Crossing the Finish Line

Faithful reader, what are your dreams, your hopes, your goals, your aspirations? What is the desire of your heart? Do you hold a secret wish in your soul?

You’re a blogger with a book stuck inside of you. Some people I know want to lose a few pounds — others would like to quit smoking or lay off the bottle for awhile. Other friends want to be physically fit. Some people have financial troubles and would like to implement spending and savings plans in order to better budget their expenses and income.

Maybe there’s that broken relationship that must be restored before you can have peace.

Or maybe just like Mother Goose, you just want to prove to yourself that you can do something IMPOSSIBLE! Do you know how impossible this race was for me? Impossibly impossible. Incredulously impossible. Eternally impossible. Infinitely impossible. As impossible as it gets.

I’m not athletic. Sometimes I ride my bike in a recreational sort of way. But two weeks ago, after a training session for this race, I sat at the kitchen table cooling down from my flappy exertions. Mr. Mother Goose looked at me and exclaimed, “Ha! You look like an athlete!” I guess I had a colorful face with beads of perspiration drops running down into my feathers, hair tied up in a knot, breathing a little bit more than usual. Just like an athlete…

Quietly I said to myself, “Maybe I AM an athlete..”

Maybe you don’t look like it yet, but maybe pretty soon, your dreams and wishes for yourself are going to come leaking out of you and you’ll start to look like the YOU inside. And that leakage will fuel more and more of your achievements until you cross that FINISH line with your hands in the air and a ridiculously big smile on your face.

Friend, maybe you ARE an athlete! Maybe you ARE a non-smoker, or a recovered alcoholic or whatever! Maybe you ARE a wise financial planner! Maybe your fences are mended and your bridges are unburned because you care enough about those relationships to do what it takes to nourish them and fix and forgive.

For too many years, Mother Goose listened to the creepy voices in her head. You know those voices, don’t you? The creepers who say, “No, of course, it’ll never happen. You’ll never do it. You’re not good enough. You’re not brave enough. You’re too young, you’re too old, you’re too fat, you’re too far gone. You’re just a goose, and it just doesn’t matter.” Everybody hears them, the creepy voices…

Mother Goose heard the voice of a neurologist twelve years ago saying, “Well, I wouldn’t want you to go out and commit suicide or anything, but the results of the spinal tap procedure show very definitely that you have multiple sclerosis.”

With as much fervor and flutter as I could gather, I answered him, “No. I have to go home and make dinner for my family.”

I walked out of his office and never looked back. I never took his advice to get on an interferon medication (daily shots of steroids to reduce the risk of future MS flare ups). I believed that God would help me with whatever came along, and He has been faithful to that promise.

Yes, some people do need to take medication. Some people are seriously ill, and they can’t help it. Some people have a viable excuse. Maybe you’ve had some failure in the past, and don’t want to risk the pain anymore. Maybe you’ve fallen and you can’t get up! And I know that some people don’t have enough faith to believe in themselves, let alone a powerful and loving God.

But what about you?

Look in the mirror today, and say to yourself, “You’re beautiful! Let’s do this thing!”

If Mother Goose can cross the Finish Line, anyone can. ANYONE CAN.