I Have A Question For You
I was a novice runner with high anxiety. Would I be able to finish this race? I had trained for 16 weeks, but could I run 26.2 miles? I was 51 with no previous experience as an athlete. It was 5:00 am and I was at the starting line of the Walt Disney World Marathon. I waited in my assigned corral. 25,000 runners were assigned to corrals according to their projected finish time.
I had waited 30 minutes when one of my team members joined me.
“Where were you, girl?! I was at the interfaith service, and we were all crying and singing and having a great time!” She then began to sing: “And He will lift you up on eagles’ wings, bear you on the breath of dawn.” I loved those words. I needed the inspiration.
The starting gun sounded, and I began to run. I was so nervous I couldn’t think of anything I had prepared to think about. I felt breathless and this was just the beginning of the race! Then her song began to fill my mind. The words and the image of the eagle became my inspiration. I sang that song for the first seven or eight miles. It carried me. I was okay.
I could now focus on the reason for this race and the path that brought me here.
It started on a fall day. I delivered the medical dictation I had completed at home and decided to stop at Shunga Park which had a winding trail along a creek. There were several groups of retirees out for their morning walk. The moderate exercise lifted my spirits.
Over the following weeks, the walk soon became a short run. The grief of my divorce lifted a little. I had been married for 29 years and after my divorce I had developed Grave’s disease. Now, with the combination of the medical treatment and the daily run, I felt better—more energy, more peace of mind, and thank God, some weight loss too.
I entered a 5K (3.1 miles) race and discovered a friend had entered who was a new runner. That entire summer, she and I ran races together. When I received an invitation to a meeting to learn about the Leukemia Society’s marathon fundraising program, I went—and signed up. What better place to be in January than Walt Disney World?
But the most powerful reason was to honor a friend, Roy, who had died of leukemia six months earlier. His wife, Robbie, and I had been long-time friends and his death at age 44 was reason enough to support leukemia research.
A coach from Wichita came to Topeka each month to keep us on track with our training. I will always remember one of those moments as a newbie runner when I confessed that I had not run my prescribed miles for the week. Our coach said: “I think you are smart enough to know that you shouldn’t do that again.” How diplomatic of him!
The last two weeks of training, in December, he encouraged me when I got a cold and my running efforts slowed. “You have done your training. You are ready.”
When I got close to the end of the race, two miles to go, I remembered my coach’s advice: “Dig down deep as your body tires and remember why you are running this race.” I thought of my friend and remembered his family, and also the young patient the Leukemia Society had assigned me. I crossed the finish line and even though I couldn’t walk upstairs for a few days, my spirit soared. I had run farther than I had ever dreamed this non-athlete could run. Also, I reached my fundraising goal and in recent years I learned there is now a cure for my friend’s type of leukemia.
The words of the song, “On Eagle’s Wings,” sung to me at the starting line inspired me because I was reminded of some special verses from Isaiah. I had written them on a card for inspiration as I trained. The verses seemed to jump off the page when I had taken a divorce workshop and they had become my watchword, for life—and for marathon training.
Isaiah wrote words to comfort the Jewish people. I needed the comfort of those words.
Isaiah asked the downtrodden Israelites if they thought their way was hidden from the Lord. He asked had they not heard that the Creator of the ends of the earth does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
He said even though youths get weary and exhausted, that those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.
The eagle denotes the freedom that I felt as a runner then and now--and that it’s not just my own effort. It is a picture of my resting upon a greater power than myself. When I really sense that strength beyond my own, it is like “soaring on eagles’ wings.”
I have a question to ask you. What is your marathon?
My dictionary states one definition of a marathon as something (as an event, activity, or session) characterized by great length or concentrated effort.
Long-distance runners speak of “hitting the wall,” which is a point at which you can’t go any further and must walk to regain your momentum. I’ve had that happen—and that is a story for another time. Do you feel like you’ve “hit the wall?”
My goal for this blog is to search for the ways in which God’s Spirit can give us the energy and wisdom and fortitude to run a “marathon”—whatever that may be—through stories and scripture. I welcome your input.