This has happened to me before. Just when I think I’ve journeyed along to a point where I understand Jesus, I find out there is more. When I think I’ve seen real change, I find out there is more. When I finally think I know and understand the gospel, there is more. Last Sunday I was reminded once again: There is more.

During the large-group worship time in my church, a musician came to the front of the room and held up a poster-sized piece of brown cardboard on which she had hand-lettered: “Six-bypass heart surgery and cancer.” She turned the card over to let us read part two of her story: “Still playing His praises and serving Him today.”

Another person followed with a card that said: “Lost a twin at birth.” She then turned her card over to show: “He carried us through, He never let go.”

And they kept coming, one after another, one story following the other.

“Wife’s critical illness since 2003;” (over) “Trusting God more, one day at a time.”

“Unexpressive and lost;” (over) “Expressive through God.”

“Our son had open-heart surgery at 10-weeks-old;” (over) “Look at him now.”

“I thought he’d be better off without me since I couldn’t give him children;” (over) “Now we have a houseful - four eternally adopted children.”

“Locked up because of sin;” (over) “Set free because of Christ.”

“Our 6-year-old son had a 20 lbs. tumor, no hope;” (over) “He is now 26 and healthy, and Jesus is our hope.”

“Felt different and alone because of my diabetes;” (over) “Now I know I am special and God is always with me.”

“Son divorced 4 times;” (over) “Jesus heals the brokenhearted.”

“We have no children of our own;” (over) “Now richly blessed teaching music to children.”

“Stricken with MS;” (over) “God has a purpose for me.”

“Died of a heart attack;” (over) “God brought me back to life.”

“Lost boy in Sudan running for my life;” (over) “Found by Jesus.”

“Living with incurable cancer;” (over) “God is in control.”

“Both thought we were Christians;” (over) “Heard the gospel for the first time.”

“Our son, a prisoner of drugs;” (over) “Truth set him free.”

It was one of the most powerful expressions of the gospel I’ve ever seen. These weren’t internet stories that get forwarded around by email; these were real stories. Maybe they were so effective because of their starkness - a complete story told in only two phrases.

Maybe it was because everyone in the room saw their own personal story on one of those cards.

Maybe it was because I knew most of the people and I knew many of the stories … and I knew that for many of them the story isn’t over. The second side of their card was more about hope than about a final answer.

Or maybe it was because many of those stories had never been shared in front of so many people … too scary, too exposed, too transparent, and too vulnerable.

As I sat in the worship service and read those cards, I realized once again, there was more to Jesus. If you’ve been around church as long as I have, and grown comfortable talking about Jesus and spiritual things, like I have, it’s easy for Jesus to become a philosophical idea that’s fun to talk about, a self-help project to teach us to live better. I need to be reminded often that following Jesus is not merely life-enhancing; it is life-changing.

But even with a changed life, it can be frightening to tell our story when our story isn’t over yet. We don’t know if the faith that helps us survive today will be so strong tomorrow. What if I tell my story to the whole church and then I fall apart in front of them? There is no guarantee that my hope and my faith will last.

I also know that for many of the people who were watching, it was a painful experience to see those cards. They are living on the first side of their card, waiting for side two. They don’t have a miracle yet, or hope, or faith, or an answer. They just have the problem.

We often have to lean on the faith of our friends, and believe that the God who changed them can change us as well. We have to believe there is more. We must know there is more.

Some of you may have received an old photo or two from me via email in the past couple of weeks. If you haven’t, yet, don’t despair. It could mean that I tried but your email provider stripped them because they were too big or too embarrassing, or it could mean that my image in your photo made me look too fat or too goofy, or maybe I just don’t have any photos of you (in which case, where have you been hiding?).

The reason for the old pictures? It first started when Cyndi and I decided to build a new house and then Cyndi said we should clean out all the back-shelf boxes we’ve accumulated since 1982. In his book Soul Salsa, Leonard Sweet wrote, “The more you live in place, the more your space becomes silted with artifacts.” He wrote that about us. Twenty-six years of living in the same house has produced a lot of artifacts, and digging through the piles is a bit like archeology.

