Running the Race

A year ago yesterday my friend Rachel died.  She was a runner and total health FREAK, so it seems fitting to say that she finished her race here on earth and raced on ahead of us to heaven.  She was a beautiful woman, a beautiful friend, a beautiful spirit, and a beautiful servant of God.  Last year at this time, I was wondering how in the world I could sum up what she had been to me, or even talk about just SOME of what I saw in her.  She wanted us to celebrate her LIFE at her memorial service, not mourn her death.  There is no perfect way to remember her, or to honor her, or even to explain who she was with those of you who didn't know her.  So, this isn't good enough, but this was all I could come up with a year ago:

10 years ago, I met a mom at my church.  Her little boy was in the toddler nursery w/ my daughter, and he was SO ADORABLE.  When I was working in the nursery, I noticed that she would sneak down to the nursery door in the middle of the service to watch her little boy and sometimes she and her husband would even stand off to the side where the kids couldn’t see and kind of whisper to each other about him.  Yes, really, “that” mom, who has to come look at her baby every half hour!   I'm kind of a low-fuss mama myself, so I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be good friends.

About 9 – ½ years ago, I had just had a little baby boy named Ethan, and that same mom stopped me to admire my baby and told me that she was pregnant w/ a little boy SHE was going to name Ethan.  When she got married (and it turned out to be the exact same date my husband and I gotten married!), she had decided that she and her husband would have two boys, one named Dane and one named Ethan.  She was “that” mom!!  The one who plans everything out years ahead of time and even has names picked out before she gets married.  I was winging my life on a day-to-day basis.  Plus she told her toddler to kiss my baby.  Now I was really pretty sure we weren’t going to be good friends.

Years later, whenever we would tell people how we became friends, Rachel liked to tell people that *I* was too busy to be her friend, and that I finally agreed to meet her for a couple of playdates.  She would probably want me to tell you her side of the story, so I am mentioning it.  But I also have to tell you the truth, which is that *she* was the one who was too busy when I tried to get together w/ her, and *she* finally agreed to meet me for a couple of playdates.  At one point after that, I remember chatting w/ my 2 sisters and telling them that I might be starting up this new friendship, but I just wasn't sure that it was going to be a real friendship, and I confessed to them that, well . . . that it was because this new potential friend was Barbie brought to life.  You see, Rachel’s hair was always perfect, she wore MAKEUP AND JEWELRY to every play date, she was always dressed just so.  Even when she was a mom of TODDLERS!  Oh yes, this person was Barbie.  And I - I am not Barbie.  I have no desire to be Barbie.  And not much desire to be Barbie's friend either.

But after a month or so of getting to know my new Barbie friend, I realized that yes, this was going to be a real friendship.  We sat outside and watched our kids run around and we talked: about parenting, respecting our husbands even when we were pretty sure that they . . . ummm, . . . even when it was a challenge, homeschooling our kids, educating ourselves for that calling, and above all, following God’s call in our lives, because we both knew God was calling us to homeschool our kids, and believe me, it was – and still is! - a daunting task.

I finally confessed to Rachel, by the way, that I had been hesitant about striking up a friendship w/ a Barbie, and that’s when I learned how humble she was, because she could not stop laughing.  She loved that I thought that about her at first, but she loved that I stopped thinking that too.  And she loved that I told her what I thought.

We spent many hours raising our kids together.   There was a long stretch of playdates at Chick-Fil-A and I was seriously impressed when I learned that she was carrying a paddle in her carefully coordinated purse everywhere she went, because her mom told her (in love!) that one of her children needed more consistent discipline.  Even those of us who want to hear the truth do not always want to hear the truth about our darling children.  But Rachel accepted that from her mom and followed through.  So there was also a long stretch of spankings in the Chick-Fil-A restroom.  She was committed to God’s call on her life, and the biggest part of that was raising her kids to know God.  

She was also committed to living frugally and eating healthily.  When she found out I knew how to make jam and jelly and how to home can things like peaches and pears and tomato sauce, she determined that she was going to do it w/ me.  We started strawberry picking with our kids together every year.  We also spent hours blueberry picking, cherry picking, and raspberry picking.   There might have been a few unfortunate incidents. We *might* have been asked to leave one or two places.   But I am QUITE sure it was a coincidence that the U-pick blueberry place that had been in business for 30 years or more closed to public picking 2 years after we started going there.  OK, our kids might have spent more time running up and down the rows of bushes than picking berries, and yes, there was one little incident where we were standing a couple of rows apart, loudly discussing all of the various places we were sweating, not realizing that a much older gentleman was picking nearby - until he popped out of the bushes and hurried off.  But, just for the record, *I* was not the one talking about her thong underwear.   Of course Rachel was also the one that made sweating and getting dirty look good.

