Friends - Proverbs 18

I am so proud of my children. They have all learned well the adage if you want to have friends be a friend. They all have friends, good friends. I am reminded of this because of my reading Proverbs 18. This chapter begins and ends with proverbs involving friendship. My children had bumps along the road but as maturing adults they all have sets of friends that they love and hang out with. They know how to be friends. I am so delighted for them.

I have maybe one friend, aside from my wife. My wife and I have our good moments.

But underlying it all I do not really want to put out the effort to be a friend. So I do not have any friends, like I said the one. But he and I are about the same. I do work at being DW's friend some of the time. It does not come naturally. I have to work very consciously at it. Often I'd rather not put in the effort, preferring to be alone with all my media distractions. We are all made by God as social beings. I am no exception. But I find it hard, sort of like a moth being attracted to a light yet getting burned by the heat.

Yeah i suppose you can trace it back to childhood upbringing and experiences. I suppose we all had experiences of hazing, rejection, exclusion and the like. In my case it also has a lot to do with how I responded to it, my sin, if you will. I chose to withdraw and not trust people. I saw everyone as an obstacle and an enemy. To this day I am not comfortable trusting someone to be a friend. I think they must have an angle.

My staring at people must come from the same childish ways of dealing with social situations. Maybe it started as a sort of passive/agressive way to get back. I assume that no one will like me. My best friend shares this trait in common with me.

These days I am trying my best not to stare in crowd situations. I have to work hard at it and think I am mostly successful. But others around me seem to do it so effortlessly. I still have to work hard at it. Mostly likely I will be working hard at it until I get to go home to Jesus. This is one major reason why crowd situations are so stressful.

Speaking of crowd situations I got up at 6 AM Saturday and walked down to Tranquility Park to do a 5k run/walk. I did not know what I was getting myself into. I got there at 7 AM thinking the race would soon start, like most 5k's.

But this was "Race for the Cure". This race over the years has gotten weird. And politically correct. There must have been over 1,000 homemade t-shirts commemorating this race, specific breast cancer victims (or survivors), companies linking themselves to breast cancer research, or even "take care of my tatas" or "check my rack". A few people wore breast related costumes. I will not describe them here. This is an event, not a race.

There were over 35,000 people here on Allen Parkway and backed up to Tranquility Park. I must say they were very well behaved. Again, this was not a race, most of them planned to stroll in groups over the 5k course.

I got there at 7 PM thinking I was right on time. I found the race was not to officially start until 8:30 AM. Who does that in Houston? So I had to wait fairly impatiently. At 8:30 I was by the walkers and nothing moved. Finally about 15 minutes later I found my way through the crowds up to the front and found there was a little trickle of people getting on the course. After thinking for a spell I did get on the course and found lots of walkers like myself already going. I actually did run (jog slowly) about 1/4 of the race but finished fairly slow in 49 minutes. That can be ascribed to all the people I had to dodge. There were people with baby strollers, children running underfoot and lots of people walking in a row.

I had no idea really, when I turned back of the loop at Montrose and West Dallas back onto Allen Parkway to head back to Tranquility Park I found there were thousands, and I mean thousands of people still coming out walking slowly. There I few races where I finish in front of over half the participants but this is one.

But I have told people to remind me next year to skip the "Race for the Cure"!