Kpinion

Well two weeks ago I finally acted on the impulse to purchase a gym membership with the logic that if I pay for it I’ll use it. That theory is still in the experimental phase but I’ll let you in on my first few visits.

With my new membership came an orientation session with a trainer. I like to call this the “brutal truth session” because they not only weigh and measure you, but they also squeeze your fat with that handy dandy pincher thing and calculate how much of your body is made of Crisco. My mind always pictures Oprah pulling out her wagon of fat when I hear the words body fat calculation.

So there I go in my workout clothes with my bottle of water to hear what is every woman’s dream – your weight, the size of your hips, and the percentage of your body that allows you to remain boyant in water. After the joys of a obviously fit guy a few years younger than me pulling the tape measure around the parts of my body I like to refer to as curvy, he pulled out his trusty calculator to figure out my body fat percentage. Let’s just say that if I was ever tossed overboard at sea I could float until the coast guard came and found me, or a shark decided to make me lunch.

So with those great numbers now figured out I signed up for three sessions with the trainer in hopes that I would develop a great workout routine that lowers those numbers across the board.

On my first session, Andrew (my trainer who is a really nice guy and laughs at me when I laugh at myself so I think we’ll get along) sits me down and walks me through an online fitness program. It requires me to enter some basic bio info one of them being my newly discovered body fat percentage. He glances at me and asks if I remember it. YES ,I say emphatically shaking my head up and down, that number is now burned into my brain never to leave.

Then we hit the floor for some stretching and warm up. Good thing: I’m pretty flexible, bad thing: I’m miserably out of shape. Next was a run through the circuit trainer machine loop, where we tested my strength (weak) and my endurance (weak). This is where he laughed at me laughing at myself because I’d get halfway through the set and my face would begin to grimace as I fought through the last few reps. Finally he dropped my homework on me. I had to have two sessions of two trips through the circuit with twenty reps on each machine plus three cardio sessions before our next session. Oh boy!

So the first circuit session was . . . . . . . miserable. The first 10 reps are easy but the next 10 quickly become a nightmare. Oh and then I get to do it all over again. YAY! That was two days ago and my triceps, pecs, and shoulders are still burning. Thankfully I can lift my arms high enough to wash my hair (that was in doubt after that first day).

Tomorrow will mark session two of the circuit training. Hopefully I’ll survive. I’ll let you know.

I met them 8 years ago. One was my new boss, E, the principal of the private school I worked at right out of college. Two were moms who would each eventually work for the school. One, K,  the self-professed OCD art teacher who had the most hilarious things happen to her. The other her partner in crime, N, a firery red-headed mother of six who could do just about anything. They became my friends, with a few other ladies sprinkeled in for good measure. They were older than me, not but a lot but just enough, so I dubbed them my “Old Lady Friends”.

We’ve laughed, cried, argued, pulled pranks on each other, and talked about the struggles of life together. They are sisters, friends, and wise women I look up to. This is an email exchange I had with E yesterday:

E: K and I have made some plans for us–hope you two can come!!  On Thursday, June 25, we are meeting at my house at 3:00 or 3:30 to go for manicure/pedicure in Snyder Plaza–”pick a color”!!!! then to dinner and end up barhopping and dancing up and down Greenville Ave. until the wee hours!!!  Can you come?

Me: I’m pretty sure I’m in, just have to double check one thing. Yay it’s been too long since I’ve been clubbing.

E: You know those three guys from SNL?  Well, get ready!!

How can you not love women like this?

Well I guess I should say “I moved!”. After a few years of using blogger I switched to Wordpress. That means that things will look a little bare for a while until I can spruce the place up a bit. Hopefully all this new will encourage me to post more.

So I haven’t posted in a while and I thought to break up the long silence I’d let you in on what I like to refer to as “Classic Katie Moments.”

These can take two forms:
1. Some sort of clumsy act in which I:

• fall down
• trip
• break something
• hurt myself
• hurt someone else by my falling
• or any combination of the above

2. Say something out loud that hasn’t been fully thought out

This story falls into category #2. So here we go . . .

A few weeks ago while hanging out with a group of friends, one of the guys (a co-worker) commented on our friend’s son and how he was eating his dinner in only his diaper. He said something along the lines of that he wished he could eat all his meals the same way. Another guy (who I don’t know so well) pipes in saying he likes that idea too.

