support to my mother.” (the irony of that statement doesn’t escape me now.)
“Did you run the whole thing?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
“Vicky.”
The announcer held his microphone up, “And her daughter, Vicky, who ran the whole way with her mom.” The race organizers gave me a ribbon, even though I was not registered for the race. That was a lot to go through for a little piece of cloth.
But my mother got a trophy! Since this was a nationally sanctioned event, the moment that my mother crossed the finish line, she was the reigning National champion in her age group. A qualifying race for the Boston Marathon was being held in some other part of the country, and the best runners were at that event. Thus, my mom captured a National title, despite having to nurse her daughter through the last excruciating and slow five miles of the race.
I was limping, and could barely walk. In fact the pain became so severe over the next two weeks, that I ended up limping to a podiatrist. X-rays determined that I was missing a metatarsal bone. I think I had that metatarsal bone before the marathon, but it had been pulverized to nothingness in that grueling race.
I should have died, and really could have died doing this very foolish thing. But of all the memories of God empowering me to do something I was really unable to do, this is among my fondest.
I am now around the age my mom was when she ran the marathon. I still run, but never more than five miles. I cannot imagine running much further than that. Mom no longer runs, except perhaps in her dreams. She is entering a different kind of marathon now.
I, too, have been in many marathons of a different type- those marathon trials and struggles that life inevitably forces upon all of us. The encouraging words of my mother return to me: “Don’t stop, keep your feet moving… I will not finish this race without you. If you can run three blocks, you can run three miles.” I hear her words, and I see God, beckoning me to finish well, step by sometimes excruciating step: “Just one more mile, you’re almost there. You can do it.”
Chapter Ten
The Taxi Driver
Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
I was young and naïve and my sense of immunity to horrible things happening to me personally was well developed. Like many people in their twenties, I gave little thought to safety or the possibility of senseless harm directed towards me, and so the warning bells that should have been clanging against my ear drums were not audible. At least, I did not hear them when I first stepped in the taxi.
Perhaps I was distracted; that was my excuse. I had a major test in the final leg of my advanced certification in Occupational Therapy the next day. I also had a major case of poison ivy, right on my gluteus maximus. Every time I would sit down, a new explosion of impossibly unendurable itching would erupt. As I sidled across the tattered Naugahide seat of the old taxi and pulled out the address of my hotel, the itching flared like ants swarming on an offending foot in the anthill. There was little I could do but suffer in silence.
Had I been more aware, the condition of the taxi would have warned me to wait for a different ride. It was old and rusty, the picture of the driver taped to the windshield was yellowed and cracked, and I could barely read the identifying information assuring me he was safe. The inside smelled somewhat badly and the driver was unkempt.
I had my Bible with me, though I did not yet believe in the God it portrayed. I was fascinated with the Bible as a piece of incomparable literature, and I was reading it, hoping to counter my incessantly nagging cousin about the reasons I should believe in God. I clutched it now as I began to feel a sense of disquiet. The taxi
“Did you run the whole thing?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
“Vicky.”
The announcer held his microphone up, “And her daughter, Vicky, who ran the whole way with her mom.” The race organizers gave me a ribbon, even though I was not registered for the race. That was a lot to go through for a little piece of cloth.
But my mother got a trophy! Since this was a nationally sanctioned event, the moment that my mother crossed the finish line, she was the reigning National champion in her age group. A qualifying race for the Boston Marathon was being held in some other part of the country, and the best runners were at that event. Thus, my mom captured a National title, despite having to nurse her daughter through the last excruciating and slow five miles of the race.
I was limping, and could barely walk. In fact the pain became so severe over the next two weeks, that I ended up limping to a podiatrist. X-rays determined that I was missing a metatarsal bone. I think I had that metatarsal bone before the marathon, but it had been pulverized to nothingness in that grueling race.
I should have died, and really could have died doing this very foolish thing. But of all the memories of God empowering me to do something I was really unable to do, this is among my fondest.
I am now around the age my mom was when she ran the marathon. I still run, but never more than five miles. I cannot imagine running much further than that. Mom no longer runs, except perhaps in her dreams. She is entering a different kind of marathon now.
I, too, have been in many marathons of a different type- those marathon trials and struggles that life inevitably forces upon all of us. The encouraging words of my mother return to me: “Don’t stop, keep your feet moving… I will not finish this race without you. If you can run three blocks, you can run three miles.” I hear her words, and I see God, beckoning me to finish well, step by sometimes excruciating step: “Just one more mile, you’re almost there. You can do it.”
Chapter Ten
The Taxi Driver
Proverbs 3:5-6
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
I was young and naïve and my sense of immunity to horrible things happening to me personally was well developed. Like many people in their twenties, I gave little thought to safety or the possibility of senseless harm directed towards me, and so the warning bells that should have been clanging against my ear drums were not audible. At least, I did not hear them when I first stepped in the taxi.
Perhaps I was distracted; that was my excuse. I had a major test in the final leg of my advanced certification in Occupational Therapy the next day. I also had a major case of poison ivy, right on my gluteus maximus. Every time I would sit down, a new explosion of impossibly unendurable itching would erupt. As I sidled across the tattered Naugahide seat of the old taxi and pulled out the address of my hotel, the itching flared like ants swarming on an offending foot in the anthill. There was little I could do but suffer in silence.
Had I been more aware, the condition of the taxi would have warned me to wait for a different ride. It was old and rusty, the picture of the driver taped to the windshield was yellowed and cracked, and I could barely read the identifying information assuring me he was safe. The inside smelled somewhat badly and the driver was unkempt.
I had my Bible with me, though I did not yet believe in the God it portrayed. I was fascinated with the Bible as a piece of incomparable literature, and I was reading it, hoping to counter my incessantly nagging cousin about the reasons I should believe in God. I clutched it now as I began to feel a sense of disquiet. The taxi
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