In spite of my whining and whimpering about my sore knee, I’ve got to confess I think I got off pretty easy. At least I’m not losing any toe nails.

One of my new colleagues, who is about twenty-five years younger than me, ran a 50K race Saturday. Yes, folks, you read correctly, “50K.” For those of you who might be about as metric-impaired as I am, that’s thirty-two miles. Thirty-two miles in one day. Well, actually, about nine-and-a-half hours in Ben’s case. He did the last ten miles or so after tripping on a big rock, smashing a couple of toes and landing hard on his left side.

“I’ve lost two or three toenails already,” Ben stated very matter-of-factly, “I’ll probably lose a couple more.”

According to Ben, and I have no reason for skepticism, the relentless pounding of the toes against the pavement and/or ground causes so much trauma to the nailbed that the nail just comes loose. Like me, Ben wasn’t moving very fast today. Unlike me, you had to look pretty closely to notice that. I clopped around like a lame horse.

Ben is much sorer than I am, I’m sure. There aren’t many muscles that don’t get sore when you run for thirty miles or so. All that motion, all that pounding, all that swinging, all that repetition of motion and force takes its toll.

In spite of that, Ben kept a smile on his face, a cheerful tone in his voice and a pleasant manner.

I’m trying to take a lesson from Ben, trying to aspire to greater display of cheerful resolution and chipper resignation to the fate at hand.

I think God likes it when His children opt not to gripe and grumble about the day He has made. Even when we’ve managed to screw it up a bit. Or maybe especially then…

H. Arnett
9/30/15