Tag: Easter

Your Inner Voice

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Before I became a cop, I was a graduate student at McMaster University.  My studies were going well.  I was on track to complete a doctorate.  Academia was my future.  Teaching and research loomed.  I enjoyed the teaching part.  Less so the research, because the ultimate goal was to write obscure, footnote laden articles and books which only a handful of people would ever read.

As the months ticked by, and I got closer and closer to finishing a Ph.D., my inner voice intervened.  What began as a gentle whisper became a fierce scream.  My inner voice reminded me that I was studying Canadian history and was about to make that my profession, but, I wasn’t passionate about it.  At the end of a day of studying or writing, I would never pick up a book about Canadian history and read it simply because it interested me.  The fire had been extinguished – if it had ever existed in the first place.

There was a raging fire though.  I’d wanted to be a cop for as long as I could remember.  As I came closer and closer to finishing my studies, and my 30th birthday loomed, I realized it was now or never.  Go after the thing I really wanted, or continue along the path I was on.

I went for it.  My friends and fellow students at McMaster were shocked.  They had no idea – none – that another side of me existed.  They had no more envisioned me as a cop, than as the Easter Bunny.

My family was with me all the way.  They knew what I’d always wanted.  They encouraged me to chase my dream.

Maybe it runs in the family.  My dad began his working life as a steelworker in Hamilton, Ontario, working grueling shifts under the inferno of a blast furnace.  He wanted more than that.  He enrolled in teacher’s college, studying at McMaster decades before I arrived there.  He went on to teach elementary school for years.  And then his inner voice became another inferno.  He felt called by God to become a minister.  Teaching had gone well.  He was on track to be a principal, to have a successful career, and a secure pension.  Instead, he listened to his inner voice.  He was true to himself.  And he and my mom sacrificed as a result.  For three years my dad had two homes, spending his weekdays at Knox College in Toronto, and his weekends with me, my mom and my brother in a small town in Ontario where he served as a minister at two rural churches.  My mom and dad must have spent those three years physically and mentally exhausted.  And now, 45 years later, as he nears his 80th birthday, my dad is still a minister, preaching on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of his year, my mom at his side. 

Some of the strongest memories of my childhood center around Easter weekend.  There was chocolate of course.  An avalanche of chocolate, coloured eggs, and hot-cross buns.  But I also remember the rhythm of that weekend.  Good Friday was a solemn day.  A day of great sadness.  I remember how draining that day always was for my mother and father.  Saturday was anticipation.  Sunday – Easter Sunday, was joy and celebration.  Those memories are forty years old.  Yet the emotions they conjure in me are as real as the glee I saw in my daughter’s face this morning as she hunted for Easter eggs.

Easter weekend remains an incredibly special, even spiritual time for me.  It is always a time for reflection. 

Yesterday, as I ran near our home, over a bridge, I saw water flowing gently on one side, and raging on the other.  Underneath the bridge was a transition point, where smooth water began to churn.  That water reminded me of the inner voice, how it is always flowing within us, and how sometimes it becomes so strong it’s impossible for us to ignore.

The Hard Miles

“The hardship of running somehow softens the hardship of life.  Running turns the madness into music.”

Those words, from the foreword to Phil Hewitt’s ‘Outrunning the Demons’ capture the essence of this book – Life is hard.  Running helps.  Hewitt himself was stabbed, beaten and left for dead alongside a South African highway.  He survived.  Running helped.

And inspired him to collect the stories of others who, in their darkest hours, found solace in running.  People shaken by grief, addiction, disease, injury, and mental illness – in the worst of their pain, running helped them survive.

As is often the case, I write this on the couch, my daughter beside me.  A mini-crisis has just passed.   Strawberry yogurt everywhere.  “Oh no, I got some on my pajamas,” she yelled.  A very big deal for her.  Less so for me.  I responded that if yogurt spilled all over the sofa, and covered her and painted the ceiling, it would be okay.  We would fix it.  We would survive a Yogurt Disaster. 

As the yogurt spill played out, I looked out our front window and saw a runner, in her bright yellow vest, racing along a path near our home.  I know her.  A little.  She runs every day.  I’ve seen her running in deep snow on days when I struggled for hours just to shovel our driveway.  In winter’s darkest days she is out there – in driving rain and howling winds.  I don’t know her story.  But I suspect she needs running.  Needs it just as much as food, and water and air. 

That’s how I feel too.

Not many years ago, someone very close to me was diagnosed with cancer.  I was terrified she would die.  It was a bad year.  Stress, worry, uncertainty and fear churned within.  So I ran.  Signed up for a marathon and trained for it not because I wanted to.  I had no time goal.  The distance was no great challenge.  I’d run marathons before.  I entered that marathon because I needed to.  A lot changed in my life that year.  But running was a constant that helped see me through the worst and emerge on the other side.   

The other side is a new life.  A life that might be very similar to yours.  A spouse, a child.  A career with constant stress, modulating daily, sometimes hourly, from moderate to severe.  Always present and always a roller-coaster ride. 

Yesterday was Easter.  My wife and I watched a day of joy unfold as our daughter hunted Easter eggs.  We watched as her grandparents and aunt showered her with love, and chocolate, and placed a pink Easter bonnet on her head.

And there was sadness too.  My parents are a long way away.  So is my youth.  I remembered Easter when I was a child.  Chocolate and church and sunshine.  Yesterday I wanted to hug my mom and dad and my brother and his family.  And be with them and tell them how much I love them.  And thank them for those wonderful memories.

One of those memories is music.  “Morning has Broken.”  A song for the ages.  A song that captures light and life and spring and sunshine.  An Easter song.  So yesterday, in the midst of it all, on a bright beautiful April day, I ran to the trails and listened to Cat Stevens sing that song.  I played it over and over again.  I found a valley and a lone daffodil.  Just the one, in a sea of grasses and weeds.  And I thought about it all.  And was thankful for everything.  Joy and youth, light and life, family and friends. Running and hard miles.