Some of our artifacts are shoe boxes full of photos. Holiday photos and race photos and family reunion photos and little kids (were our children ever that small?) in the backyard with our pet rabbits photos and church group photos and piano recital photos and horseback-riding and chore-doing photos and aerobics photos and vacation photos and church ski photos and band trip photos and high school graduation photos, and I guess I shouldn’t go on and on about this but, some of you are in some of those photos.

The other reason I’ve been sending photos by email is that my friend and personal computer wizard, Frank, replaced my ancient 5-year-old printer with a combination printer-scanner-copier and now I can scan old photos more often and much easier.

The thing is, even bad photos, and by bad photos I mean crooked or out-of-focus or finger-in-the-nose or eyes-closed, have a story behind them. And it’s hard to throw away a story. It’s pretty easy to throw away a poorly taken photo, but if that photo is a link to a story I want to remember, I’ll keep the picture every time. I’m afraid of losing my stories.

Last summer I scanned old family pictures with the intent of printing digital photo albums to give to our now-grown-up kids. It isn’t easy to show pictures when the only place they reside is on a computer. Passing around a laptop is not the same as passing around a family photo album.

I scanned a lot of pictures, but I haven’t yet published them in a book. I didn’t know if I should group them by event, or by chronology, or by person. (If you have any suggestions, let me know.) And now, with our current archeological project underway, I have even more pictures to scan.

I guess the remainder of my summer will be a long dig through more and more old boxes, which means, more and more stories.

Sweet wrote, “Stories sanctify space. If those artifacts come without stories or purpose, no matter how beautiful or expensive they may be, you are turning your home into a garbage dump.” He suggested getting rid of anything that doesn’t have a story attached.

When we first moved into this house in 1982 we weren’t old enough, we didn’t have enough accumulated history between us, to follow the only-keep-things-if-they-have-a-story rule. But that is no longer true. Nowadays, we have lots of stuff and lots of history and lots of stories. It’s harder to justify keeping something just because it’s pretty. It needs a story.

Why are stories so important? Because it’s our stories that tell us who we are; knowing who we are is hard because we’re constantly changing.

In one of my favorite movies – Joe verses the Volcano – Joe Banks, a man who has lost track of himself, asked Marshall, his chauffeur, where he should go shopping for clothes. Marshall stopped the car and said, “You say to me you want to go shopping, you want to buy clothes, but you don’t know what kind. You leave that hanging in the air, like I’m going to fill in the blank; that to me is like asking me who you are, and I don’t know who you are. I don’t want to know. It’s taken me my whole life to find out who I am, and I’m tired now, you hear what I’m saying?”

Marshall was right: it takes our whole life to find out who we are. But it isn’t about clothes; it’s about our stories.

So I don’t know what I’ll do with these boxes of old photos. I suspect I’ll scan some to email, probably mail a few analog copies to friends, and put the rest back in the shoe boxes and on a shelf in our new house. The stories they tell are too loud to throw away.

I figured if there was someone exactly like me, they had to be in love with someone exactly like Cyndi, and drive a red Toyota Tacoma pickup, and read lots of books, and have friends exactly like my friends, and have run in 41 consecutive pairs of New Balance shoes. How could there be someone exactly like all that and yet we haven’t bumped into each other somewhere sometime somehow?

I almost had a double, once. When I was a student at the University of Oklahoma there was a guy who looked a lot like me. He wore the same style glasses. He had the same brown curly hair. He had the same reddish-brown beard. He was approximately the same height and build as me. In fact, we looked so much alike, there was one time when his roommate walked over to my table in the cafeteria and talked to me for several minutes about his schedule for the week. I didn’t know who he was at the time, and didn’t know how to respond to this talkative stranger who was giving me so many specific detail about his life. I just sat there, nodding my head. He walked away thinking I was his roommate.

