Bedtime Prayers with my 4 year old.
I’ve grown accustom to it now, but when I stop up and consider it, it’s really quite amazing.
Every evening as I tuck my two oldest girls into their twin beds for the night we always say ‘thank you‘ for the things that we are most grateful for. The regulars that make the list each night include our immediate family, especially their new baby sister (with a special thank you that she wasn’t a brother), extended family, safe home & community, school friends, our health, warm beds, ice cream, candy, butterflies, cheese, and kittens. There is one peculiar entry that comes from my 4-year old every single bedtime, though, that stands out as an unusual item on their beautiful little list.
“Terry Fox“, she says.
Actually, she always ranks him second on her list right behind her little sister (which is well ahead of me by the way). Terry is more often than not affectionately honored further with the footnote, “Our Canadian Hero“.
I showed my girls a documentary a while back on Terry Fox. We watch a few actually. All that he did, and perhaps more importantly, all that he was. They each sat on my lap. Didn’t say a word through the whole thing (very atypical for these two), and remained thoughtfully quiet after it was over.
“He died?”, they asked with confused puckered lips and crinkled brows.
After we talked about his story further, and watched some additional footage of his Marathon of Hope, he has ever since been deemed the Canadian Hero of our household. And rightly so.
I’m no historian. I’ve never talked with anyone who knew him closely. I can’t say I’ve studied Terry Fox’s life enough to be able to claim a deep understanding of who this young man was. But do we have anyone else like him? Like most of us I only have that immediate impression he left us with; his unimaginable legacy of cancer awareness, fund-raising, and collectively uniting a country with his monstrous solo run of self-sacrifice across Canada through the summer of 1980.
143 Consecutive Days of Marathons… with one leg.
I am certainly amazed by the physical feat of it all. 143 back-to-back days of running. Not just running, but a marathon (26 miles) each day. 143 consecutive days of marathons! On a prosthetic leg. How in the world? What must be inside the heart of a man to do that? I am not sure exactly. You can listen to him clearly and humbly explain why he kept going, and yet it is still perplexing to us. It is something, a fire, that can still capture the imagination and admiration of a little girl at bedtime. Yes, a second later she is listing off popsicles and gummy bears, but he still gets in there. He still somehow makes the list. Every night.
She is going to mention him again tonight. Guaranteed. Second on the list. I need to focus on his name a little more intently during our prayer time this evening. Maybe it’s just because we’re ex-pats living within the borders of our southern neighbor. Maybe we miss our home too much and get a bit sentimental at times. But to us, his example is unmatched.
In the vast world of oncology, individual motives can be compromised by professional territorialism, ego, and profit. In Terry we find a spirit that unifies, and a purity of intent that a 4-year old can pick up on.
So, Thank you Terry… for helping us stay grounded in the good & the right, and for putting a smile on my face as my children say their thank you’s before bed.
You are a hero. Our Canadian Hero.
Love, Rhiannon (4-yrs old), Aowyn (6-yrs old), and David (41-yrs old).
Terry Fox was forced to stop his coast-to-coast run across Canada on September 1st, 1980. He started it on April 12th (funny enough, my 4-year old’s birthday). He completed 143 days of running that totaled 5,373 kilometres (3,339 mi).
Dr. David Karl Oster is a licensed Naturopathic Doctor (ND/FABNO), and founder of www.OsterOncology.com, a video consultation-based medical practice exclusively focused on supporting cancer patients moving through active treatment anywhere in North America, with the use of Naturopathic Oncology.