Running is in my blood. I've done it since I was little. I've always enjoyed the solitude, the pain, the competition. I had to stop running in college when I injured myself and only drugs would fix the pain. That was many, many years ago. Life happened. Jobs. Marriage. Kids. Divorce. Survival. You know. Life. Then one of my friends started running. She was a mom just like me. She had a job too. She'd never run before. I found myself yearning to run again. So last summer I did. I ran. It hurt. It felt good.
I ran my first 10K this past weekend. I was scared. I was thrilled. And then the snow storm came. Five inches of it. No way! I hate being cold. Everyone thought I would bail. Silly people. Once I put my mind to a task, I complete it or die trying. I prayed before going to bed that the streets would be clear, the sun shining and the wind nonexsistent. God is good. It was cold, but doable. The starting line was crowded with a crush of runners. I could feel the adrenaline rushing through my veins. I could taste the brisk rushing of the wind. I could hear the blood rushing in my head. And then everything was controled chaos. A crush of people racing through an inflated starting line.
The first mile passed with occasional chatter and laughter amongst us runners. I then settled in for the long haul.
As I started mile two, I pushed the world away and went inside myself, to my runner's place. There I prayed for my friend, Carla who is fighting cacer for a second time. God and I conversed stride by stride. I argued with my Creator, explaining to Him who holds the whole world in His hands how important she was to her family and friends; how her example and love for Him needed to keep shining.
As I expounded with the Everlasting Father, I hit mile three and the wall. It was about this time I started seeing people who weren't really there. I was pretty sure I saw one of my friends in a passing car even though I knew good and well he was in Virginia. This brought a smile to my lips as I traversed memories of laughter and quiet. Unfortunately, pain soon invaded both my runner's place and fond memories.
Mile four found me alone, plodding onward through a stone cold, drippy, tunnel that was eerily silent. Mile four was by far the worst mile I have ever run. The silence hit me like a ton of bricks. Then my shoes hitting the pavement broke through the silence, and I was reminded of what we should never forget: the Death Marches of the Holocaust. You see, I teach my students about the Holocaust. I've done hours, days, weeks of research on it. The word pictures that get me are the children on forced death marches plodding step by step, ghosts of themselves moving across the country in mass and dying in silence. Wiesel's Night is a book that haunts me. It intrudes upon my life at the oddest moments. Mile four was one of them. He says of his first night in the concentration camp after marching to what he thought was to be his death, "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed...Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live..." I wept. I'm not ashamed of it. I wept because I hurt. I wept because "Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that
inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it." Mark Twain. I wept because my lungs ached for air. I wept briefly, yet it seemed to last forever.
The only thing I remember about mile five is that there were policemen directing traffic at an intersection so we runners would be safe and a sign that said, "Run like you stole something." I have to admit, I laughed. Laughter at this point was a good thing because I thought my lungs were going to explode and my legs were going to give out. I had no idea how long I had been running because my watch was on my kitchen island at home. I just knew it had been a very, very long time.
As I rounded that last block, I saw mile marker six and the huge inflated finish line. My heart sang! I was going to survive. My strides lengthened and my mind flew briefly over the past six miles: the laughter, the chatter, the prayers, the cancer and its warrior, the fond memories of friends, the death mraches, the tears, and the silence. And I crossed the finish line at a run; a run of pure determination silently screaming to the world, "I am alive! I will never forget! I love deeply! And God is oh so good!"
