Lorrie’s Blog

Whoever invented Band-Aids is my hero (right up there with Dennis Rodman).

Consider with me for a moment, the simplicity, and yet the complete functionality of a little strip of some rubber-like material with a small square of gauze attached to it. It’s a miraculous invention.

In addition to their obvious function of protecting and assisting with the healing process of small wounds, they also serve other useful purposes. A band-aid can almost always make a child stop crying. Band-aids are an inexpensive and effective (and relatively harmless, adhesive notwithstanding) plaything to give a child when you need to make a phone call. They come in a wide variety of styles, colors, shapes, sizes, and with almost any cartoon character you could wish for, so you can always assure that your band-aid matches your mood and your ensemble (even if your ensemble is Superman underwear and a cape made out of a blanket).

I had a “mommy moment” this morning when I went to the medicine cabinet to get a band-aid. Before I had children, I always opted for the band-aids that are clear and therefore unnoticeable. That doesn’t go over well with children who view band-aids as a status symbol. So my options today were Clifford the Big Red Dog, Stars & Stripes or the Power Puff Girls. I decided my mood today was definitely Power Puff. When I put it on, for just a moment I felt invincible.

So, thank you Mr. Band-Aid Inventor, whoever you are. You’ve made a happy difference in my domestic life.

Don’t try to tell me that God doesn’t have a sense of humor. Or that He doesn’t know me so well it’s scary. What He does know about me is that not only am I a s - l - o - w processor, but I’m also stubborn and oblivious and it takes repeated bangings on the head before something finally sinks in. Usually I know when He’s wanting me to deal with something in my life when it comes up 5 or 6 (to infinity) times in a short amount of time.

This issue of communication is one of them. I actually could have posted this as an identical comment on either of Jeff’s or Bill’s recent blogs, but decided it was too long to be comment-appropriate, so I’m just putting it on my own page.

I’m reading a book called “Love Walked Among Us” by Paul E. Miller, which was recommended to me by Mike Spencer. As I was reading yesterday, highlighter in hand, I realized how applicable this particular section was to the issues we are dealing with right now.

The author is referencing the story of Jesus and the blind man in Mark 10:47-52. Here’s what he has to say: “For a brief moment Jesus goes inside the blind man’s skin. Asking questions slows us down and puts us in other people’s worlds, hearing their words, their expressions, and their desires. We become the learner rather than the expert.

Jesus’ question, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ is not as obvious as we might think. We patronize people when we assume that we know how they want to be helped. If we don’t ask, we may heal the blind man, but he might not feel loved, only fixed. This is ‘top-down’ love. Though we may sincerely want to help, we are trying to do so from a superior position, with little risk to ourselves. Instead of considering how we can love people with their weaknesses, we consider how they should be different — often we think they should be like us.

Top-down love decides how and when to love. But when our love is bottom-up, we lose control of how to love. Others decide for us. Bottom-up love is the best kind of love because no one can help me think about your world better than you can.

A word of caution: Don’t be legalistic about asking questions. Religion and pop psychology often reduce love to specific behaviors (for example, ‘always ask questions), thus simplifying love so we don’t have to work at it. We like clarity. ‘Just tell me what to do’. But Jesus deals with people as they are.”

That’s just a part of it — the rest is equally as good. What I can tell you right now is that the recent blogs and this book have stirred up so many things in my head. You can ask me in a few days how the processing is going!

This past Saturday, I ran 16 miles. My legs hated me. Did you know that less than 2% of the people in the entire world have ever run a marathon? That should give you some comfort that the other 98% are not idiots.

I often ask myself why I am putting myself through this. (I mean, it would make sense to run 16 miles if one of my children was hurt and I was running to them, or if someone was pursuing me with a sharp object.) Then I remind myself why I wanted to do this in the first place. It is a huge goal — perhaps one of only two really monumental things I’ve ever tried to achieve in my life. Part of it is that I love being a part of that 2%. (It’s an odd irony about me. I hate having attention drawn to me, and yet I love accomplishing things that put me in an elite, i.e. small, group.)