What made me think about this was something that happened last Saturday afternoon while I was digging through old boxes and throwing stuff away in preparation for our move into a new house next fall. I discovered an essay fragment I’d written in 1995 to read at the Midland Writer’s Group weekly meeting. Apparently, I had checked a book out of the Midland County Library titled “Meditations from the Breakdown Lane, by James Shapiro. I read it the first time in 1986, soon after it was first published, and I wanted to read it again. As I was thumbing through the book I saw a yellow sticky note stuck on page 45. It was the same kind of sticky note I’ve used for many years to mark my favorite passages for copying into my journal when I can’t use a highlighter.

In 1995, I wrote, “Surely that isn’t my sticky note from 1986, is it? But who else would have put it in there … my mirror me? How many people are there in Midland County who use yellow sticky notes to mark passages in obscure distance running books?”

But to claim it as my own sticky note meant it had been stuck on page 45 since 1986, and it also probably meant no one else had read the book since then.

I wrote, “When I returned the book to the library I left the sticky note on the same page. Who knows, I might read it again in the year 2005. I wonder if it will still be there.”

So on Monday I went to the library at my first opportunity and found that same book on the shelf, and yes, I am almost too embarrassed to write this since it seems too contrived to be true, there was a yellow sticky note on page 45. Still. Really.

Was it the same one? Had it been there since 1986? Was it mine? Without a C.S.I. lab at my disposal it was impossible to prove or disprove.

This time, however, I took the note out of the book and threw it away. A librarian once told me that the glue from a sticky note will eventually soak into the paper and destroy the book. I don’t know how long that takes, but apparently longer than twenty years.

I must say, finding that sticky note again, for the second time, was spooky. It felt like scheduled déjà vu.

It felt like a glimpse into who I am, and how much I’m still like who I use to be. It felt more revealing than even the old photos from 1995 that I found in the same box with the essay. It felt like I have someone to live up to. Me.

At one point near the end of the movie, the Captain of the spaceship said to his computer copilot, who was trying to prevent a return to a burned-out and polluted earth because it was not survivable, “I don’t want to survive. I want to live.”

When I heard that comment, I pulled out one of my 3×5 cards and scribbled in the dark: How often do I choose survival over life?

Only a few days before seeing the movie I was in the county library, upstairs in the magazine section looking, for an article in a past issue of Time Magazine. As I was coming down the stairs to the first floor, I realized how I was tightly gripping the handrail with my right hand and how I was moving slowly down the stairs favoring my left leg. As if I was hobbling down stairs with a broken leg.

The reason I noticed this was because my left leg felt great that day and my knee was happy and flexible and I had no reason to be limping down the stairs. I stopped about halfway down, released the handrail, rebalanced my book bag on my shoulder, and quickly moved down the stairs like a nimble youngster: pop, pop, pop.

Walking out to my pickup it occurred to me that limping had become a habit that lived on longer than my original injury. My muscle memory kept me compensating even when I no longer need it. In fact, the very act of limping was causing additional injury from imbalance and muscle strain.

I wondered, was it possible to live so long in injury that my body might forget how to live without it? Was it possible to forget how good life could be? Was it possible I’d taught myself to actually enjoy limping? After all, it gave me a convenient excuse to explain away poor performances.

I was reading a book of essays titled, I Was Told There’d Be Cake by Sloane Crosley, and she wrote of the time when she was misdiagnosed as having hemochromatosis, a too-much-iron-in-the-blood disease. Later, when she found out she wasn’t sick after all, she was a little sad. “I had myself an explanation for everything that had ever been wrong with me,” she wrote. “I wanted to hold my flaws close but controlled like a balloon tied to my wrist with a string. If anything went wrong, all I had to do was tug at the string and bring my explanation down for others to see. This is who I am and this is why.”

I often think to myself, I’m handling this situation just fine. I’m compensating. I’m getting by. All I have to do is get used to this limp and downgrade my expectations a bit and I’ll be OK. At least I’m surviving.

So it’s like whenever I take my first run in a new pair of running shoes and I’m amazed that they are so light and cushy and comfortable. It fools me every time. I realize for the first time how bad my old shoes had become. Only last week, while running in my old shoes, they just felt like shoes. Who knew they were so broken down?

