Growing Pains #3, "The View From Behind"

The View From Behind

Today my son outran me.  To be honest, that is no great feat.  Over twenty years ago, when I was on the high school wrestling team, I and a guy we called "Panda" were the slowest guys on the squad.  You would think that a guy with that kind of history would find losing a foot-race to be insignificant at this time in life, but it wasn't.

In my forty-first and his fourteenth year my son outran me.  Oh, I always knew it would happen, and besides I'm still not the slowest in the family.  If I stay healthy, I'll be able to outrun my older boy for a long time.  In fact he's not even interested in running far enough to see if he can outrun me.  He seldom runs at all unless someone's chasing him or he's chasing a ball.  But the younger guy has the lean, leggy, loose-jointed look of a distance runner.  We've run together a number of times.  I can remember days when I waited on him, and other times when I wore ankle weights as a handicap.  My mind told me, "He is on his way up and I'm on my way down."  Still, it just didn't seem right to finish our three mile run seventy-five yards or so behind him.  I knew it was coming, but it wasn't supposed to happen this way.

I guess I'm a closet romantic.  I had imagined a long process: the time in which I could generally outrun him would gradually become the time in which we were evenly matched and that would shade into the time in which he could generally outrun me.  I imagined this process stretching over a couple of years of good natured rivalry.  My "process" was compressed to one morning--a little more than twenty minutes. 

Like I said, I knew it would happen.  I'm getting older and stiffer and slower.  He's getting older and stronger and faster.  This morning about a mile and a half out, his growing strength surpassed my aging strength and, I am reminded, life will never be the same again. 

I was judging everything by the slow, comfortable, plodding decline that I see taking place in my body.  I had forgotten the explosion of change that takes place in the young.  I guess, especially since it was my youngest child, I was forced to realize that never again could I simply assume the mastery of these two lives that I had helped to bring into the world.

My youngest son outran me today.  He and his older brother will do a lot of that.  Already there is so much in their world that I can't quite reach.  When I finished the race this morning I was just a short way back.  Soon both my sons will be running off out of sight accomplishing what I never will. 

I would be lying to you if I said it didn't matter.  It does.  I write with a strange, proud sadness.  It is a feeling that those who have not been parents will have trouble grasping.  It is the passing of an era, but it is a good passing.  I'm nursing a sore thigh, but I've been training some any how, and I'll be increasing my milage when my leg feels better.  I plan to outrun him again, but it will never be the same.  It can't be.  It shouldn't be.

My son outran me today. 

Run, son.  Run far and fast and straight.  Run with purpose.  Run when your legs ache and you think you can't go any more.  Run when your comrades have given up.  Run because God has placed in your heart something worth running for.  Run, because even though I can't keep up I'll be with you.

Son, now that you can outrun me, remember how I used to wait on you.  I'd love to run with you every once in a while, but look out, because on one of those days when you just don't feel right and I feel great I'll get you.

Postscript (March 1999):

I will enter my 49th year this month.  After the day I describe in this story I never did outrun my son again.  I don't feel bad about that, because there were lots of others who didn't either.  Chris went on to set his school record for the mile and two-mile.  He was single A state champ in the two-mile his senior year.  He presently runs for Cedarville College.  He is nursing a bad foot but plans to compete in track this spring. 

He has done well, running and in other ways as well.  He will graduate this year, after only three years.  He is getting married in August.  He plans to pursue a career in Youth ministry.

Though, I can't run with him any more, we do enjoy occasional bike rides together.

I enjoy watching him run!

Happy 21st Birthday Son.

dad

Growing Pains, Table of Contents

Growing Pains #2, Suck It Up:

I stood on the side of the cross country course watching my son go by, his face grimaced with pain, an ace bandage coming unwrapped, trailing from his left leg.  He had pulled up lame a week or so before; he hoped to be able to do well enough today to go on to the regional meet.  I was juggling my heart--not too skillfully I might add.  Do I encourage him to go on, knowing that if he goes on he'll push himself in such a way that his pain will increase?  Or, do I yell, "Son, don't hurt yourself.  Pull up."? I Know that no one will blame him for not continuing to run on a bad leg.  "These things happen.  You've got two more trips to the districts.  Even if you do hang on and qualify will your leg heal in time to do your best at regionals?" 

Of course I couldn't have said all of that out loud.  There wasn't time as he ran by.  But I knew that with a nod, a look, a few shouted words I could have communicated most all that.  Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference.  Perhaps I flatter myself to think that what I would say would make a difference at such a point.  Maybe, but I don't think so. 

Instead I yell, "Hang in there 'Topher.  Remember your brother's advice."  Big brother, his macho freshly charged with the news that he will be starting this Friday against the #1 football team in the state, had eloquently stated, "You gotta suck it up."  (For any who read who are not familiar with sports-macho-talk that means to keep going even when it hurts, for a determined mind to tell an injured body to keep on going.  For maximum effect the line needs to be delivered in a course low voice.)  It was my son's version of a thousand usually corny sounding statements that coaches spout and hang up on locker room walls.

Only today it wasn't corny. 

I knew success in life didn't depend on whether or not my son finished that race.  If he didn't qualify for regional competition his life wouldn't stop like some town clock forever frozen at the time of the big earthquake.  But all of us must learn to "suck it up."  Was this one of those times?  I wish I knew for sure.  I'm really not any closer to being sure today than I was yesterday. 

Maybe he needed to face the hard fact that God doesn't guarantee that hard work will lead to success--at least success as recognized by the passing out of ribbons.  Maybe he would have learned more courage by facing the potential scorn of his peers, who would say, "He had a big chance and he let a little pain get in his way."  Even in the quiet reflection of the next morning I don't know.  That is often how it is.  We just don't know, yet as parents, when our kids run by, we are expected to yell something.

Is this the time to let him stretch the limits?  Is he ready for this next step?  Do I encourage him to run through the pain or do I let him weep in my arms and tell him there will be other days, other races?  We aren't equipped with a manual that is that specific.  Even if we were, we wouldn't have time to read it.  So we stand on the sidelines and yell things as our kids go by.  We love them and try to have the best desires for them and try to listen to them and pray for them and hope that at that critical moment when they rush by on their way to adulthood we will yell the right thing.  I wish that it were more precise than that, but it's not.  If it weren't for the fact that I trust God I would probably give up in despair.

I am firmly convinced that my heavenly Father loves my boys even more than Kathy and I.  While I am yelling out to my sons He is encouraging me.  Like another old sports cliche', He only expects me to do my best.  I need to make sure that my soul is filled with His word and that my heart is tender to His leading.  At the critical moment there is no time to study; often there is not even time to think.  I need an internal guidance system that always points to the right way.  I need to regularly program that system with the data of the Bible.  Even if I do my very best the fact remains that I will sometimes fail; if I had to depend solely on my ability to always say and do the right thing in order for my sons to turn out right, I would be a very frustrated dad.  I try to do and say what is right, but in the final analysis I have trusted them to God.

It is hard.  I guess I just have to "suck it up."

Growing Pains, Table of Contents