Training Week 2

Training is beginning in earnest.

Two weeks ago I participated in an indoor training event where you attach your bike to a device fittingly called a "trainer," which essentially turns your pavement shredding machine into a stationary bike.

So there, inside the basement gathering space of an historic Atlanta church, we pounded out not miles, but certainly tons of sweat and calories.

Having missed an opportunity to do a group ride on Saturday because I was simply exhausted after the March for Life, I went yesterday to the area the group rode and kind of made up my own route.

Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

That's right!  This fat boy tore up Brookhaven's neighborhoods and logged 15 hard-fought miles on this Atlanta suburb's hilly roads.  Peachtree-Dunwoody Rd was particularly obnoxious to ride up, but I made it.  I tell myself as my legs burn and my heartrate hits 180 "Don't get off this bike!  Don't you dare get off this bike!"  It works for now...

The ride took, as you can see on the screenshot, almost an hour and a quarter.  Come June, I will need to be able to pull off 6 and 2/3 of those 15-milers to reach a century...also taking into account the ascents around Lake Tahoe and the altitude, most of the ride being well above a mile high, where the air is a good bit thinner and the heart has to work harder to oxygenate the muscles.

Since I haven't made much progress in the organization of the new team, I don't yet have names of the cancer patients or the sisters who care for them, so I offered the pain and the 4 mph uphills for the intention of the Lord leading the way, that he would, as this plan unfolds, upon up the doors we will need opened, and give us strength to persevere.

As I think about all that needs to be done, I realize how big an undertaking it will be to make this training and the realization of the event happen.

At this point in the game, though, my biggest worry is how anyone, no matter how great their endurance, can sit on a bike seat for that long.  The heart will calm down, there will be a coming decent to relax the legs, but that seat, that piece of marble covered in thick plastic, is always there...uphill or downhill, coasting or peddling, it's right there ready to bruise and wound and to mock you.

Pray for this endeavor!  Pray for the people of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home!  Pray for the Sisters that love and care for them!  And, if you can spare a prayer, pray for my bottom!

I'm off to log some more miles today.  Till next time,

Peace in Christ,
FrM

HUGE

Friends, earlier today I found myself in a HUGE dilemma.

After seeing and being inspired by my dad's fight with cancer through faith, family, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's (LLS) Team in Training, I decided to join him and the Team to train for America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride...a century (100 mile) ride around Lake Tahoe in June.

Click here for the more on the context and reasons for participating.

I recently set up my fundraising page and earlier today sent out the link on Facebook.  Within 2 minutes I had donations coming in!  I was getting really excited.

Then a friend sent me a private message saying that LLS doesn't have the best track record with human life issues.  So I did a little research.

It didn't take long to find LLS's connection with (thankfully failed) legislation to promote more funding to embryonic stem cell research (story here).  Then a Facebook friend lead me to this quote:

"LLS recognizes that medical research must balance risks and benefits. Based on the leading scientific and bioethical advice available, and our mission, The LLS Board of Directors adopted a Policy on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research in June of 2005. LLS updated the statement of our position in November of 2010. LLS supports the use of human ES cells for research and the development of therapies whenever the proposed research is judged meritorious by appropriately constituted scientific review committees and the Board of Directors of LLS."

This unattributed piece of information was then confirmed by a quote from the CEO of the LLS in an email to the American Life League, using the exact same language as above:

"LLS supports the use of human ES cells for research and the development of therapies whenever the proposed research is judged meritorious by appropriately constituted scientific review committees and the board of directors of LLS."

(Citation from ALL)

So, that was that.  (If you want information on why Christians should be against embryonic stem cell research, check out the USCCB website where there is a plethora of resources and information).

I was put on the spot, I had the information and I had to make a decision.  Part of me knew that I couldn't support LLS and ask others to do the same.  But, in total honesty, another part of me wanted to just ignore the information I had found and say, "well it's not like all the money raised goes to killing embryonic humans...maybe the money I raise won't go to that stuff."  

Rationalization.  That's all it was and I knew it.  I was trying to justify my participation and to avoid the difficulty of having to back out of the Team and of having to tell my dad who has benefited so much from the camaraderie and possibly even the results of some of the good things that LLS funds.  I'll do a post sometime soon about the ADULT stem cell success my dad has had in his cancer treatments.

Then came the fact that I had to contact the two people who had already donated! My Facebook friends have such great hearts!  So eager to help, so ready to give and support.  I sent them messages and they completely understood why I was backing out and taking the donation page offline.  

Then I had to call my dad.  I sent him an email first, perhaps, as I thought, to soften the blow of telling him that I wouldn't be training with him and the Team.  He responded and told me to call.  Oh boy.  Here we go.  How was he going to take it?  He has been through no fewer than 10 century rides with this team...that's 1,000 miles of ride events and many thousands of miles in training with them.  The best I expected to hear was, "Michael, I understand, and you are free to do what you need to do."

