to go around.

For example:

The other night Tom and I went to bed at odds with each other. That doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, I hate it. We both do. Neither of us had the capacity to deal with it, which meant we had to sleep with it. As I turned over, and closed my eyes, a thought occurred to me. May it be fruitful.

The next morning on the porch in the cold pre-dawn darkness we sat with our coffee, trying to make sense of what had happened. It was a hard, emotional, and painful conversation. It wasn’t fun. I cried a lot. It took listening on both of our parts, and eventually we found our way back to each other.

The fruit of that hard thing was that we discovered how to be better partners to each other.

Life is harder than ever right now. For me, and for the people I love, and most of the time there isn’t much we can do for one another other than to listen and bear witness to the hard. That, and pray that whatever it is will bear good fruit. That we will lean into the pain, or the fear, or the conflict, or the anxiety, or the anger, or the loneliness, or the grief, and turn it into something fruitful.

Nothing else makes sense.

Because the only thing that makes something hard even harder is when it doesn’t bear fruit.

IMG_0696.jpeg

The Tip Of The Iceberg

This morning my throat hurt. Not from a cold or cough, but from screaming during the Seattle Seahawks’ nail biter of a game yesterday. Apparently I needed to scream. Thankfully the game gave me something to scream at, so that I wouldn’t scream at someone.

We are navigating the most challenging times many of us will ever face, and fear runs deep. Often operating below the surface of simply trying to make it through another day safely, and not freak out at the latest headlines, fear is taking an emotional toll on all of us. Cooped up with others, or living with only ourselves for company, that fear often comes out as anger. Not as necessary righteous anger at the injustice, incompetence, and inequality that has been laid bare, but at others who happen to cross our path at the wrong time.

Anger is the tip of fear’s iceberg.

Rather than take it out on one another, let’s look for healthy ways to express our anger, like a slam ball workout, a punching bag, or splitting wood until your arms ache.

Or.

You can tune into the next Seahawks game this coming Sunday at 10AM.

Photo by Frans Van Heerden from Pexels

Photo by Frans Van Heerden from Pexels





A Question Worth Answering

Today in another rich conversation with my spiritual director, the topic of things I want to make happen, work I want to step into, but haven’t, came up. Again.

After a thoughtful pause, he quietly posed a question. What has kept you from stepping into it up until now? Now that is a question worth answering.

What is something you have really wanted to do? But haven’t.

What is something you have really wanted to make happen? But haven’t?

What is something you have really wanted to bring to life? But haven’t?

What is something you have really wanted to accomplish? But haven’t?

What has kept you from stepping into it up until now?

Now that is a question worth answering.

For all of us.

pixels.com

pixels.com






Fire Safety

There is a simple fire safety technique called Stop, Drop, and Roll, that is meant to prevent further injury if our clothing ever catches fire. This technique is meant to extinguish the fire by depriving it of the oxygen which fuels it. Most of us probably remember practicing this when we were little kids, and while we hopefully haven’t had to actually put it to use, if we ever did, or do, we will know how to protect ourselves..

Emotions can be a lot like fire. A sudden small spark, if given enough air, can burst into flame and engulf us before we know it. Different emotions enflame different people. One of mine is a sudden inner rage, and while yours might be something different, what they have in common is the need for something to keep them going. We stoke our fire with the stories we tell ourselves in its presence, and without a technique to extinguish it, we continue to fan the flame into a roaring fire that will not only burn us, but can endanger those around us as well.

When it comes to our fiery emotions, maybe we can take a lesson from those three steps we learned in school The next time we feel that first spark of anger, fear, shame, resentment, guilt, anxiety, hatred, or fill-in-your-own-blank, let’s Stop, Sit, and Notice. Literally.

Stop whatever we are doing. The simple act of stopping will slow the fire down.

Sit down on the ground, a chair, our bed, the kitchen counter, or on the floor of our own mind. The simple act of sitting will give us a new vantage point from which to see.

Notice what we notice. The simple act of noticing will give us a chance to name what we see.

With practice, we can learn to catch ourselves sooner.

With practice we can learn what fuels the fire that threatens injury to us, those we love, and the world around us.

With practice we can learn instead to tend the fire that fuels us, our work, and the world within reach of its warmth.

Stop.

Sit.

Notice.

With gratitude for the wisdom of my sister Margie, and my spiritual director, Dane Anthony.