Lessons From Children

Well I have returned from a week of doing day camps (vacation Bible school) in Carson, ND. The family that we stayed with owns a ranch outside of town in the Heart River valley, and the house we stayed at was at the bottom of the valley by the river, and it had little-to-no cell phone service and extremely poor Wi-Fi. Needless to say, it was heaven. Carson is in southwest North Dakota and is a pretty hilly place, making running out there tough. To make it tougher, there were two directions to go- north or south- to go with the fact that the house was at the floor of the valley. This meant that no matter which direction I picked, I signed up for around 10 minutes of tough uphill running at the start of each and every morning run (when my legs are still trying to wake up). It was worth it. I’ve been discovering the amazingness of morning runs out in the country this summer. The quiet and peacefulness of it all is simply stunning, and the beautiful western North Dakota scenery helps too J

So back to day camps. During the camps we stay with somebody and work with kids for around 6 hours a day. We play games, do crafts, sing songs, learn from the Bible, and play more games. One of the interesting things about kids is that they’re pretty easy to read when it comes to what they want. They generally tell you outright, whether you want to hear it or not. One of the kids was annoying me with his 5000 questions, each one of them going exactly like this: “Can we play octopus?!”

Octopus is a game similar to tag. Kids line up on one side and have to run to the other without getting tagged by the octopus (or multiple octopuses [octopi?]). If they get tagged, they sit where they were tagged and become seaweed. As you may expect, this game favors the fast on their feet. This camper thought he was really fast (to be fair he was the fastest of the campers), and so he always wanted to play octopus because he knew he could win. When he won, he didn’t want to be the octopus because then he wouldn’t get a chance to win. And when he won, it was not in a respectable fashion. He would walk as slow as possible to the other side, only running when somebody was chasing him specifically. He would look around for validation from other kids and us counselors, hoping that somebody would acknowledge how good he was at the game. It drove me crazy. But then I had the sobering realization that I am no different than he.

When I go to meets or races, I know that I’m constantly looking around for validation from other athletes, or maybe even the slightest hint that I could be as good as my brain tells me I am. Even doing strides after an easy run, I find myself looking around to see if anybody is watching. It’s pathetic, really. I’ve tried to force myself to not pay attention to other people, but it’s hard. When I saw this camper’s wandering eyes, I could see myself before meets. When I saw him walking across the field instead of running, I saw myself running strides harder than I should at meets, trying to show off. When I saw how angry he got when he finally got tagged, and how he searched for broken rules to get out of being tagged, I saw myself falling apart when a workout doesn’t go my way.

So you know what camper? I’m not mad at you anymore. We are alike. I hope you join track and cross country someday, and I hope you do a better job than I do at making it more about serving others and less about yourself. Because that’s where true joy can come from. It’s something I work on each and every day, and we all should do that. Running is much more fun when you can share it with others, only as long as you can have some alone time in the North Dakota countryside every now and again! J

Have a Great Day!