Living with clubbed feet is a little...different. Not only have the muscles and tendons in my legs developed differently (causing what some call "chicken legs"), but also the motion in my ankles is severely limited causing a kind of jackhammer effect on my feet. Over the course of playing basketball, racquetball, or hiking long distances...my feet will throb with pain, and the next day I will walk with a noticeable (and pain-filled) limp. It's been like that as long as I can remember.
This is what makes my decision to hike 20 miles of the Appalachian Trail with one of my best friends since birth (Seth Grogan) seem so absolutely ridiculous. I knew before I ever set foot on that trail what I was in for...yet I chose to take a walk up to the top of a 5,000 foot mountain ridge with a 30 pound pack on my back, knowing the shape my feet would be in after the first day!
The morning after our first ten miles, my feet were feeling like someone had jabbed knives into the tops of my ankles. Growing up, I had spent numerous summers working in row after row of tobacco, for weeks at a time...but this pain was like nothing I had ever felt. There was no amount of labor on the farm or endless summer basketball games that had ever given me the feeling I had last Friday morning. Grogan, on the other hand, is half Shirpa and could've climbed Mount Everest at that point.
About five miles into our ten mile exit hike...I laid down next to a log with my head on my pack. I was exhausted and hurting. After a few minutes rest, I stood up. Grogan grabbed my pack and said, "Ready to go?". I tried to get him to put it down, but he's part mule, which manifested itself in his ability to carry both my pack (and his) the last five miles of our hike...like it was nothing.
Solomon said, "...there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother." (Proverbs 18:24). Some have used this verse to describe the relationship of Christ to God's children, and such is an accurate description. However, there are people who walk with us through life's trials and pain...friends who help us up when we fall, friends who will help us carry our weights and burdens through every rocky path...friends that truly become closer than our own flesh and blood. Thank God for those friends.
Yeah, he is pretty awesome. Fortunately for me he is a friend and brother.
ReplyDeleteProps on the hike, by the way.