There have only been a handful of times in my life where I have had bruised knees with right now being the most recent. Why are my knees bruised? Crawl spaces. Part of signing up for this journey was the huge undertaking required to pack up my classroom and find a place to store it. I was fortunate enough to have friends who were willing to let me store it at their house for FREE! Only downside was it was in their crawl space. They had showed me the space a few months earlier and I must have thought it would be fine but I also seem to have completely forgotten what it looked like and imagined something entirely different from what I showed up to just a few days ago.
I had spent the last few weeks packing up my classroom with the much appreciated help of my mother, renting a cargo van, and then loading it all up with my mom and my cousin and moving it all out to my friends which is about 40mins outside of the city. We get there and I go to show my mom and cousin where we’ll be putting it and am confronted with a 3 foot tall crawl space that I need to crawl a good 15 feet to get to the space carved out for me. Imagine my disappointment and horror. There was no way my 6ft3 cousin was going to be crawling through there moving my stuff for me. My mom was convinced it wasn’t going to work and we decided to spend the next hour trying to find a storage unit that wouldn’t cost me a ridicules amount. No such luck. My mom drove my cousin back to the city to keep searching for a solution while I stayed and visited with my friends and their new baby. My friends were convinced that it would fit and told me it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was down there; it just takes a bit of work. My friend who had recently given birth put me to shame as she grabbed 2 of my totes and began the crawl. I sucked it up and with a bit of help from her husband got 12 totes, 3 milk crates, 20-30 boxes, a tv stand, a heavy old school tube-back tv, and a 4ft 7drawer storage tower with drawers full in the back corner of the crawl space. I encountered dust and cobwebs that would normally make my go running and banged my head more than once but it’s done (until it comes time to move it all out again). One thing my friend told me stuck with me, “Lisa you’re going to be away all year working and doing things that you probably would rather not do. The space is free it just is going to take a bit of work. Just suck it up and do it!”
A more pleasant, but equally painful, memory of bruised knees comes from when I learned to snowboard December of 2011. I had never skied or snowboarded but always wanted to learn how and when a friend offered to teach me I jumped at the opportunity. I wanted to snowboard because other than just looking ‘cooler’ it appeared safer to me; I couldn’t do the splits, I wouldn’t stab myself with poles, and I had only two ways to fall – forwards and backwards (or so I thought). I remember being crazy scared that day. Scared of looking like an idiot; scared of falling getting off the lift; scared of going too fast; scared of hurting myself; scared of how ‘big’ the hill looked from the top. The day consisted of standing, sliding down 10ft while screaming/whimpering, and then falling. I only made it down the hill twice that day (when you consider that the hill is only 350ft tall I felt slightly embarrassed) and I hadn’t gone more than 15 ft before falling but I had fallen in love with the sport! That night the pain set in and I had difficulty even rolling over and getting out of bed the next day. I was bruised and broken (literally, I found out two weeks later that I had fractured my wrist) but I was already dreaming of doing it again. I may not be the best boarder on the hill but I can get up and down the hill 40+ times on a good day with very little falling and no screaming and I am even teaching myself to ride switch now.
So why this post about bruised knees you may ask. The last thing I think about when I think about bruised knees is prayer. I don’t often kneel to pray but occasionally do and have sometimes done so to the point where my knees hurt. Bruised knees teaches me about who God wants me to be. He wants me to brave and stubborn/persistent like I was while learning to snowboard, and humble enough to crawl lugging box after box while sacrificing my pride. He wants me to work hard and get the job done even if it isn’t ideal and less than glamorous. I have recently started a reading plan entitled 30 Days of Prayer and so far it has shown me examples of people in the bible praying boldly and with specifics. Right now I have two main prayers; my mom who is going to miss me terribly when I go and secondly finances. Admittedly I have been sucking at the finances one falling on the excuse of “Oh well, it will happen, God will provide.” But I know I must too play my part. I must continue to ask people to support me and I must pray. My goal is to raise the $10,000 needed by Aug 21st completely though supporters, I will then be able to finance the rest myself if need be, but I am still $3,545 away. Everyone I talk to asks me how I plan to raise that and I tell them that honestly I don’t know. I have been frustrated with God at times with the less than kind responses I have occasionally received. When God called me to this race he clearly told me “I will make a way where you don’t see one” I have as little and idea of what that means now as I did that night, but I had hoped that it was about fundraising. So tonight, with bruised knees and all, I will get down beside my bed and pray. Pray that the fundraising idea formulating in my head is successful and profitable, pray that God will place a call to support me on some specific peoples’ hearts, and pray that this blog will reach someone and compel them to give.
