The Girl They Said Would Never Walk

Wilma Rudolph was born prematurely in 1940 in Clarksville, Tennessee, the twentieth of twenty-two children. At four years old, she contracted polio, which left her left leg twisted and useless. Doctors told her mother she would never walk without a brace.

For years, Wilma wore a metal leg brace. Every week, her mother drove ninety miles round trip to Nashville for physical therapy. Her siblings took turns massaging her withered leg at home. At age nine, Wilma stunned her doctors by removing the brace and walking on her own. By twelve, she was running. By sixteen, she had earned a bronze medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. And in 1960, at the Rome Olympics, Wilma Rudolph became the fastest woman in the world, winning three gold medals in track and field.

The writer of Hebrews understood this kind of perseverance: "Let us run with endurance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith" (Hebrews 12:1-2). The race God sets before us is not a sprint. It is a long journey through braces and therapy rooms, through seasons when the people closest to us must carry what we cannot carry alone.

Whatever brace you are wearing today — grief, illness, doubt, failure — do not believe the voice that says you will never walk again. The God who marks out your race also supplies the strength to finish it.