Tonight I had a bit of a scare. I only planned to run 2 miles because my legs were sore after Saturday and then running too hard on Sunday. One of my favorite things to do when I do a short run is have Nic go along on her bike. It’s very good cross training because I try to keep up with her which means sometimes I’m barely moving and other times I’m running all out. She also frequently needs a push, so I really am getting a full body workout. As we were running down the street out of our neighborhood, I was watching her instead of watching where I was going, and I stepped in a hole, twisted my ankle and as Jeremy described it later, “wiped out.” I sat in the middle of the street and took a couple deep breaths. When I stood up, my ankle was pretty tender. Nic was mostly concerned because I was bleeding (skinned knee). I couldn’t decide whether to try to run on it or go back home. Any of you who know me, already know what I did. I ran on it any way. (I’m not sure if that was more out of stubbornness or stupidity; they probably both came into play.) As it turned out, we had a pretty easy run and it only bothered me mildly. I am sitting with it elevated as I type and in a little while, I’ll put some ice on it.

When I fell, my first thought was of all the hours I would have wasted by training so hard up to this point, only to have it lost in a moment when I just wasn’t paying attention. That is certainly ripe with spiritual and personal application. It made me think of other lost moments in my life when I just wasn’t paying attention — a chance to make someone’s day with a kind or encouraging word, to tell those most important to me how much they mean to me, to say I’m sorry, to forgive someone, to offer a helping hand, to overlook someone else’s faults. Pretty convicting.

I tend to get philosophical when I run, and since that seems like all I’m doing these days, I spend a lot of time philosophizing.

Fortunately, I have a little bit lighter week this week. My long run is only 8-10 miles, a very small amount compared to the mileage I’ve been logging. Overall, I’m very encouraged.

Thanks for sharing this journey with me.

We had the funnest time at dinner today with the Jenkins and the Fishs. In fact, at the end of dinner, the waitress asked if we were celebrating anything special or if we were just enjoying being together as a family. Is that cool or what? Any way, I can’t remember when I’ve laughed so hard. Being with the Jenkins clan in its entirety made me a little homesick for own family. We’d all be talking and they’d suddenly all say the same thing, at the same time, with exactly the same inflection (usually a line from a movie). It was so great.

Which brings me to the topic of my title — another page from the Kirkpatrick family scrapbook. My family was very middle class. I grew up with a hard working dad who was loved and appreciated by his coworkers, but was definitely not paid what he was worth. My mom was a preschool teacher at a Christian preschool so she wasn’t pulling in a six figure income, either. And all four of us girls went to Christian school. I’m still not sure how they pulled that off. (Did I mention that they also never used credit cards?) Somehow, though, we always went on really fun family vacations. We camped in a tent most of the time (I have some of the greatest ever putting-up-a-tent stories) and we visited places like Mt. Rushmore, Washington DC, Niagra Falls, etc. My dad loves to drive and we spent HOURS in the car.

One of the ways my sisters and I amused ourselves through the long hours in the car was by making up new ways of fighting with each other. The lucky one got to sit in the front seat between mom and dad. Then the other three had to duke it out in the back, but silently so we didn’t risk the arm of dad being flung at us to make us stop fighting. We had a pretty big car (a Ford LTD — green with a white vinyl top), but it was still much too small to be sitting with three teenage girls in the back seat. My favorite thing to say, in a whiny voice, was “Mom, Donna’s putting the fat of her leg over on my side!” (I don’t really have a sister named Donna, but I thought I’d make up a name in case one of my sisters ever comes to visit, so you won’t actually know which one I was talking about and start snickering about it right it front of her.)

But, back to the lettuce. Because we were living on a middle class budget, my mom always packed our lunch to take in the car. The problem with that was that she would get up at like 5am on the morning we were going to leave and make sandwiches — with lettuce. Do you know what 6 hour old lettuce looks and smells like? Eeeewwww. I can hardly stand to think of it even now. I always tried to get a seat by the window so that I could dispose of my lettuce quickly and without detection. I can’t tell you how many highways throughout the US were littered with parts of my lunch.