That's not what happened.

As I bumbled over my words and tried to present my backing out of the Team as gently as possible, not wanting to offend but at the same time wanting to present my position firmly, at one point my dad interjected, "And I'm with you."

I choked back tears.  

And I pitched my idea...

What if we formed a team for life?  A team that exists to train for the ride and to raise funds, not for research per se, but for actual cancer patients here in the Atlanta area.  Money going STRAIGHT to people suffering, without passing through a massive organization with intimate ties to the destruction of embryonic life?  What if we could form a team to support Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cancer Home here in Atlanta?

Read through their website and you my friend will be the one choking back tears.  The Hawthorne Dominicans who run the place are dedicated to giving hospice care to cancer patients of any creed, race, or nationality who can no longer afford treatment.  

I've celebrated Masses there and visited their residence.  The sisters there are simple, holy, joyful women of Christ.  Caring for the terminally ill poor is no easy task, yet they do it with such a love as if each patient were Our Lord himself.

So what if we still did the ride, still trained our butts off, all the while asking for support for this beautiful mission of the Church?  What if we formed a team of cancer survivors and supporters of cancer patients to ride and raise funds for the sisters' mission??

I feel the Lord moving here.  Deeply.  He's up to something HUGE in this heart.  

But before I go any further, I should probably contact Mother Superior and the priest chaplain there...

The TNT Post

In 2003, my dad was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.  At the same time, I was just transitioning out of the University of Georgia and into seminary as I had strongly felt the Lord calling me to be a priest.

     As I went up to Franciscan University of Steubenville and later to Rome, Italy, dad went into round after round after round of chemo, radiation, and biopsies.  Ports were put in, lumps were taken out, chemicals flooded his body, he lost his hair and his appetite.  Being so far away from home was particularly hard.  Mom would call and give me updates, and over the breaks from school I'd get to come home and try my best to love my dad back into health and, as my seminary experience progressed, even got to begin to minister our Lord's grace through prayer and the Sacraments of the Church.  Even with Faith, it's hard to see your dad suffer and, as I would find out, how hard the trial is on the whole family.

     There were a few things that kept my dad going.  He always first credits the Lord especially through the inspiration of Pope St. John Paul II who showed the world how to suffer with dignity and Mary, Jesus' mom, who takes all her Son's disciples as her own and loves them from Heaven.  In a very close second, he always thanks his wife, my mom, for being absolutely everything for him in his sickness and treatment; she was the mediator between doctor and patient, she was the chauffeur, she was the primary attending nurse, she was the nutritionist, she was the emotional support, she offered all of her strength--physical, spiritual, mental--to ensure that dad made it through.  Then there was my brother who literally shed his blood that our dad might have life...he donated some of his bone marrow to transplant into our dad, a procedure that seems to have the cancer in remission for the foreseeable future.

     

     When he found out about TNT and the rides they do to raise funds for cancer treatment and research, it gave my dad yet another reason to fight, something to do and a mission to fight for during those long years of treatment.  Despite his severely compromised immune system, he was on a stationary bike spinning it out even before he was cleared to be around crowds.  He told me how he did it not so much for himself, but for the people sitting in those lazy-boy recliners holding on to a hope that their chemical drip therapy would kill their cancer.  He told me how he had in mind his father-in-law, his brother, and a seemingly countless number of family members, coworkers, and friends who have been stricken with cancers of all types.  He offered the pain of the training for their health and comfort...that the cross he took on voluntarily through TNT might become a means of support for those on whom the heavy cross of cancer was placed involuntarily.

     So he started training.

     He made new friends, got in great shape, and, over the past 12 years, has raised thousands of dollars for leukemia and lymphoma research.  Each summer since his diagnoses, he has done a 100-mile ride with Team in Training, building a community of family, friends, and benefactors to help kick cancer in the face.  He has been and is a source of such inspiration in our family, and I feel the call to join him in this year's event, to become part of the Team in Training.

     Friends, in honesty, I have a long way to go.  I'm overweight and I haven't taken good care of my body since getting out college.  But I know that with the same means of support my dad has, I can do this.  Faith, family, purpose.  It's going to hurt, it's going to be very uncomfortable, and it's going to require some significant changes to my lifestyle, yet I firmly believe that with the Lord all things are possible.

     Will you help me on this epic journey?  Will you help me to raise funds to get treatments out to those who need them?  Will you say a quick prayer for the perseverance of those who, even at this moment, are being pricked and prodded, ported and dosed, especially those who are loosing hope?  Cancer is a battle no one should have to fight on his or her own.  Let's do this as a Team.

     Thank you!

Fr. Michael Silloway