And this is when the Classic Katie Moment hit. I ever so innocently looked at both these guys and said “See now my mind is picturing you two in your boxers . . .” A small moment of silenced followed and then I realized what I said, as did everyone else. Laughter ensued. Innocent? Yes. Funny for everyone else? Of course. Classic Katie Moment? Always.

On Sunday, our kids ministry taught what every other kids ministry across the world covered, the resurrection of Christ. I’m pretty confident in saying it was “the lesson” of the day. As I led the kids through a review game over our Bible story, a question was asked, “Who came to visit the tomb?” The answer was of course, “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary.” I made a sarcastic crack (that I’m pretty sure only the adult leaders overheard) about feeling sorry for the other Mary because she was the second string Mary.

Let’s admit that if your name is Mary, you get a pretty high profile spot in the lineup of women in the Bible. You have Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalen, Mary of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus fame, and then there’s the other Mary(s). These women were privy to the greatest story ever told and each held a front row seat for different parts of the life of Christ. And then on the final days of Christ’s life on earth, they gathered to witness the most unexpected ending to a story they were all part of.

In Christ, each of these women had found a friend, a teacher, a lord, a hope for a future that was almost forgotten, a purpose, an acceptance, a love greater than they had ever known, and a changing self that only comes in the presence of the Savior. But on that last day, they stood and watched as all hope seemed to fade away and the man they had known, had followed, and had learned from, the man in which they placed their hope, trust, and faith, was captured, tried, and sentenced to what would be an unimagined end in their minds. These women gathered at the cross anguished, broken hearted, and in pain to watch their lord suffer death.

I can only imagine the grief and questioning they experienced on that hill. I wonder if they even thought of the promises he had made, the claim to be the Christ, or where they so dispondent from the sight of the physical pain he was subjected to? Could they look past the absolute hurt at watching their friend, maybe the only one who had seen past the muck of their sin to the beauty of life in his love, succumb to the torture and death so wrongly thrust upon him? Were they even thinking of the claims he had made to be the Son of God, of his prediction of his death? Or was the grief so deep and penetrating that hope was lost?

These women, who had experienced life with Christ, were now witnessing his death and I wonder if they thought their own new life might die with him. There is a place where grief is so deep, so overwheming that hope is lost to the shadows and I think these Marys might have been in that place. There are days where the promise of a new dawn, a new day are lost to the darkness of the moment; where we are blinded by the pain to even be able to picture anything else. Sometimes these days come like the one these women experienced, filled with death or loss of hope and sometimes they are days where we just wonder if tomorrow will bring something better than today.

And then that day ended with such overwhelming grief as the women watched Jesus gasp his last breath; taken down from the cross broken, battered and lifeless; wrapped in cloth and rushed to a tomb that was not his own; then experienced the finality of the stone being rolled over the cave marking the end to a life they had joined in. I imagine that was the day that hope died for them too. And so when the Marys returned to the tomb, to show one last act of love and kindness for a man who had given them so much more, they were so filled with grief that the empty tomb held no hope for them but only sorrow.

But that day the great difference between eyes that are human and eyes that are eternal was shown. For they saw a tomb that was robbed and the angel saw a tomb that was conquered. A new day brought with it a long ago promised new reality, one that had banished the sting of death and brought with it a hope that was finally realized. Death had not won on this day, grief and sorrow would not be victorious. And the story these women had participated in had not ended with a man’s death on a cross but found its fulfillment with an empty tomb. A new dawn had come, a new day was here, and hope had survived its greatest test.

So how often are we the other Mary? Maybe it’s the story of our own lives, where grief and harship seem to triumph over hope, or maybe it’s the lives of those we call friends, who we share life with, that go through days where tomorrow doesn’t seem possible, where hope if questionable. How will we stand beside them as they struggle through their own trials? Will we believe that hope and promise will somehow overcome the darkness of today? And even if the ending of their story doesn’t come out the way we want it, will be rejoice that God has a plan, a wonderous, perfect plan that is always good and always bringing Him glory?

The Marys were part of a story that was overwhelming with its joy and grief. But maybe the point is that they were part of the story, they stayed until the end, whatever it might be.