The Amazing Race

            One of the few shows on television I enjoy (some seasons more than others) is The Amazing Race. There are lots of reasons I like the show but perhaps some of the most appealing to me are observing how people deal with pressure, how they do unbelievable feats which require an immense amount of bravery (or stupidity) and how relationships between two members of a team, and between teams themselves develop over the course of the race. 

            One of the details of the show which I find most “amazing” is the almost manic mood swings when couples get irritated with each other during difficult tasks and five minutes later are embracing when they find they are not eliminated. When frustrated with a challenge you’ll often hear a contestant say, “I quit!” Yet, they never do and almost always find the strength to carry on. 

            I wonder how many times today, or this week have you thought, “I quit!” Maybe your frustrations revolve around a particular problem like not having enough money to pay the bills or a rebellious child who’s going to end up in jail if he doesn’t straighten up. Or perhaps your troubles run much deeper than that…a bad marriage, a terminal disease or the sudden loss of your job. You may be facing more than one of these issues and you’ve just felt like throwing your hands up and yelling at the top of your lungs, “I quit!”

            Me too! Yep, me too. There is a part of me which always thinks things will get better. My heart still believes there’s some green grass out there somewhere and most of the time I’m up for looking for it. But there’s also a part of me that gets tired, frustrated, fed up and burnt out. There are days when I think I might want to quit. Just sit down, give up, “cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die.”

            But then, like a frustrated, manic Amazing Race contestant, somewhere deep inside there is a voice…no maybe…a pulse, that negativism and hopelessness had almost drowned out. I feel it beat a steady rhythm, I hear it call my name. It starts somewhere deeper than my heart though, it has a source of life all its own, not connected to circumstances or outward stimuli. It is other-worldly, not conditional on my five senses, somehow powered by something which has a source of energy “off-the-grid.” Although my body, mind, situation…my sight and the rest of my senses cry stop…Amazing (G)race will not let me. I keep running, climbing, hoping, looking for the next “pit stop,” knowing that “this too will pass” and there is a prize for those who run the race well. The answer to my Amazing Race challenges is Amazing Grace!

Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
'Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far
and Grace will lead me home.           

The Ultimate Mistaken Identity

            He slowly opened his eyes and saw nothing. He struggled to hear something beyond the sound of his own beating heart. Beneath and beside his hands he felt the splintery coarseness of rough-sawn planks, but there was little room to move any of his extremities. His lungs ached from trying to breathe, and the only scent was that of musty earth. His brain was frantic and yet eerily numb. He tried to decipher what his senses were telling him, and then he froze. He stopped feeling and smelling and seeing. In an instant it flashed across his consciousness like a meteor across the sky…he’d been buried alive!

            He had heard stories. At the time he thought they were only myths, just legends of the ultimate mistaken identity, when the living are erroneously taken for dead. He tried, without success to take a deep breath and scream, but there was not enough air for screaming. Fear crushed him. Panic immobilized him. Somehow, even though he could see nothing, some kind of blackness seemed to be creeping over him like thick ink. He was going to die.

            He had been to only a handful of funerals in his life. He had never really given much thought to the nightmarish possibility of being buried alive. He did, however, have a vague recollection of stories about cords being tied to the presumed corpse and attached to a bell above the ground, making it possible for the “almost dead” to let those above ground know there was still life left in the old soul. He wondered…

            He felt around the best he could, hoping to find the lifeline. Where would it be attached? His hand? His foot? Was it even there? In the cramped quarters of his coffin he used his last remnants of energy to grasp, to gasp…nothing. He collapsed in absolute fatigue like he’d never felt before, but as his hands fell to his side, he felt it. A cord, not as big as a rope but larger than a string. A cord. He grabbed it as tight as he could and began to pull and release, pull and release, much like you would ring the bells in a steeple. The phantom strength with which he pulled the cord came from a place inside him he didn’t know existed, but he pulled and pulled and pulled. He could not speak the words with breath but he could beat them out with pulls and tugs…And so he continued to yank, to ring the bell, and in so doing shouted… “I am not dead yet!”