Living with an injury can be the same as those old shoes. I get so used to it; I forget how good life could be. The injured life, just feels like life.

Not only do I have to fix what’s broken in my body and my life, I have to strengthen what is weak. I have to forget the past and learn a new way of walking. I have to break the limping habit, and choose to live.

Kevin is our 5-year-old nephew who’s been living with us for the past few months. I suspect some of our lifestyle choices have been confusing to young Kevin.

For example, the fact that he used the phrase “I hope” rather than taking for granted the presence of birthday cake showed his realization and understanding that he has been living with people totally beyond his comprehension. It’s as if he was dumped into a house full of coneheads from France who haven’t yet grasped the most important features of American life. “I hope there will be cake,” he says. In his mind, it would be inconceivable to have a birthday without birthday cake. That is, until now.

I said, “You know, Kevin, I don’t care for cake all that much. I would rather have birthday apple pie.”

“But I was hoping for some birthday cake.”

“But is it my birthday. You can have cake for your birthday … in six months.”

Well, Sunday after church – where he behaved very well and successfully survived big church sitting next to his grouchy uncle – Kevin asked, “Uncle Berry, is this a restaurant day?”

“Yes, we are going with friends to McAlister’s.”

“Is that where I always eat racanoni and cheese?”

“Yes, it is.”

When the server brought our Fiesta Chicken Wraps and Kevin’s macaroni and cheese, Cyndi deftly palmed the package of Teddy Grahams from the tray before Kevin saw it. It was good to know she still has her touch. Kevin asked me, “Uncle Berry, will you open my package of chips?”

“Sure; after you eat ten bites of macaroni and cheese.”

He looked a bit downcast, and asked, “How about four bites?”

“How about eight bites?”

“How about four?”

“You don’t understand negotiating, do you? How about you eat all of it and then I will open your chips?”

“OK, how about eight bites.”

Kevin actually ate his eight bites, even though he first tried to sneak past us by counting individual pieces of macaroni instead of complete bites. Cyndi was on to his tricky ways immediately. I said, “Kevin, Aunt Cyndi is a professional teacher and kid wrangler. You can’t slip something like that past her.”

Much to our surprise he ate all his macaroni and cheese and all his chips. And he was so happy to know there were Teddy Grahams for desert. Then, on our way out of the restaurant as we got our obligatory drink refills for the long ride home, Kevin noticed a plate of giant delicious-looking individually-wrapped chocolate chip cookies. He looked up at Cyndi and said, “I think they have cookies for children who eat all their food.”

Cyndi said, “No, that’s what the Teddy Grahams were for.”

Kevin looked over at me for help and I just shrugged my shoulders and said, “Nice try.”

Later that Sunday evening we went to the AXIS worship service at our church. Kevin looks forward to this because they serve flavored sodas with ice and whipped cream (which he calls pudding). He successfully drank all the liquid out of his cup before knocking it over on the floor. I helped him clean it up and threw away the cup, but Kevin kept his bendy straw, which he immediately converted into a handgun. That kept him occupied for awhile until he discovered he could stick the straw in his nose and it would stay there by itself. I was actually proud that he’d made one of the more useful discoveries of a young boy’s life so I let him play with the straw in his nose until I realized he was distracting the college girls sitting behind us. I didn’t want this to turn into an ugly distraction, so I took his straw and stuffed it into my pocket.

Kevin, feeling sad, put his head down on the table next to Aunt Cyndi’s MacBook, on which she was recording the service for her podcast, and went to sleep. He didn’t move again for the next 15 minutes. I think he was dreaming of birthday cake. One can only hope.

I also wonder why every age group thinks their generation invented rock-and-roll, and believes the rock-and-roll played by their generation is the version that will last forever.

Last Sunday night we went to a concert in Dallas that started with a long set by the Doobie Brothers, followed by another long set by Chicago. It was an amazing evening, if for no other reason than to see men in their 50s who still have their chops, who play as well as ever, and appear to enjoy every minute of it.

