Running Down April Street

Today, two years ago, as I write this I was in my first surgery trying to repair my right foot. The idea was to make it healthy enough for me to be able to run again. My gut feeling was this had little chance of working, but felt enough outside pressure, real or imagined, that I felt I had to do it. The truth is I lacked the courage to face it.

One year and six days later I would take the step I could not bring myself to take this time. This first operation was very painful; when I woke up it felt like strong hands were trying to wrench my foot apart.

None of us know what tomorrow - or even the next minute - will bring to our lives. I have never thought my recent experiences were any more than challenges to be overcome and the threat to my life small. I was not facing the devastation of aggressive cancer, or having some rare condition for which there was little hope of a cure or even coming to daily terms with it.

What I have found in others is that we human beings, each and every one of us, possess an innate ability to be courageous under any horror life's caprices may visit upon our beings. That we do unspeakable things to each other that no disease could ever dream of in nightmares unimaginable. That we can go on and on given the minutest glimmer of hope and opportunity, that these flawed bodies can do miraculous things. If we each do our best, then together we cannot be broken.

As I get ready to receive my running prosthesis and the last barrier to being able to be the best runner I can be, I think on these things. On this new starting line, I am ready to go in mind, body, and spirit.

We reach into the unknown and find rare friends there.