The dreaded gym

There comes a day when even an inheritance of good genes needs help.

Having the benefit of a mom who looked good right up to the moment she slipped off to glory and a dad who, in spite of years of messing around with DDT, lived into his nineties, I considered myself a fit specimen for my age.

No slouch here. Although confident that walking the dog every morning fulfilled my daily exercise requirement, when the doctor questioned just how fast I walked, I had to admit that the pooch liked to stop every five minutes to find the exact blade of grass with the most concentrated scent. “But,” I hastened to add, “I joined the Y. Took a yoga class yesterday.”

The svelte doctor lady wasn’t impressed. “You need cardio intensive exercise,” she said. “Five times a week.”

Now, I know some people rush home from work and head straight to the gym, but I totally lack an enthusiasm for this type of activity. I’m also intimidated to use equipment that goes faster than I do, so I chose a modified cardio class that broke up the hour with different types of exercise. It was the first set—the step set— that was problematic.

Anyone who has hand/foot-simultaneous-movement coordination challenges (think Steve Martin in The Jerk) shouldn’t be front and center of a class. I claimed my spot off-side, but just when the exercises began a woman next to me said, “Can you slide over?”

“No,” I hissed. “I don’t want to be in the middle.”

“Oh, you won’t be,” she said, planting herself within a swinging arm’s length next to me.

Restraining the child welling up who wanted to scream, “This is my spot,” I moved over— front and center. And as I suspected, I was so bad the instructor advised me to just keep up with the feet—if I could.

The next day I donned my black cotton/spandex pants and matching Nike sneakers with the purple edging, and decided to face down my fear of the machines. I squared my shoulders and opened the gym door.

Thinking it easier to move my legs back and forth rather than up and down, I avoided the ellipticals and headed to the treadmills, each occupied by sweating, muscular bodies. Thankful to see a paunchy man moving at a speed slower than my dog-walking pace, I chose the machine next to him.

My initial plan was to ease into my pace, but within minutes, a young woman in short shorts jumped on the machine next to me and started off running. It was a lineup of the three bears: slow, faster, fastest.

In the midst of my angst, I wondered why I cared about the age on my left and the youth on my right.

  

Although inclined to be comfy, I wasn’t Goldilocks looking for the perfect chair to snuggle into. I was a woman who wanted to be poised in her later years as full of life as Moses whose “eye was undimmed and his vigor unabated” at 120. (Relax kids.That’s not my goal.)

Not for the sake of aimless longevity, but for all God has intended me to do.

And if part of that meant beefed-up cardio, so be it.

Looking neither to the puffing man on my left or the sprinting girl on my right, I upped my speed.  

Lightning Stirkes and a Merry Heart

  Why I remember light travels at 186,000 miles per second and that there are 5,280 feet in a mile, I have no idea. I'm sure the teacher who drilled those facts must have taught me something else as well. Really, it's not like the knowledge of the speed of light is particularly useful on a daily basis, but I do remember it during thunderstorms.

As a kid, we used to count the seconds between the lightning and thunder, but I don't remember if we knew to divide the total by five, which would make a bit of a difference. I might have spent my childhood thinking a five second space meant the storm was five miles away when, in fact, it was right on top of me.

Last night we had a ripping thunderstorm. Since the pool is close to the kitchen patio doors, I was counting the seconds from the lightning, and trying to not forget the mahi-mahi in the broiler, and thinking about an acquaintance with breast cancer, and listening to the news about drug thugs taking over a previously prosperous town in Mexico...it was all very worrisome.

But then, I caught the end of a news story that made me stop and cheer for a little town whose name I didn't catch. This town, like many others these days, had no money for recreation projects. But the people made a decision not to let recession and depression steal the joy of their children's childhood. Deeming summer memories of swimming, and splashing, and laughing important to the well being of their children, they raised the $12,000 needed to run the pool.

Good for them, I thought. I'm sure they had plenty of pressing needs, but they chose something immeasurable.