Now, I know what some of you regular readers are thinking: Enough already about Chicago and all that dated 1970s music. All I can say to that is, “Well, no, it isn’t enough. There’s more.”

Not only does the music of my youth stay with me, some songs in particular left permanently implanted images in my brain. I remember the first time I heard “Jesus Is Just Alright With Me,” by the Doobie Brothers. I was in Hobbs, New Mexico, on a dark and damp Sunday evening in 1973, driving my 1964 Chevy Biscayne to Bellview Baptist Church for the evening service, when I heard the song on my radio. I sat, entranced, in the caliche parking lot until the song ended. I knew the Doobie Brothers, of all people, had not found religion, but I didn’t care about their motives. They were singing the coolest song I had ever heard that had the name “Jesus” in it. I went out that week and bought their Toulouse Street 8-track. I eventually wore it out playing it in my car, but it outlasted three 8-track players.

But Chicago was my music-of-choice when I was in high school and college. I bought every album they made (well, at least the first 14), and I still have them all (even though I don’t have a turntable that will play them). I also bought books called “Sketch Scores” which had all of their songs, including the horn lines, and I spent many nights laying in bed listening to the albums and studying the horns.

I heard “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” by Chicago, on the radio in the summer of 1971, and hearing the brief trombone solo at the end of the song changed my life. Before that week was over I went to Gibson’s Discount Center in Hobbs and bought the Chicago Transit Authority album, their first, recorded and released in 1969. I remember listening to the opening song, “Introduction,” for the first time, with its numerous solos and swinging horn lines and, well, all I can say is, it rearranged the molecules of my life, morphing me into a musician. Just like that.

And to my joy, the first song Chicago played Sunday night was “Introduction.” As soon as I heard those first two distinct eighth notes, bump bump, a pickup and beat one, I was carried away, like magic. “Sir, I can name that song in two notes.” “Sir, I can be captured, with two notes.” Like magic.

I must say my favorite part of the concert was the encore, which consisted of six songs, with both bands on stage playing, fourteen musicians at one time, including three drummers. There was a lot of energy.

The combination of the two bands had a lot of texture. Their two styles blended well without much overlap, so each song had an original sound. The Doobies changed the feel and depth of Chicago songs “Free” and “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is” and “25 or 6 to 4,” adding complex rhythms and density of sound. Chicago made “Rockin’ Down the Highway” and “Listen to the Music” swing with fine horn arrangements laid on top of the traditional Doobie Brothers boogie guitars.

Well, we had great seats for the concert. We could see and hear very well. And since the audience was made up mostly of people my age, we got to stay in our seats most of the evening. However, more than once, Cyndi looked longingly to our right where people were standing and dancing the entire night, wishing she could be having fun with them.

But even I had to stand up when the combined bands played “Free.” In a brief instant I became who Cyndi is all the time, someone who has to move their body to experience music. Granted, I was just moving my arms, which hardly qualifies as movement on Cyndi’s scale, but it was heartfelt and sincere. I just wanted to be free!

Well, since John told me about that conversation, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to answer the question for myself. Why do I need to read so many books? Surely I’ve caught by now?

It’s true, I read a lot of books because I want to learn new things, but it’s seldom the actual data that I’m interested in. Most of the time I read because I want to know how the author thinks; I want to engage the author in a conversation. I seldom read a book without using a highlighter to mark my favorite parts, and I often write comments in the margins of my books, either agreeing with the author or disagreeing with the author, or linking something the author said with my own thoughts and observations.

Sometimes I want to import the writer’s thoughts into my own heart and mind. For example, one of my reading goals for 2008 is to read all the Spenser novels written by Robert B. Parker. I want to absorb his sense of time and pace and dialogue, to be a better storyteller in my own writing. I’ve learned the value in immersing myself in a particular author, especially if my goal is to absorb his technique and his voice and his imagination. Several years ago, 1999 to be exact, I read every book and essay by C. S. Lewis that I could get my hands on, in honor of the 100^th anniversary of his birth. It was a lot of deep reading, and none of it was easy. You need a broad swath to catch someone’s heart - reading only one or two books is not enough.

