The Great Race

This past Saturday was our church school's annual 5K race. It was a large turnout with the fastest runner completing in something over 19 minutes. Although he was across the finish line in amazing time, his triumph was dwarfed by my daughter Vicky. She came across the line an hour and 20 minutes after the start of the race at the very last position. The guy announcing the race didn't even know she was still going, had the group of spectators cheer for the final runners while she was still out of sight, and moved the spectators on to another event. She crossed the line to the clapping of a couple of the helpers who were getting set to take things down. It was an accomplishment of staggering proportions.

For the past few years she has been so sick that a walk across the backyard was exhausting. She spent much of her high school asleep - sometimes 16 hours per day - and when she was awake she could barely move from the couch. Less than a year ago we were having serious talks with her about having to face the possibility that what she was experiencing could be what her life was going to be like. She may have to find a way to function in the midst of it.

After numerous tests there were many possible explanations, but they were all pieces of a bigger picture. The two things we knew conclusively were that she had Lyme - and all 10 indicators on the tests, something most of the doctors had never seen before - and Grave's disease. The Grave's disease was brought under control by a cocktail of various prescriptions. She had been diagnosed years earlier with the Lyme and had the standard CDC Lyme treatment and the specialists at Children's Hospital pronounced with complete confidence that she must be cured because that 3 week antibiotic was all that was needed to fix Lyme.

We finally stepped outside the CDC straight and narrow path and took her to a specialist who was willing to treat risk lawsuits and being labeled a quack and treat "chronic Lyme." He blasted her system with mountains of antibiotics over a long period of time and the results were stunning. It would be easy for me to blame the CDC, and the various doctors that act as their consultants to define their Lyme regime, for the lost years of Vicky's life, but I don't live in a Godless, happenstance world. I live in a world where a sovereign God weaves all the evil caused by humanity's rebellion into good for those who are his own.

Who Vicky is now, and who she will be as she moves into adulthood, has been shaped by those years of suffering. I would never wish it upon her and would do everything in my power to alleviate her suffering, but I have already seen some of the good that God has created using the chisel of her trail. One small example was her walking 5,000 meters in a race on Saturday. Despite almost complete exhaustion after the first 2.5k she pushed on, slow and steady, all the way to the end. She has learned to live above how she feels, to do what is right rather than what feels good, and accomplish the tasks that are set before her with a tenacity that is inspiring. I have never been so proud of the last place finisher in a race. And not only because it was something that seemed impossible just a year ago, but because it showed how much God has already done for her good using these long years of sickness. Vicky - although there was not a crowd to cheer you across the line last Saturday, I believe there was a joyful shout in heaven of, "Well done!"

"Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Phil 3:12-14