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It seems I'm starting a trend... when the going gets tough, the tough go bowling.Friday was one of the crappiest days I've had in a long time -- so bad that crying in the ladies' bathroom was actually involved -- so at 11:30pm Friday night my buddy Tim and I once again ventured to the lanes. This time was supposed to be a rematch, because Tim swore he was "just letting me win" the last time we went. Well, the highlight of my night was rather Babe Ruth-esque call-it-before-you-do-it turkey in the tenth frame of our first game, and the highlight of Tim's night was my vain effort at human bowling in the second game (a sad fact of life, sometimes those slippery shoes stop slipping, and your body doesn't stop with them... man, those lanes are really oily... the real miracle is that I still managed to knock down eight pins, even from a flat-on-my-face release point).The results of the rematch were not very satisfactory... for Tim. But he got an extra laugh at my expense when the alley manager commented on my less-than-graceful fall while we were turning in our shoes, so we're probably even now. What's next -- bumper bowling?
Exhausted and feeling under the weather, I crashed out on my couch yesterday afternoon as soon as I got home from work. At 6:05pm, Jack Buck's screaming voice woke me up... "Gibson swings, it's a fly ball to deep right field, it's gonna be a home run! I don't believe what I just saw1"(Yes, I am just enough of a baseball fanatic to have the radio call from Kirk Gibson's immortal home run in game 1 of the 1988 World Series as a ringtone on my cell.)My glasses were nowhere to be found, and after knocking the phone off the table in my attempt to answer it, I finally grabbed hold of it and squinted to read the name on the caller ID...ERIK.Could it finally be??? His name has not appeared on my caller ID for a year. I flipped open the phone, said something very groggy and incoherent... and sure enough, that trademark Fonzy-Meets-Adam-Sandler greeting reached my ears... "Hey."My brother is home!!!
It's snowing here today, so the concept of "Spring Training" seems a little elusive to me this morning. But even as I type away here in Colorado, my team's pitchers and catchers are arriving at the ballpark down in balmy Tucson, climbing out of their fancy cars, slapping each other on the backs after months of vacation, and clamoring towards the locker rooms...BASEBALL SEASON IS HERE AT LAST!!!Man, just typing that sentence makes me crave a really greasy hot dog and some heat-lamp-mutated nachos, not to mention the blue skies, the sunburn, and the sticky stadium seats. Few things in life are as enjoyable as a day at the ballpark -- especially when it involves a miniature plastic batting helmet filled with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce and candy sprinkles. And that's just spring training at the little minor league ballpark -- don't even get me started on the garlic cheese fries at hte major league field!But lest you think I'm really just obsessed with food, there are SO many things I love about baseball. The camaraderie with complete strangers in the seats next to me, the leisurely glory of the slow-burn sunshine, the rousing chorus of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the seventh-inning stretch, the computerized condiment races (why don't they ever let mayonnaise compete?), the individual music to introduce each player at the plate... but you know what I love best? No commercial breaks! The action of the game is never interrupted so superficially. It's over when it's over. No time penalties, no shot clocks, no two-minute warnings. And there are so many variables, literally anything can happen! From the obvious big things like the number of players and the size of the playing field, to the minute details like the direction in which the grass is mowed and the placement of the pitcher's fingers across the ball seams....What more can I say? Toss it all in a big ballpark blender, top it off with those garlic cheese fries, and you've got the greatest game ever! Let the opening day countdown begin... 44 days and 4 hours till first pitch! Anyone care to join me in Denver on April 3rd? :-)
I started to write this last weekend, but with all the emotional crap that hit the proverbial fan this past week, I got waylaid. Now I'm glad I did, because many comments and discussions this week led me to think more deeply about the power of touch. Touch is a love language. From the first time I held my niece in the hospital, and now she fights with her sisters over who gets to hold my hand as we cross the street or snuggle closest to me on the couch while we watch The Sound of Music for the umpteenth time, to the way I saw my dad's touch soothe his mother as she lay dying, to the ultimate touch of all... just thinking about all the powerful ways one can communicate just by holding hands... Lord, may I never be afraid to reach out...