Recently, I’ve come to understand that often I read in order to have something new to share. For me, it isn’t enough to simply journey through life; I need to tell about it. I’m not the solitary man I claim to be, even though I certainly enjoy solitude. I have a need to talk about what I’ve been through. I have to tell my story, and reading brings new stories.

Sometimes I get frustrated because I can’t remember something from a particular book. I remember a few years ago when Cyndi and I remodeled our son’s old bedroom into a library, I was a little embarrassed as I pulled books out of boxes and put them on the shelf … embarrassed that there were so many books I knew I’d read (they had my highlighting and my handwriting all through them) but I had no memory of reading them or what they were about. I asked myself: what is the point in reading if I don’t remember?

Well, sometimes reading is not so much an intellectual process as it is an existential one. To quote Kathleen Norris, one my favorite writers, books are “a way of reading the world and one’s place in it … working the earth of my heart.”

I wrote this in the margin of her book: “I read so many books and listen to songs and sermons on my Nano, hoping the bits and pieces will compost in my subconscious, and come out as intelligent thought when I write and teach.” I do remember more than I realize, even if I don’t always remember the original source.

Here is another thought about reading. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote – “All happenings, great and small, are parables whereby God speaks; the art of life is to get the message.” I like the notion that everything is a message from God, but my favorite part of that quote is the phrase “the art of life.”

I like it because life is not a formula to be solved; it’s not a computer program to run; it’s not a game to be played; it’s not a random set of events to be survived; it’s not chaos (well, maybe on a mathematical level – but even then there is pattern in chaos). Life is art. And there is an art to living.

As in all forms of art, there is skill involved. And any time skill is involved, there is room for improvement. We can get better at living life, and life can be lived elegantly, regardless of the circumstances.

And so, why do I need to read another book? Because, for me, reading is the art of life, and I want more.

First, I met with Dr. Smith who looked at my shoes, and at my feet, and pushed on secret pressure points known only to CIA interrogators, asking, “Does that hurt?” She kept moving her fingers and pushing until she found the right spots. She made lots of notes about my feet and my knees, and I’m sure I have a lot of work to do. It was fun, actually. I could tell that her main goal was to get me back to running as soon as possible.

After that, I had an appointment with three physical therapists, all at the same time: Drew, Bob, and Gladys. All three of them were holding clipboards and asking questions and making notes and comparing observations. Ordinarily I would’ve felt too exposed and vulnerable standing alone in my running shorts with no shirt while they analyzed all my shortcomings. In fact, in general, I don’t usually enjoy that much hands-on attention. I don’t like to be fussed over or pampered with or tucked in.

But this experience was more than comfortable, it was enjoyable. They pushed on my joints and bent my legs, had me lean right and left, told me raise one leg then the other, twist one way and lean another way, bend my knees, straighten my legs, try to stand up using only one leg, and like that. They spent a lot more time on me than I expected even one therapist to spend, much less three therapists. It must have been a slow day in the clinic, is what I thought. Or they were looking forward to the challenge of fixing me.

They sent me home with two pages of exercises, and the expectations of a follow-up visit in a month. What is more, they were joking about making me their poster-child runner at next year’s Marathon Expo. They said most runners aren’t comfortable standing up in front of a crowd to tell their story. “Well, I don’t have a problem doing that,” I said. “But first, I have to get better.”

I left Austin that day with hope. The therapists and the doctor gave me lots of hope … and not just hope for a sustainable life, but hope for a better future. Not just a pain free existence, but hope for a new and improved and a faster life.

Who knows how all of this will work out? The human body is not as predictable as we’d like, and I know that anything can happen. But still, hope is a mighty thing. Because of the hope the Seton team gave me, I haven’t missed a single day doing my exercises, and I’ve become hyper-conscious to how I run and how my feet land and how my hips move.

