I am not going to look back to see how many Thanksgivings I have posted something about this but just going to say it again.
Thanksgiving Morning 1982
Several times when I was young I came close to dying
from asthma, pneumonia, or the medication itself. Many times I really wondered if I was going
to be able to take that next breath. In
those days treatment options were quite limited. Consequently, prolonged bouts with this stuff
seemed to keep me in an emaciated physical state. At age fourteen I weighed just seventy-eight
pounds and was four foot, eleven inches tall.
There were many nights in my life spent sitting up in bed just trying to
breathe. My back grew bowed and one side
of my chest protruded out much farther than the other. I looked deformed and I guess I was. For me, playing sports was quite
limited. I was always the last one
chosen for a team.
After adulthood and years of treatment, my health
improved somewhat. Eventually, I grew out of my deformed chest; but still, I
was occasionally besieged by bouts of severe asthma attacks. It seemed that being an asthmatic was my lot
in life, my own piece of hell, a curse from which I would not be set free.
Thanksgiving morning, 1982 found me once again
suffering from an asthma attack. Having
been up most of the night trying to breathe, I was a man much out of
sorts. Somehow though, on this one day
in time, a whole lifetime of frustration seemed to culminate right then and
there on that Thanksgiving morning. I
was just fed up. I was just angry—very
angry. For some reason, I just wanted to
run. Absurd as that reasoning might
sound, I just wanted to make my lungs suffer, to strike back at something, at
anything. “Enough is enough!!” I
thought. If I were going to be gasping,
struggling for breath, and wheezing, well by golly, I might as well have a good
reason for it. I was going to run! What was I thinking? It was crazy, I know. Could be I was just a little bit over the
edge at the time?
I had no shoes to run in so I laced up my hunting
boots and started a slow jog down the dirt road in front of my house. I was going to run the quarter mile to the
end of that road if it killed me. It
very nearly did. In fact, after only a
few moments, after less than a hundred yards, I was bent over with my hands on
my knees, seriously struggling for air.
Asthma had beaten me again, I thought, as I walked slowly and dejectedly
back to the house. Surprisingly though,
sometime later after I had fully recovered, it seemed that I could breathe a
little better than before. And some of
that anger—no, a lot of that anger—was still in there bubbling, simmering
around inside. I would have another go
at it the next morning. This wasn’t
over.
The next morning, I got a little farther down the road
than the day before, but it was still a suffocating experience. Beaten again.
But, I had gone a few feet farther.
It wasn’t much farther but there was some small satisfaction in it. Afterward, I again found I could breathe a
little better than before my run. The
next morning, the next, and the next found myself making similar attempts and
being met with similar defeats. But,
with each effort, I was getting a little farther down the road. Anger had matured into firm resolution. My mind and spirit now had “missile locked”
on someday getting all the way down that road, the whole quarter mile. Finally, one day I just hung on, suffocated
more than I ever thought I could, and made the whole quarter of a mile. No, it wasn’t an Olympic finish. No bands were playing. No crowds were cheering. No one cared, but I knew. It was just my own ecstatic experience, a
private victory on a little dirt road in the middle of nowhere.
No stopping me now; I had tasted it. My asthma was getting better almost
daily. Finally, one morning I ran all
the way back to the house—a half mile. I
was elated! Then the day came when I ran
a whole mile. Like a prisoner breaking
out of his jail cell, breathing
fresh air for the first time in a very long time, there was no containing
me. I was out of control and still am, I
hope. Thank God!! I traded my hunting boots for slip-on deck
shoes and, when my long runs got to
around three or four miles, I finally bought real running shoes.
The
rest of the story is about longer runs: 5Ks, 10Ks, Half Marathons, and, in
1987, my first marathon. Sometimes, even
now, having completed over thirty-two marathons and 53 triathlons, it is still
hard to fully comprehend. To think that
I did all that, but knowing all the time I am really nothing special, just a no-talent,
ordinary person built and inspired by God who hung on. I am so grateful! I feel so blessed!! May I never lose that childlike wonderment at
all this. May I never forget that first frustrating
Thanksgiving morning in 1982. But even
more importantly, may I never forget to give God the thanks, that I can run!!