HOLDING HANDS
A curious infant reaches out
Clutching just a finger
With all her tiny might
the perfect touch of wonder
A carefree daughter reaches out
Trusting like no other
In her snuggled safety
the perfect touch of joy
A comforting son reaches out
Not to receive but to give
A soothing last goodbye
the perfect touch of peace
A confident friend reaches out
Surprisingly tender and secure
Trembling with silent promise
the perfect touch of love
A constant pursuer reaches out
Eternally patient and inviting
Scarred for all to see
the perfect touch of Life
How to unleash all your pent-up aggression and recover from a really crappy day:1. Go bowling.2. Go bowling late at night for discounted prices ($1.00 shoes/lanes).3. Go bowling with a good friend.4. Beat your friend at bowling.5. Beat your friend four times. (He will, of course, insist that he's letting you win.)6. So then beat your friend left-handed, and by a margin of nearly 40 points.7. Watch your friend's tap-dance lessons as a 5-year-old pay off as he strikes the most amusing poses upon releasing his bowling ball... especially when he's bowling left-handed, too.8. Laugh heartily.9. Dance in your slippery fluorescent shoes to the retro techno music that's just a shade too loud to hear yourself think.10. Get lots of free bowling coupons from the really cool bowling alley manager.11. Go home and take a bath to remove the stale cigarette odor from your hair.12. Fall asleep in the bathtub.
I know my way around a computer, but I'm not the world's most high-tech person. You may laugh that I still use an old-fashioned planner (a diary to my UK friends) that consists of pens and paper and writing things down by hand... but you'd laugh even harder if you knew the number of times I forgot to charge my old PDA and lost my entire schedule and address book! No, these big red books I carry around each year, with the year stamped in gold on the spine and cover, work much better for me. I actually look forward to getting my new planner every October, and slowly filling in my activities for the year -- few of you would be surprised to know that all my entries are color-coded, too...The ritual of filling out my new planner each year always begins with a purple pen and a printout of the Arizona Diamondbacks season schedule. That's right, I put every home and away game right into my planner. (Go ahead and laugh, you Rockies fans...) Then it's a green pen for my annual bagpipe competitions and Scottish festivals, a light blue pen for choir practices, a pink pen for my women's bible study, an orange pen for my World Vision sponsorship commitments... the list goes on. Birthdays, holidays, paydays, laundry days... everything goes into that planner. And the older I get, the more colors I find myself using. It's crazy, but it works for me. And once the new year begins, I open the pages of that new planner and enjoy how orderly and purposeful my life looks... a well-planned, widescreen, Technicolor marvel.But it never stays that way for long! Who of us can ever plan our lives a year in advance, and not have our plans change? Oh, the best-laid plans of mice and men!Thing is, with the PDA, if my plans happened to change, I could simply erase a cancelled appointment or move it to a new day and voila! It was all still perfect and neatly organized. My life was still orderly, according to the little screen in the palm of my hand. No one ever had to know that the Diamondbacks were originally scheduled to play at 1:05pm but that the ESPN coverage moved the first pitch to 1:35.With this big red planner, however, when something gets cancelled or changed, I have to cross it out and rewrite it. There's no hiding the mistakes, no way to keep up the appearance of a neat and orderly life. I've tried white-out, but all that produced was a really nasty headache and a lingering acrid odor. And as I looked at my planner last night and all the changes I'm already having to make this year (and it's barely February!), I even entertained the thought of buying a new one and starting over.But then it hit me -- my life is never going to be perfect. So why waste so much effort at pretending? On the contrary, I should be glad that my plans for my life are falling through. How dull my life and its big red planner would be if it was always perfect and orderly -- especially if it was only full of my plans. God's plans are so much more exciting! The very fact that I'm now living in Colorado proves that. I should be glad to be crossing out my plans and replacing them with His! And I should be glad to look back through all these scribbled pages and see the places where He foiled my attempts to control my own life. It means that He loves me too much to let me have my own way! So no more white-out for me, no starting over... because it's not my big red planner. It's His.