I want to speak the truth here, so I do want to also say that Rachel was not an easy friend to have.  First of all, there was the cleaning.  Every Monday she needed time alone so that she could wash all of her windows and her walls – yes, her walls got washed down w/ soap and water every week.  Nothing could be scheduled to conflict w/ Monday cleaning.  All of that berry and fruit picking?  Rachel always had to be the fastest at it.  She always had to finish before me!  And she was always trying to come up w/ ways to make jam faster and can peaches and pears faster.  It was . . . errrr . . . interesting at times.  And we learned there are just some shortcuts you can’t make.  There was also her habit of speaking her mind.  After I had my third baby, our friend Sue was pregnant w/ her fourth, and Rachel had decided she was done at two.  She picked up my sweet little newborn and said, “You’re done, aren’t you?  I can’t have more than one friend w/ 4 babies!”  I am really glad she hung in there w/ me even though I did go on to have a fourth.  And Sue took a very big gamble by having a fifth - but then, Rachel was also very forgiving.

We were each other’s homeschool support group at the beginning.  We discussed pros and cons of curriculum, the benefits of reading to your kids even when they are older, and how much time you really have to spend on handwriting.  But I never called Rachel up to cry on her shoulder about how I couldn’t get all of the lessons taught in my homeschool that week without knowing that she would then tell me about how she had gotten all 4 days done, and maybe even hearing that she had gotten a couple of extra lessons squeezed in.  Yes, not always an easy friend to have.

One thing I never understood about Rachel, though, was how nervous she got when she was in large groups.  One of the first times we were hanging out with a bunch of other homeschool moms, I thought I was helping her and giving her something to talk about, and announced that she had been homeschooled.  If you’re not a homeschool mom, you have to realize that almost all of us spend quite a bit of time wondering if we are doing a good job, and so, for those women, I had just given them somebody standing right in front of them who had obviously survived being homeschooled and looked none the worse from it.  In fact, she looked amazing.  It was like offering up a yummy doggie treat to a starving dog, so of course they all started swarming about Rachel and asking her questions.  She gave me a Look, and that is when I remembered that Rachel was actually a little embarrassed about having been homeschooled, and so I just stood back and laughed.  She survived, looking beautiful and poised as usual.  So I made sure I did that a couple more times.  :)

I think all of the women whose lives Rachel touched at the homeschool co-op where we taught together will tell you that she had a special way of making them feel included.  We used to talk about how special our co-op was for being so easy to fit into, but now I think that it was – at least in part - that Rachel that made it easy to be included.  And she was always reaching out to others, wanting them to be a part of things, and kind of putting people together.  She thought she had to make Sue be social and do fun things.  She knew I was worried about finding girlfriends for my daughter and arranged playdates with moms of other girls.  Even during her last weeks, she would tell her mom to remember to turn to specific people for comfort and support after she was gone.  She was always looking out for her friends and family and always willing to help them.  I used to marvel at how many friends she had, and how very special they were to her in so many different ways, and yet how humble she was about it.  She always said, over and over, that God brought her the friends that He knew she would need.  She never thought it had anything to do w/ her.

Two years ago in July, Rachel and her doctors were starting to realize something was seriously wrong w/ her health, and my house caught on fire.  My husband called her, and she was out trying not to worry and celebrating her birthday w/a bunch of girlfriends.  At first she showed a remarkable determination to believe that somebody was impersonating my husband and making up a story about a house fire.  But she got over that and came right to my house.  She stood there w/ us and watched the firemen finish chopping holes in my roof, and she went inside to get clothes for me when I couldn’t face it, and took us home to her house.  Whenever we had problems w/ our car that went through that fire, she was quick to lend us her SUV.  One time I even called her up about 10 minutes away.  Without even a hesitation she made it clear that it was NO problem whatsoever, and I shouldn’t even feel bad for asking.  She loved helping people in tangible ways.

I am so privileged to have been able to walk alongside Rachel in her final journey.  I treasure the memories I have of the talks we had during the months of her chemotherapy and radiation – times of having real conversations, asking hard questions about God and of God, and yet always coming back to our trust in His plan and His love for us.  This was a path she didn’t want, even if God healed her miraculously.  Even more than the cancer and the sickness, she hated being that special person “with a story.”  She wanted above all to be a person in the background, serving God quietly, being the person behind the special person.  But she gave that all to God too.  She gave to God her fears for her children.  She gave to God her fears for her husband.   She gave to God all of the things that she wanted for herself and her family and accepted what He gave her and asked only that it glorify Him and be used for His kingdom.  She did all this, only being able to see Him as through a glass, darkly, and knowing Him only partly.  And even though I miss her terribly, I rejoice in knowing that she has now opened her eyes to joy in His presence, seeing Him face to face and knowing Him fully.  She has finished her race, and she ran it well.

~Stephanie