The reward is in the challenge | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: The reward is in the challenge | Previous Challenge Entry
By mark lyon
01/31/08
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I had once been one of the best athletes on the school basketball team. I was as quick as a cheetah, I could shoot “lights out” and I could jump so high that I could touch the top of the backboard. Kids respected me, opposing players feared me, and my coach trusted me with the ball during the final minutes of the game. Yes sir, when I was on my game, no one, I mean, no one could stop me.

I was on my way to receiving a full ride scholarship at the local state college when the accident occurred. I had just turned around the corner in the stairwell when I immediately tripped right over Amanda Rogers’ back, who was kneeled down over onto the floor, picking up all of her papers and books that had been knocked out of her hand by the local school, deviant bully, Sam “Mac Daddy” Collins. I stumbled & fell hard on those cement stairs.

The next thing I remember is Principal Thornton saying to me “Don’t move, help is on the way.” I had no idea at the time that I had cracked four disc in my vertebrate and that I had suffered a deep gash on the side of my head. I can still feel that first tinkling sensation along the perimeter of my muscle lines from my shoulders down to my finger tips.

It had been almost six years since I receive the prognosis’s that I would never walk again. No longer could I run, jump, or even walk. No longer could I move about freely, without any constrictions. I was now like an immobile, tree stump that had become a prisoner to a shopping cart called a wheelchair.

All the athleticism that I had in my thighs had now turned to mush, all the tightness of my legs had become like jell-o, and all the calluses in my feet were now gone. My body below my waist line was completely immobile. My former life, my dreams, my goals, my hopes, had changed, they had been altered, and I had to confront the reality of the situation.

It was then that I met Ben. Ben was handicapped and he too had received severe, life changing injuries through an accident. He had been a drunk driver who swerved off the road and hit a telephone pole, dead center. But Ben, unlike me, didn’t wallow in his self pity, Ben didn’t whine about his circumstances, and Ben didn’t pout about his plight.

For you see, Ben was a Christian. It was through his faith that gave him the inspiration to overcome his alignment. He saw his circumstances as a gift from God. He felt that being handicap was just a physical deterrent; it didn’t stop him from being a productive citizen or a meaningful witness to others.

He saw being in a wheelchair as an opportunity to reach out to those who felt ostracized by society, he saw that being handicap could open doors to those who felt out of favor with the norm of society, and he saw his encumbrance as an important asset to assessing value and worth in one’s character. Christ had given him meaning and purpose in life.

It was through his witness that I too became a Christian. And now, I help others who are physically challenged to challenge themselves to achieve extraordinary things. Just as Christ reached out to the invalids, to the nomads, and to those forgotten souls of society, I to have been blessed by God to help others who can’t always help themselves. For all things are possible through the God that does the impossible.

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