No, I’m not speaking of the one at the church building; I now have one at home. Yes, that’s right… if you can consider an unpainted room with a beater of a computer on an old desk surrounded by boxes an office. But it is OUR office, just down the hallway from OUR room, on the main floor of OUR house!
I’d hoped to blog nearly every day last week (I had topics in my head, oh yes, I did), but it was simply insanity. In the midst of Lectureship at WCC, Thanksgiving, moving stuff, cleaning and painting a bit, living between two houses all week, and stuffing work into the cracks, I hit Thursday feeling like my ‘to do’ list was yet untouched. Into panic mode for three days, Sunday morning came and was a special one, and Sunday afternoon came to a crashed nap in front of a football game along with my bro-in-law, dad-in-law, and a friend.
Today’s Monday, and it is definitely a day off. Time for some ‘home errands’ and hopefully more painting before the week is half done.
Yes, that’s Thanksgiving weekend I’m talking about. For any American readers, yes, this IS the time for Thanksgiving.
A few favourite parts…
Lectureship ’06 at WCC: Piles of people to visit that we hadn’t seen for a long time, a worthwhile workshop for ministry folks on “Broken Churches”, a “wow” kind of presentation about the work of Christians in the Ukraine, and a well-taught class on the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts. Add to that our China presentation and my leading a late night worship time, and the evening was full.
Sports: Late night chances came for some volleyball and some hockey, both games I haven’t played in years. Volleyball–I can at least fake like I know where to be and what to do; hockey–hey, I’ve got the blisters and pulled leg muscles to prove I was there.
Keys: Saturday we were handed the keys to our new home. Sunday and Monday saw us moving boxes and the few pieces of furniture that we own.
Riders: Is there something wrong when the highlight of my Monday was moving boxes and furniture?! Ouch.
This week is going to be a quick one! Monday’s gone. Today is “breeze through the office; do what NEEDS doing; get heat, water, power, phone hooked up; and whatever else comes along” day. That leaves three days for getting ready for Sunday’s tasks, visiting a few fine folks for suppers and visits, and gearing up for the Riders’ final home game on Friday and the Glen Elm Kings’ first hockey game on Saturday.
The article is actually about steroid abuse, but in an effort to boost my female readership, I thought I’d just put the leading caption out there and allow confused or frustrated wives and girlfriends to simply read it and nod knowingly: “I knew that something wasn’t quite right with him.”
Should an anonymous “Shannon” post a comment on this one, we’ll quietly move on to the next post.
This comes from a forward that a friend sent me (thanks Sarina). The funny thing is that I’ve been thinking of these guys ever since seeing a DVD about them a few weeks back.
Strongest Dad in the World (From Sports Illustrated)
I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay
for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.
But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.
Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in
marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a
wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and
pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.
Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back
mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes
taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?
And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was
strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged
and unable to control his limbs.
“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life.” Dick says doctors told him
and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an
institution.”
But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes
followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the
engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was
anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told.
“There’s nothing going on in his brain.”
“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a
lot was going on in his brain.
Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by
touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to
communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate
was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for
him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”
Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more
than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he
tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for
two weeks.”
That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it
felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”
And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving
Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly
shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.
“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a
single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few
years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway. Then
they found a way to get into the race officially – in 1983 they ran
another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the
following year.
Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”
How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he
was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick
tried.
Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour
Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud
getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you
think?
Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own?
“No way,” he says.
Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a
cantaloupe-sized smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston
Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best
time – Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world
record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to
be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the
time.
“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the
Century.”
And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a
mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries
was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor
told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”
So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.
Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston,
and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always
find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and
compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s
Day.
That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants
to give him is a gift he can never buy.
“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair
and I push him once.”
Here’s a decent little video as well, if you care. Pretty touching stuff.
