Struggle Strategies (Part 1)
A couple years ago, I wiped out two miles into my Saturday morning long run. One moment I was gliding along (like a gazelle! like a cheetah! like a mom of five with varicose veins and a permanently stretched out stomach!) and the next moment, I was air born. The toe of my running shoe caught on an uneven sliver of sidewalk, and I went flying.
I’d like to tell you that I did a brilliant, ninja-like tuck and roll, but we all know that’s not what happened. I did come up laughing though.
The friend who was biking with me that day took one look at my shredded knees and skinless palms and suggested we head back towards our neighborhood. I bowed to her superior wisdom for all of about twenty yards before I decided that I felt really good. The best I’d felt all month! And there was no way I was bailing on my run.
Which naturally meant I committed to doing the full eight mile loop of base.
So with my hands cupping little blood puddles, I proceeded to run the base, leaving lots of DNA evidence behind to disrupt the military working dogs (I’m such a giver). At mile three, my friend and I passed one of my husband’s Airmen, who leaned out the window of his patrol car in concern, calling, “Be careful out there, ma’am!”
That ship had already sailed.
At any rate, it was all fun and games until I got home and realized that I couldn’t get myself undressed or cleaned up without getting blood everywhere. So I went to wake up the Man.
There’s nothing quite like being woken up on the one day a week you get to sleep in by your wife when she’s covered in blood. Honey, I’m home!
Anyway, once the Man helped bandage me up and told me exactly what he thought of my life choices (“Really, Marian? REALLY?”), we split up to start the soccer rounds. By the time I’d made it through the first game to rejoin the Man and the rest of the herd, I’d bled through all the bandages and been forced to stop at a CVS for first aid supplies. I rebandaged everything with the Man’s help while watching the second half of game number two. Never let it be said that we can’t multitask.
After the game, I got lots of questions from my kids’ teammates. “Ms. Marian! What happened? Ms, Marian, are you okay?!” The icing on the cake was being able to tell them that my running/biking partner, who just so happened to be their soccer coach, had pushed me in front of a car because she was embarrassed that I ran faster than she biked. For the record, none of them believed me.
My knees and hands (and shoulder and elbow and a few additional fun scrapes) took weeks to heal. Once they did, I somehow still ended up at the doctor to find out I had strained a ligament (or ligaments) in the palm of my hand and landed myself in a wrist brace for two more weeks. True skill. Go big or go home.
Photo taken by Kat, who was completely innocent and has never done anything wrong. Ever.
So I found myself sharing this story with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and after we finished laughing uproariously at my idiocy, she proceeded to share her own wipe out story from a time when she tripped walking up a set of concrete stairs while holding her baby, ending up with a shiner, but narrowly escaping doing some serious damage. As my friend told her story, I noticed that while my story had been punctuated by hysterical laughter, hers was punctuated by repeated expressions of gratitude. She was so grateful that her baby had been protected. She was so grateful she’d not been hurt worse. She was so grateful for the people who had helped her when she fell.
Similar circumstances. Different reactions.
The contrast of our stories got me thinking about the ways that we respond to struggle. This year hasn’t necessarily been a cake walk for our family, as is probably evident by the severe dearth of blog posts over the last few months. Don’t get me wrong: we are okay. We aren’t suffering. We have just—and I hate this phrase but it has the exact level of emotional weight I need—we’ve just kind of been on the struggle bus. If something can go wrong, it probably is going to, but none of it is the end of the world.
We’ve been well cared for. There are still plenty of good moments. But the oven is on the fritz and a kid has poison ivy and we’ve had five surgeries in ten months and someone else is sick again and referrals keep getting rejected for dumb reasons and Blythe is still trying to murder the kittens and the list goes on. It’s kind of been one day at a time for a lot of days in a row right now, and it’s been making me think about the ways that we handle life when things aren’t going the way we think they should.
With all that said, we’re on summer break. And we’re not moving this summer. Which means I’m spending my days catching up on all the stuff I’ve put off during the school year, especially medical and dental appointments—of which there are legion. But in between, I’m hoping to spend a little more time writing about struggle strategies.
But don’t get your hopes up too high. One day at a time. Let’s see how this goes.
