Immaculée Ilibagiza

If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll remember that over the summer I recommended a few books to read. The one I hoped people would read was Left To Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza. Immaculée’s life was transformed dramatically during the 1994 Rwandan genocide where she and seven other women spent 91 days huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor's house. Immaculée entered the bathroom a vibrant, 115-pound university student with a loving family - she emerged weighing just 65 pounds to find most of her family had been brutally murdered. Immaculée credits her salvage mostly to prayer and to a set of rosary beads given to her by her devout Catholic father prior to going into hiding. Anger and resentment about her situation were literally eating her alive and destroying her faith, but rather than succumbing to the rage that she felt, Immaculée instead turned to prayer. She began to pray the rosary as a way of drowning out the negativity that was building up inside her. Immaculée found solace and peace in prayer and began to pray from the time she opened her eyes in the morning to the time she closed her eyes at night. Through prayer, she eventually found it possible, and in fact imperative, to forgive her tormentors and her family's murderers. Immaculée's strength in her faith empowered her to stare down a man armed with a machete threatening to kill her during her escape. She also later came face to face with the killer of her mother and her brother and said the unthinkable, "I forgive you."

After reading all three of Immaculée’s books, I knew I couldn’t pass up the chance to see her tell her story in person when she came to St. Andrews church in Gibbsboro, New Jersey last night. I took my Mom with me and we both shared a truly inspirational evening. How does this tie in with running? While I’m running and it becomes difficult, tiresome or painful, I often think of Immaculée and say to myself: "Immaculee went 91 days without the gift of movement. She would have done just about anything to be able to run down this vast open peaceful road. You think this is hard…this is nothing. Enjoy your gift of God’s peace and movement." It always helps me put things in perspective and gets me through the next few miles. I intend on utilizing the gift of movement to it’s fullest extent on Sunday.
Just five days to go. Thanks for reading,
Pat