One of the things they pointed out to me was how un-symmetrical I was. Apparently I am so unsymmetrical I have muscles that never have to work at all. In fact, they said I have only one butt that works, and my inner abs don’t work, and only one hamstring works as hard as it should. But my quads and outer abs are so strong they’ve learned to overpower those other slacker muscles. I get by using the muscles that work best. Because I am so unbalanced, my pelvis gets out of square and my knees go wobbly and my right foot slaps the pavement too hard, and … well, you get the picture.

So this morning, as I was brushing my teeth, I thought about being unbalanced. I’ve been teaching my guys that we should learn to rely on our strengths and don’t waste all our energy trying to improve weaknesses. But, at least in the case of muscle groups, there is a danger of relying exclusively on our strengths. We can get so good at compensating for our weaknesses that we end up walking with a limp. That’s what happened to me.

Now that I’m approaching my 52^nd birthday (which is only 11 in Celsius), I am hoping that maybe I can finally become a balanced guy. Maybe with a little more therapy.

In the Headquarters I bought a Guadalupe Mountains T-shirt and talked to the ranger behind the desk about the looming rain clouds outside, and how I got rained on Thursday evening on the trail. He asked where I’d been hiking, so I showed him my route up to Wilderness Ridge and my day-trip into the Lincoln National Forest. He knew the area, and asked if the gate between the two parks was marked or sealed. I said, “No, just an orange homemade turnstile metal gate.”

Two days earlier I’d hiked up the Permian Reef Trail under dark gray rain clouds and occasional sprinkles. I tried to hurry so I could set up camp before the rain started, but my “up” pack weighed 65 pounds and it slowed me down a bit.

Once I finally cleared the ridgeline and entered the pine trees it started raining hard, so I sat on a log under a low pine tree, took off my backpack and dug out my tent’s rain fly for a makeshift shelter. I guess I sat there for 15 to 20 minutes in the rain. There was a lot of thunder right over my head and I knew I was taking a chance with lightning by sitting under a tree (there were burned trees all around), but getting struck by lightning was merely a possibility, while getting soaked by rain was certain.

When it quit raining I crawled out from under my shelter, rolled the rain fly up loosely under my arm (in case it started raining again), shouldered my backpack, and took off down the trail. I found the campsite almost right away and set up my new REI tent in a slight drizzle. I got it set up by 5:00 PM and moved my wet backpack and all my stuff inside before the rain started again. All in all, it was a beautiful afternoon.

I keep coming back to the Guadalupe Mountains because they have a profound effect on me. They aren’t visually breathtaking in the same way as the snow-covered Rocky Mountains in Colorado, but they feed my heart. The very harshness of these desert mountains speaks to me. They seem bold, brave, dependable, robust and courageous … like I hope to be.

Looking out across the desert from up on top of these mountains feels like peering into infinity. The only sounds I could hear were distant airliners flying overhead, the faint rustling of leaves from very
slight breezes, and occasional birds singing. And I could hear my own pen scratching on the paper of my journal.

This was my first time up this trail, and I didn’t know what to expect about the camp site. Wilderness Ridge sounded like a Disney Resort with stylized log cabins where the staff wears coonskin caps and says
things like, “Well, lookee yonder!” But my concerns were unfounded. It was a beautiful place to stay.

At dusk I sat on the cliff edge overlooking McKittrick Canyon, and I could see the visitor center parking lot 2,000′ below. It was completely empty except for my car. Apparently I had this entire portion of the park all to myself. It didn’t feel lonely, however; it felt strong. It felt like ownership.

On Friday I took an 8-mile day-hike through the orange gate into New Mexico, into the Lincoln National Forest. I ate lunch while sitting on a big flat rock overlooking Devil’s Den Canyon. (Why are places like
this always named “Devil’s” Den instead of “God’s” Den?) I was sitting very close to the edge of a 1,000′ cliff, with my feet hanging over the edge, eating a Blueberry Crisp Clif Bar, when it occurred to me
not to fall off since no one would ever find me. I couldn’t imagine this canyon got many visitors at all.

I read from my Daily Bible, from Proverbs, and the author used the phrase “apply your heart to my teachings” twice. I thought about how different that was than saying “apply your mind,” or “apply your
behavior,” to my teachings.

