Run Your Race

Another birthday approaches. But it is not just a birthday, for our entire family it is an anniversary, the anniversary of new life. For the first time I have realized how coincidental it is that her birthday lands right in the middle of spring. It’s the perfect time for beginnings.

This past week we had her annual IEP for school. Without a doubt it is a miracle in itself that she is attending school. She made it there. But what strikes me hard is how perfectly things have worked out.

My girl maybe the luckiest girl in the state of Georgia.

Many would find that hard to imagine between the four injections of an antibiotic that stings like crazy in this past week, the IVig infusion today and the two CT scans planned for tomorrow, but really that is a sidebar for her. Still she has a lucky streak. The powers that be have decided that this girl of mine will be blessed. The people in place in her school are amazing. Our school experience, her school experience, is unlike most deafblind students in Georgia.

Blessed. Beyond. Imagination.

And this year as Ivey’s birthday fast approaches I can’t help but think of them. Over the past few years this race we have been running with Ivey has been hard. Now we have this team at school running this race with us. Teaching her.

Earlier this year I took the boys to watch the movie Secretariat. I cried pretty much the entire movie. Throughout the movie the words “Run you race” kept surfacing. I sat and would look at the boys and think "Just run boys, run". Stupid maybe. I like the philosophical stuff. But when I look at Ivey it seems so appropriate too.

Without knowing it, she is running her race.
Her race.
Not my race or your race, just her race.
Her pace.

Some of us get to sit in the stands and watch and cheer her on.

And then there are some of us who run with her -

She can’t hear the defining words of her appearance. She doesn’t notice the quizzical comments of strangers.

No.

She just runs.

It is her race.

She is running to win.

She started out of the gate late and slow.

But she is thundering ahead.

There is a finish line out there.

She sees it.

She feels it.

I’m running.

Matt is running.

Two brothers are side-by-side with her.

Ivey’s League is running.

And then there is this amazing group running with her, they love her, they want her to win….they want her to …. Run Her RACE….

This year for her fifth birthday all I can think is “Run your race baby girl, run your race”. You’ve been running it all along - with and without me. Just keep running.

We’ll be there cheering you on –
ALL of us.