As we finish up our LiveWeak series, we thought you would be interested to hear how Kristen finished hers. You may remember that she began with the idea of providing a Bible study to go along with training for a marathon. At the time, she was weakened from surgery, yet not afraid of her weakness.
To further her training, Kristen signed up for a local 10K. Don’t miss her story about that race. While she may have been on her own target pace, things didn’t work out as she had hoped.
The marathon didn’t work out as planned either. Just a month before race day, right after she finished a fifteen-mile run through Central Park, Kristen found out that her cancer had returned and she needed surgery almost immediately to relieve pressure on her trachea. She would not be able to run and wrote, “I really wanted to cross that finish line. I feel confused and frustrated, but I don’t think the story has ended. I will just have to wait and see.”
Friends rallied around her, offering to push her in a special racing wheelchair, but Kristen was not so keen on the idea, “This is a picture of weakness I most definitely do not want to be.”
We see glimpses of how Kristen felt in the last few weeks of her Bible study–just when she was supposed to be running her final training runs and instead was bedridden. When procuring a racing wheelchair proved difficult, she admitted to being relieved. But, as she predicted, the story had not ended. A racing chair was found, and friends talked a hesitant, tired, and hurting Kristen into being part of the race with them.
Can you guess how the race ended? Although she wanted to be on her own two feet running herself, Kristen did feel like part of the team, and said, “It turned into an amazing spectacular day.”
“Not too far into the race,” Kristen wrote, “I realized something that changed my day and left a lasting impact on my heart. These ten people were a few of many who had been carrying me and my family through difficult times these past years. And now they would push me through one of my weakest moments. It seemed a fitting end to a study on strength through weakness…”
Just like Kristen, you don’t have to do it all alone. There is a community out there who will walk alongside you, or push you, through your weakest moments.