A merry heart does good like medicine the author of Proverbs tells us. I may not have much money, but there are lots of inexpensive ways I can do something to lighten my spirit--take time out for beauty, do something different or differently, read a humorous story, call someone and cheer them. Such little things are not life-changing but they just might be enough to change my perspective for the day and knock me out of a rut.

Lord, today,may someone needing the healing of a merry heart be blessed by a gift of laughter.

P.S. Perhaps too trivial for a laugh, but--Reuters has some silly news stories, like the girl who took her car for an oil change. The mechanic found bags of drugs under the hood and called the police. She told them she didn't know the mechanic had to look under the hood. (Okay, maybe not)

The nautilus and the sea urchin

Like a heat-seeking missile, I was determined to find a nautilus shell like the one I saw on the postcard in my hotel lobby. It was early morning. I was trying to sneak out the room without waking my husband. But he turned, blinked a few times and asked,"Where are you going?" We were, after all, on vacation, which to his mind meant rest.

"The tide's out," I said. "I have to get on the beach early to find a nautilus shell.

Sport that he is, hubby sighed, rolled out of bed, and donned his sweatshirt and shorts. We joined the other early-morning seekers along the vast stretch of beach famous for its shells. The birds vied for low-tide pickings; the gentle lapping of the retreating water and the misty salt air added the ambiance for a seashell hunt.

I set out briskly, certain I would find the one shell I had in mind. Bob soon lagged behind, stopping every few minutes to examine something which he either discarded or added to his bag. I walked faster, ignoring the piles of shells and shiny objects on the shoreline. Bob stopped, examined, enjoyed. After an hour or so we met up and compared treasures. I had nothing. Bob had a bag full of perfectly formed, shiny, spikey, curly, pearly treasures.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a shell store where I learned my nautilus didn't even live in those waters. They were just props on a postcard.

I had been so focused on the big treasure that I had overlooked all the little beauties along the way.

Today, may I have the eyes to see, the faith to believe, and the heart to be thankful for what I have today.

She's got "the depression"

My sister called to say her Wii Fit was asking for me. Said it hadn't seen me in a while. Maybe that's because the last time I got on, it groaned, "Oh," and said I had a fitness age of about eighty. Jan also wanted to know where my blog post was.

I admitted last week I had a case of the D's--discouragement, despair, disillusionment, doubt, diets, death...Well, I wasn't that bad; mostly I had "the discouragement" (a term borrowed from an elderly, perfectly coiffed woman I met at the dentist office who said her sister had "the depression"). 

It came out of nowhere, a simple remark by a person whose opinion I valued. I determined to persevere through the fog of mental ennui that settled on me and sucked my thoughts out. But as so often happens, one bad thing led to another.

The corner of my front tooth broke (maybe grit your teeth and buckle up isn't such good advice). It wasn't too noticeable so I decided to postpone fixing it until I had caught up on my bills. A few nights later, after I brushed, flossed, spit, and rinsed, I looked in the mirror and stared at the big space where the corner of my other front tooth had been a minute before.

It's hard to ignore two broken front teeth, besides, my daughter was coming to visit with a friend she wanted us to meet. Not wanting to look as if I'd left my shotgun in a cabin back in the 'holler,' I promptly called my dentist.

"The discouragement" was gaining on two fronts--mental and physical. Early one morning, I curled up on the couch with my Bible. A verse, so random and so seemingly unrelated to my situation, parked itself like a mighty boulder in front of my broken-down defense.

The exiled Jews were rebuilding their destroyed temple, but their adversaries were trying to stop them. The adversaries tattled to the king who was unaware of a decree issued by a previous king, which gave the Jews both permission and provision to build. The current king issued a search in the archives where the treasures were stored and there in a fortress, a scroll was found.--Ezra 6:2

I'm not sure why this knocked the dis off and left me with courage. I think because it speaks of hope, of unexpected possibilities, of things never filed away and forgotten by the KING.