10 miler is done!

I can today with great thankfulness to all you that prayed that I and my team finished the Army 10 miler! What an incredible feeling to finish a race like that. I wish you all could have been there. My wife, kids, mother-n-law and my mom all went with me. Also there were Drill SGTS and other soldiers from FT Jackson. In that group included, Scott, Mitch, Jason, Glenn, Mark G, "Chewy", Mark J and 24,000 other fine folks. It was a beautiful day about 65 degrees at the start. The course wound from the Pentagon through downtown DC, by the Washington monument, the Mall and the capital. We then ran back across the Potomac and finished at the Pentagon. It was amazing! All along the way people cheered for us and bands played. I had no idea I was even tired till the last mile or so. Inspiring soldiers that had lost limbs in our current conflict ran the race despite their missing parts. In fact that was the name of their team, "Missing Parts in Action". Eccentric folks ran too. I saw one guy juggle 4 hackey sacks the whole way. I got my picture with two ladies that dressed as wonder woman and super woman. But for me the coolest part was coming in the last 1/10 of a mile. I came down off 395 and heard screams of delight, "Daddy!" There at the bottom behind the barricades was my family screaming for their old slow daddy. I finished 10650th out of 24,000 people. Not exactly on the medal stand. But it was as if I had won. My kids think I am a superhero! I imagined as I ran through the last part of the course that heaven must be a lot like that. Having run the race to completion surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses cheering us on we strain for the finish line. It is not lost on me that soldiers ran this race, soldiers who have fought and bleed and seen their friends killed. As we run that last 100 meters to our final finish line I can't help but think that the scene will be similar. We are all warriors in life. Its a war for our hearts and our souls. All those who have finished the race will cheer. They know how hard the miles are, they cheer also because they know the joy of finishing and finishing well. At the end of that race instead of a timer measuring the minutes it took, there will be a King waiting. Our King of Kings and Lord of Lords to say the words that we long to hear, "Well done good and faithful servant, enter your reward!"