Atlanta airport. Day one of the World Race. It’s 3 am and I haven’t slept a wink. A squad mate of mine and I were conversing about being bold. We both agreed being bold in our faith and in what we believe was the priority of ours for the race.
It’s now 5:30 am and coffee is definitely NOT coursing through veins like I imagined. In fact, I was standing at a coffee shop waiting for it to open. My patience lasted about 5 minutes and I ducked out and headed back to my seat to maybe snag some much appreciated and needed sleep. As I was walking back, I heard a noise coming up on my left. It was a woman probably in her 60’s with a heavy backpack flailing back and forth on her back holding papers and a wallet in her hand. She was moving as fast as she could and then would stop to take a break to catch her breath. It was by the grace of God she didn’t fall down as her legs and backpack were not working in unison.
Pause
First thought, “she’s a little too old to be a racer and we definitely are not late for our flight, so why is the woman sprinting across the airport at 5:30 am??”
Resume
Instantly I ran over to her and asked to help seeing her struggle. After she gave me a weird yet desperate look, I verbally said “I will run with you. Give me your load”. Although I don’t believe she was fully on board yet, I decided to make the decision for her and took the pack off her back. As we began running, my personal training inside of me kicked in! “Come on!”
“You can do it” “Push through the pain” “You’re almost there”
As we kept running down an almost empty hallway, I could hear a woman over the loud speakers “last call for Orlando”. As we approached the second to last terminal, she let out one final deep breath and so did I! I strapped her backpack on her tired body and through her gasps of air, thanked me. She proceeded to tell me that she was flying to Florida to see her mother who was ill and hospitalized.
As I said turned around to leave I said, “God Bless you I’ll be praying for you and your mother”….BOLD <— that word jumped in my head. So I turned my tired little butt back around and prayed for her in front of everyone in that line. And lemme tell you one thing, I PRAYED LOUD! I made sure everyone around us hear me. It was not a loud prayer or a long prayer and by the time I opened my eyes up, she was almost up to the check in counter ready to board her plane.
It’s now 5:35 and I was AWAKE and awake I stayed for hours. God has challenged me to be bold and to not hide behind my faith, yet use it as a tool to partner with my faith.
Here’s to the beginning of a lifetime of running races with random strangers, stepping out in faith and most of all, being BOLD and letting God take my load!