            Have you ever felt so crushed, so weighed down by life, so immobilized and unable to move that others might have mistaken you for dead? Have you ever felt tossed out, sidelined, kicked to the curb because others felt you had become useless? Has there ever been a time, maybe because of your age, your appearance, your weight or your failures that you were tempted to throw in the towel, give it up, call it quits, retire from life? What about a time when you too, felt that some sort of darkness was overcoming you, making you invisible to those around you? Perhaps you have felt what St. John of the Cross called “the dark night of the soul.” I’m not necessarily talking about suicidal thoughts. I’m talking about feeling buried alive, interred too soon, mistaken for dead.

            Reach for the cord! Find the safety net. Ring the bell. Shout out as loud as you can… “I am not dead yet!” Death you can’t have me. Despair you can’t win. Discouragement be gone. I’m not dead yet! Get up, move around, get a vision, make plans, don’t just lay there and die…ring the bell, for cryin’ out loud, Ring The Bell!

Scarface

            It was the dreaded day…the day we received our school pictures which had been taken several weeks earlier. Most of my Junior High friends were excited about the prospects of writing flirtatious notes on the back of their pictures and distributing them to the opposite sex. The girls were especially giddy to receive their own portrait back and didn’t mind saying how beautiful they found themselves, not having developed that false sense of humility and self-criticism which would not become socially acceptable until high school.

            Most everyone was excited, except the few who couldn’t care less. Not me. I was terrified. As a teenager who suffered from severe acne, which could not be hidden no matter how much tinted Clearasil® I applied in the morning, picture day was tantamount to horror day! I dreaded it from one year to the next throughout my teenage years. When I received my pictures they were shoved inside my desk or the back of my notebook. I didn’t look at them for fear someone would see them. I couldn’t stand the embarrassment. I would take them home, unopened until my mother asked for them. She would always open them with a smile and reassure me that I would “grow out of it.” I never did.

            Finally, my last year of high school a nurse in our church told my mom about a new experimental vaccine. A culture would be grown, using my facial blemishes as the base, and then a vaccine made which should help with the acne. My mom signed me up and every week I visited the home of a local nurse to get my injection. The remedy was almost miraculous. Within a few months my face was clearer than it had been since I entered puberty.

            But the miracle wasn’t perfect. As my face began to clear of the massive pimples which had been all I could see in the mirror for years, I realized there was a new form of embarrassment looking back at me…scars. My face was covered with deep, rough, pockmarks. My heart was broken…the cure seemed incomplete…I no longer had the pimples, but everyone would always know…by simply looking at my face…where they had once raged on the battlefield of my face.

            That was over 40 years ago. The scars are still there. They will always be there. There are occasionally days which go by when I don’t think about them…but not many. They are a constant reminder of what was.

            I tell this story, as uncomfortable as it is, to remind myself and those of you who read it, that bad actions and decisions leave scars. Sometimes they are our decisions and sometimes they belong to other people. Sometimes they are innocent mistakes and sometimes they are rebellious acts…but few of them will come and go without leaving a mark…a scar.

            Is that cause for dismay, hopelessness, dark despair? It could be…if we allow it to drag us to a place where there is no light. But it doesn’t have to be that way. I learned a little trick years ago that helps me when I look into the mirror. Except when absolutely necessary, I don’t look at the scars, I look into my eyes. When I look into my own eyes, I try to see hope and light and the future…not the past. Do I still have scars…yes…I just choose not to dwell on them or let them control my life.

            I’m assuming most of you have some scars too. Maybe not the kind I’ve written about today. Perhaps they are much more serious, the kind on the inside that make your heart ache or that just won’t go away no matter how hard you try. For whatever it’s worth, here is my sage advice: Stop trying. Stop looking. Stop thinking about the scars. Look into your own eyes. Look for light, for hope, for the future. If it’s been a while since you looked, you may have to dig a bit, take some layers of hurt off and lay them aside, but keep looking…there’s light in there somewhere…and hope.