Submitted by Dr. Robert F. Lane on
I didn’t recognize them at first because I had no idea there was such a thing as a Windrunner, or for that matter a Bell Lap - until I saw someone running for their life – and well. No one had told me about them in med school, nor on the evening news or from the pulpit. Then I met one, and saw one, then another and another. Whoa! Who were these people and what was so special about their stride?
They had been there all along, but I had never recognized them in the Happy Snappy land of wealth, health and security until that life-shattering sound of the bell rang out in their lives, that diagnosis of a life threatening disease, possibly a race/life ending disease.
Many Windrunners took a stutter step, some even stumbled to the ground, but none stayed down or ran away, and none pretended they hadn’t heard the bell. They knew they had to deal with the same stuff as everyone else for whom the bell rings and they still ran headlong into it: All the confusing times of testing and diagnosis in the first stretch and near corner, the hard times of trying to understand the medical environment and start treatment, the same devilish adversaries of fear and false hopes, and they all had to consider descending into denial or defeat or bargaining for grace. But somehow they recovered their stride or never lost it, but came powering out of the near corner pulling ahead of the pack.
Some distinguished themselves early right out of the blocks, but all were catching the attention of every onlooker by the time they were lengthening their stride and moving into the outside lane of the backstretch -when the diagnosis and prognosis were complete, the treatment started and a new life with a new disease was coming into focus.
I could see they were running strong and distancing themselves from the others, with less fear, less angst, more joy and more purpose. Something special was going on, but what? Clearly they were better prepared, yet none had known the bell was about to ring. How could that be?
There were dozens of them, but not hundreds amid the thousands I cared for. A consistent theme that united Windrunners: they were all running toward God rather than away from death. Let me tell you about Becky and Fred, Chuck and Connie, Gale, Lisa, and Sally, Jim and Dave, Mary and Karina, Doris and Al, and let me tell you about Wendell Price.
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