How To Be A Spotter

He asked if I needed spotting, me who had just finished stretching on the bench he was nodding toward. I glanced at the mammoth weights placed on each end of the bar looming above the maroon-colored work-out bench. I refrained from laughing and said, no thank you, I think I hurt my lats during some push-ups I tried yesterday. He smiled and said yes, he has done that also, he walked away, to lift more weights. Swallowing the need to defend myself, to change the number of push-ups to more than the seven I actually performed, I cranked up volume on iPOD, hummed along. The change it came, gradually, unwillingly at first, and after a while this competitive heart waved white flag in surrender. Once a long distance runner, and semi-weight lifter, I learned to wean myself from panting desire to run, to feel adrenaline high, especially in majestic fall season. Humbling it is, to bend knee so low that scabs form and the white flag, it folds gently in autumn air, even though hand waving still trembles from inner desire to control. So, I punch down the speed on treadmill, speak body into slow, ushering in this virgin acceptance to nurture.

A good friend shares, bad cancer struck hard in her family and I worry less about scraping the knee now. More about lifting palms, less about how far down the rack of weights the pin pushes in.

 Splashes of vibrant color decorate the landscape, and those orange, blazing-red and yellow leaves, they carpet hard ground. A kaleidoscope of color floats gently, and I know that trees are undressing, and bare limbs appearing, the change is coming here too.

And I tell my friend I will pray. Breathing in His grace. Grasping it in midst of the hard, the ugly and the painful. She says she recently read the book and she is poised to count, to record the blessings. Breathing slow, I remember that God is always one step ahead. I click to capture still beauty, a view I could not appreciate while speeding by in Nikes.

The path, it weaves and twists, turning another corner and climbing mammoth hills. I contemplate this journey and I think the hill climbing, it might require another set of hands, maybe even one thousand, to lift you, to be a spotter. To be just there, to be with you when the weight gets too heavy, too burdensome and arms quiver under strain so great.

To be a spotter is to be the gift.

 

 

"Before us is a future all unknown, a path untrod; beside us is a friend well loved and known-that friend is God." Unknown