Toward the end of the movie, “Saving Private Ryan” the character played by Tom Hanks was lying in the road, wounded, and shooting his pistol until empty at an approaching German tank? That fruitless, heroic , yet pathetic effort, made my heart wrench. He was doing all he could, but the tank was impervious to his efforts to stop it.
After a year and a half of struggling against the tank of my own personal injuries and enemies; after firing all my rounds at the approaching ironman distance event; after all that: I lay on the ground, spent, empty, impotent. Today, I feel that same heart-wrench that I felt in watching that movie scene.
The Miles of the Journey to my ironman effort have lead to failure – one might call it a heroic and courageous effort , but the tank still rolls past me and my dream. Sure I paid the price. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was out there, battling the self, taking the pain, pushing past, and overcoming. Yet, at the end of the day - today - I am at the end of my journey. Today, the last vestige of hope oozed out of me despite all the “never quit” platitudes, the great plans, the high hopes, the prayers, the vision of a finish line in tears of gratitude to God, the ironman tattoo with a cross over it - no, not to be. I am out of bullets, out of energy, tired of fighting, tried of swimming upstream, and I just want to lie down and let the ironman tank go on past me.
Who knows where I went wrong. I have made a lot of mistakes; failed at this so many times over the years. (seehttp://milesofthejourney.blogspot.com/2010/03/failure-isnt-final.html http://milesofthejourney.blogspot.com/2013/04/fasting-day-1-let-it-go.html. It’s hard to tell where the final damage came from . It takes a pretty special person to make it to the ironman starting line. Perhaps , quite simply, I am not an ironman; never cut out to be one. Perhaps, I was overmatched to begin with: the enemy had a tank and I had a handgun. As surely as a finisher is told at the finish line, “you are an ironman,” I am being reminded that I am NOT an ironman. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but It is the truth.
No more wars for me- that is - no more ironman quests. The stinger has been taken out of the bee, meaning ; I am not sure what this defeat will leave me or what future is down the road. But I doubt I will ever again possess that wonderful passion that my ironman hopes had. So there it is. This is where the Miles of the Journey have taken me. This will be the last past on this blog.
Yet, there is a certain satisfaction even in failure. I made mistakes but I know I truly did my very best. My best just wasn’t good enough, but it was all I had. And perhaps God is not as disappointed about all this as I am? No doubt He knows how much I poured into this. No doubt he saw me shoot my last bullet at the approaching ironman tank. Perhaps, He will say after all, “well done my good and faithful servant. You gave all you had. “
"I fell hard because I reached high."
