"Running off at the mouth"

It has now been six weeks since my last chemotherapy treatment.  It is such a strange feeling.  I feel almost like I am aging backwards.  Each morning I wake up feeling 5 years younger than the day before.  (Ten more days and I will be back in diapers.)  I think that I didn't realize how poorly I was feeling until my health started to return.  The contrast has been wonderful.  I don't think that I have ever appreciated my health quite like this.

Happiness is stinky running shoes

On Friday we went to the wound care doctor.  As you may remember, my leg wound, where they harvested the bone to build my jaw, has had significant problems healing properly.  At one point there were serious concerns about needing to amputate or even worse.  Since I stopped chemotherapy and thanks to the wonderful skills of the wound care team, finally my leg is beginning to look better.  The other day, as I was laying on the bed waiting for JoLynne to bandage my wound again our son Peter came in and said, "Wow, that just looks like normal road rash now".  I will take that as a compliment.  On Friday the wound care team also gave me permission to run again.  It has been nearly four months since I was allowed to run.  So, on Saturday morning, I laced up my shoes and went for a run.  It was Heavenly!  I didn't go too far or fast, only three miles.  I was more out of breath than I am used to.  I'm guessing that my red blood cell count isn't quite back to normal yet.  Still, I loved it.  As I was running, maybe it was my imagination, but it felt weird in my jaw where they put my leg bone.  Like the muscles were contracting trying to help me run.  Those body parts need to learn that they have another role to play in my life now.  They have been re-assigned.  Today my leg muscles are sore.  It is so nice to have that kind of pain as opposed to the other types that I have been experiencing of late.


I forgot to mention a very sweet act of kindness shown to me a few weeks ago.  One of my dearest friends came by with a beautiful painting that he had done for me.  This is the same friend who came and paced me for the last 25 miles of the ultra marathon I did last spring.  He said that while he painted he thought of the scripture in Matthew 6:28-30

Painted by my dear friend and running partner

And why take ye thought for raiment?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, ^ashall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little ^bfaith?

Throughout this challenge one of the greatest lessons I have learned is that God loves me and will take care of me.  I have been amazed at how He has cared about even the seemingly small things enough to send help and comfort. Though the trial wasn't taken away, I always felt like a path was provided so that I could find my way through.  I sometimes wonder if God hasn't always been so involved in my life but I was too preoccupied to notice.