Why do I tell you that story? Because to this day, I rarely eat lettuce on a sandwich. In fact, if you come to my house for dinner and we’re having sandwiches, you’ll have to remind me to get the lettuce out. And if I come to your house for dinner, I promise not to be offended if you put lettuce on my sandwich as long as you promise not to be offended when I take it off.

Just thought I’d give you a quick update on how my marathon training is going. Today I ran 14 miles in 2 hours, 11 minutes. Not super fast (my best ever half marathon time was just over 1 hour and 57 minutes and that’s 13.1 miles), but I keep reminding myself that I’ll be running farther (by a lot) than I’ve ever run before and that I don’t want to do something that will risk injury. Today’s run ties for the longest distance I’ve ever run in my life. I’m amazed at how much of this is psychological. (No, I didn’t say psycho, although some times I feel that way in the middle of a long run.) Several weeks ago I was feeling pretty discouraged because I thought I was behind in my training and was doubting that I was going to be able to do this. Then I had a talk with a girl at work who ran Chicago last year and it was her first marathon. She gave me a copy of her training log from last August and September and I wasn’t behind at all! That has made such a huge difference in how I feel about my training and the marathon over all.

Probably what made today go so well was that Bill and Matt met me at the park 4.5 miles into my run, gave me water and a towel and then ran a couple miles with me, and then had more water for me at my next break. Plus they never once remarked about how bad I looked! I can’t even begin to tell you how encouraging that was. Thanks, guys!

I love it that some of you are going to be able to be in Chicago with me.

. . . or why Dennis Rodman is my hero. I guess I should say WAS my hero because he has seriously devolved over the last several years.

A little background is probably in order. I grew up in a household with 5 women and 1 man. The 1 man (yep, my poor dad) was as masculine as they come — outdoorsy, athletic, loves to hunt and fish. I’m sure his greatest wish at one time in his life was to have a son. Unfortunately he and my mom kept having daughters . . . over and over and over. When my youngest sister was born, I’m sure a part of him died. And talk about girly girls. Oh my. We were all as feminine as you can get. He tried on several occasions to boy-ify us. One year for Christmas he bought us all squirt guns. They were the first guns we had ever had in our house. We thought they were cool for a couple days until they got buried under all our makeup and nail polish. His only ray of sunshine was our mutual love of fire and burning things. (That’s a topic that requires it’s very own blog . . . and a moment of silence.) But then, one day, on a stroke of genius, he installed a basketball hoop in our driveway. At that time, I was in middle school. Almost every weekend, we had college guys from a local Christian college come over to hang out with our family. I loved hanging out with the guys. They loved playing basketball and so I loved playing basketball. However, since I was the smallest one on the “court” and also the one determined to get their attention, I became a rather violent and intense player. They frequently went home bruised, or with an occasional black eye. (There are really no rules in driveway basketball — it’s pretty much everyone for themselves.) Any way, that inspired me to go out for my school basketball team and so I played on both the JV and varsity teams. I started on both teams and played on both because I loved playing so much and we were short of players (did I mention that I went to a Christian high school?). My goal became to foul out of every game. Which I did. Flagrantly. I had discovered my competitive side.

What I’ve come to learn about myself through sports is that there are certain people I can never compete against (Matt is one of them) and also that I have very high expectations of myself and I love beating my best — whatever arena that may be in.

So how does Dennis fit in to all of this? Well, Dennis used to be a phenomenal basketball player. He was pretty good offensively, but he was unbelievable in defense. He could rebound, assist, and oh, could he foul. He was tough and scrappy, but he was a hard worker. It also didn’t hurt that he had really buff arms.

But as most heros do, Dennis became bizarre and started hanging out with Madonna. My feelings for him changed after that.

You know what’s sort of ironic about this whole thing? If you asked me who my heroes are now . . . one of them would be my dad.