I wanna tell you about my best friend. My best gal pal pallie gallie.
C has been a steadfast friend for like 35 years, and we've been through some ups and downs but this is my forever friend. I cannot imagine life without her friendship.
Right now, she's going through some shit, big giant shit, and it's hard. It's hard to watch and be hopeful that everything will be alright.
But everything will be alright. Things may be different, but they'll be alright. We just never see it while we're in the middle of the horribleness and struggle. I think back on this blog, the house loss and the Bank that Shall Not Be Named. If I didn't have this blog to remind me of things sometimes, well. I may not have a recollection, or remember just how bad it was. It would be a dull and distant echo.
I always use music, as you know, to connect to a bigger reality. Many songs by Guster and so many others have gotten me through some rough patches.
It is November so it is "post season" and C reports it is hot. So hot. I was afraid it would be cold but I guess climate is ... unpredictable.
She's been struggling. Blisters, pain, exhaustion. She sends me screenshots of her fitbit app with ten times the amount of steps I'm doing just around the neighborhood. I thought they'd be doing maybe 5 miles a day so I was going to try and in spirit and solidarity. But 13, 17, 18, 21 miles! Um .... wow.
It's a lot. And it's hard. THIS is hard.
Pilgrimages are supposed to be challenging, an opportunity to center one's thoughts, focus on your relationship to God, yadda yadda. It is hard to appeal to your inner heart and faith and light of Jesus when your feet are blistered beyond help and you've tripped while carrying your backpack. It is not a paved road in most places, it's cobblestone, so tripping or stumbling is a risk. It's a struggle, internally/spiritually/emotionally/physically. Everythingly.
And while she's been doing this, it was to be an escape from what's happening in the United States with the elections, but it opens a whole can of discomfort and struggle that is different from the president. Does it take your mind off the elections and the results? maybe? But also for me, it would compound it.
Every day she's been checking in with me... and I've been thinking about Guster's song "The Captain," I found this sweet under-visited video of a stop they did at a rock-climbing gym to play some songs on tour earlier this year.
Face forward
Move slow
Forge ahead
In a lot of ways I always think of:
Do justice
Love mercy
Walk humbly [with your God]
from the prophet Micah when I see those words together, they just connect for me. I'm weird like that.
Anyway, at the end of the song they sing "Onward" several times. And every day I say a little prayer for C and I say the lines from the Captain, and just Onward, Onward.
So many Guster friends have Guster tattoos, and my friend Kacey has Onward and some little waves tattooed to her wrist so she can look down at it and make that her mantra. I have a bracelet. I've been wearing this one for days and just touching it like a little rosary, saying little prayers, each letter. Each blue or green bead. A sort of pilgrimage along with her, without the blisters and bruises.
It will be over eventually. She'll get to Tuy, she'll come home. And it'll be okay. Digits below.
digits
exercise: 12/12 hours. 26 minutes/1.15 mile walk (treadmill said 1 mile but the fitbit measures my pace and seems more on target for what I'd usually get at 26 min). circuit room full of high school kids. 8k+ steps by bedtime
blood glucose:
8:15am: 164
4pm: 153
10pm: 176
food:
coffee/water
11:45am: large bowl of homemade chicken salad (mayo, cream cheese, grapes, walnuts)
noon: metformin
2pm: apple w/pb
7:15pm: metformin+jardiance; bowl of chili (beans & meat, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, a couple fritos)
8pm: 4 Oreo cookies
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