Back at the Park Headquarters, the desk ranger looked up from my trail map, after he asked about the gate, and said, Well, the Lincoln National Forest was closed to all visitors on May 1st due to the high fire risk. I guess they didn’t see you.”

“There can’t be many corners of the Lincoln Forest more remote than where I was.”

“You’re right. And they weren’t watching for hikers coming into the park through an obscure backcountry gate.”

“I certainly wasn’t carrying anything that could start a fire.”

“No?”

“Well, maybe MacGyver could have started a fire with what I was carrying, but I couldn’t.”

At the time, I was actually on the lookout for a big black Lab who could run with Cyndi and Katie. My theory was that a big black dog would frighten any would-be attackers whether or not he was actually scary. I phoned the City Animal Control and asked them to be on the lookout for a scary-looking, yet sweet and gentle, black Lab. A few days later they phoned me back to tell me about a gentle female golden Lab that had been abandoned and was being cared for by a family until she could be adopted. Close enough.

So Katie and Cyndi and I drove over to visit the dog, and we all fell in love with her at once. I remember standing in the backyard contemplating the value of a black dog verses a golden dog, while Cyndi and Katie were sitting on the concrete porch with (soon-to-be-named) Lady draped across their laps. Apparently, the deal was already done; I was just the last to know.

When we brought Lady home I said, “She looks like an outside dog to me.”

Cyndi said, “Sure, except for at night. She can live inside with us at night … or when it is cold … or any other time we let her in.” I was out of the decision-making loop already.

We learned some things about Lady right away. She didn’t like being in water deeper than her belly, and she showed no interest in playing fetch (two core behaviors for most Labrador Retrievers). She didn’t seem to care much about playing or wrestling. She seldom barked, and never barked inside the house. She never made a mess in the house. She only dug in the backyard to find a cool place to lie down, and even then she was discrete about her digging locations. She never chewed anything she wasn’t supposed to chew. She mostly liked to lay around on the floor and lick the carpet.

And, she loved to run.

I realize that all dogs like to run around the backyard, but that isn’t what I mean. Lady loved to go for 2 miles, or 5 miles, or sometimes 10 or 12 miles. She simply loved it. All you had to do was rattle the leash and she would start leaping in the air. She could tell when anyone in the house was getting dressed to go running, and she would just go ballistic. It was the only time in her life that she showed excitement, and she was completely over-the-top. It was often hard to lace up our running shoes because Lady was right in our face jumping and smiling and … well, being overjoyed. The girl just loved to run.

I have no idea how many miles Lady has run in the past ten years, with Cyndi (mostly), or me and Katie (occasionally), but it must be several thousand. I once offered her a running log to keep track of her miles, but she wasn’t interested.

But time and mileage has taken its toll. In the past couple of years we’ve noticed Lady can’t go the distance like she used to. She is good for a short jog around the school, but that is as far as she can go. She still gets excited when she knows someone is getting dressed to run, and she still wants to go, but she just doesn’t have the legs for it any more. We often have to sneak into the garage to get dressed so she won’t know what we are doing, since we feel guilty leaving her behind.

And there is another change we’ve noticed. Lady wants to be close to us all the time.

She has always been independent and self-contained, and content with minimal attention from us. She was happy to lie on the floor and ignore any humans in the house. I often wondered if she was deaf, since she showed such little response to us apart from running.

But lately she just wants to lie on the floor at our feet all the time. She wants to sleep on the floor of our bedroom right next to one of us, right where we put our feet if we get up at night, making a big target for tripping over in the middle of the night. We have adjusted to her being underfoot, and in fact, we like it. She still doesn’t care much to be petted or rubbed for a long time, but she wants to be close to us. It is sweet and tender to watch her follow us around the house.

The reason Lady is on my mind this week is because of a verse I read from my Daily Bible. Psalm 27:4 says, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.” (NIV)

When I read that verse, I thought first of Lady, who just wants to be in our house lying at our feet, very close. I want to live with God that same way. In The Message, it says, “I’ll study at his feet.” Isn’t that sweet? I want to be just like Lady.