Marking Every Mile

Jake Hall and his son Thad are going for a run. Their big gray van pulls into the parking lot of West Virginia’s C&O Canal Trail—their favorite route—as the late-afternoon sun slants through leafless trees. Jake, sporting a long beard and yellow tank top, hops out of the van and opens the sliding door. Eleven-year-old Thad sits quietly inside in his big, black wheelchair.

Thad was born in March 2011, two years after the Halls’ first child, Magnolia. He was weak, but doctors weren’t sure why. He cleared all the tests, but a few months later he began having seizures. Each seizure made him weaker. By the time Thad was 8 months old, he could no longer cry or eat and could hardly move. He was having 15 to 20 seizure episodes per day, each lasting for several minutes.

Medication didn’t help. Doctors inserted a feeding tube, but they could only diagnose him with “failure to thrive” and “intractable epilepsy.” Jake says the weariness and helplessness of those early days took a deep emotional toll. He’d been a committed Christian for years, but at first he felt like he was living two disconnected realities: one with a kind, powerful, and real Jesus; the other with a suffering son and no clear answers. He avoided reading the Gospels. All the stories of healing hurt too much, especially the one about the boy with epilepsy. “Jesus heals him, and ... I’m like, I know You can do it, God. Why don’t You do it? I do not understand how this could possibly be good,” Jake recalled. “If one more person quoted Romans:8:28And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
See All... to me, I was gonna throttle them.”

After Thad’s birth, running became an escape, a way to clear his head. But in 2016, when Thad’s grandparents gave the Halls a jog stroller for Thad’s fifth birthday, Jake decided to start bringing Thad along. At first, they only covered gentle distances—2 miles or so. He thought about running races with Thad, but most didn’t allow strollers.

But one of Jake’s friends knew the organizers of the Harpers Ferry Half Marathon, and in May 2016, he offered at the last minute to get them a spot. The race was the following day, and Jake had never run more than 8 miles. He said yes anyway.

On race day, Thad woke up calm and alert—no seizures. Jake struggled through the race, crumpling briefly at mile 10 with severe leg cramps. But that day remains one of his favorite memories. “That moment of finishing that race was just this unbelievable joy,” he said. “I let out a big yell, and then we kind of glided through, and they handed us our little medals.”

Jake put one of the medals around Thad’s neck. “I’m proud of you,” he told his son. “In my mind, Thaddeus was completing a half marathon,” he said.

That race opened a world of new possibilities. Since 2016, Jake and Thad have run hundreds of miles together. When Thad grew out of the jog stroller, friends helped them raise money for the Hoyt racing wheelchair. As Thad gets older and heavier, running with him will get harder—but Jake is planning on plenty more runs with his son. “My goal is to be fit enough to be able to run with Thad as long as I can....I’d like to be running until I’m at least 70,” he said.

Since that long hospital stay last year, every run fills Jake with gratitude. “We really thought it was the end of the road ... sometimes it’s overwhelming.” Then he chuckles: “It’s OK to cry while you run. It’s hard, but you can do it.”

https://images.wng.org/WORLD_6.3.2023.pdf?_gl=1*95cde2*_ga*MTgzNzkxMjkxMy4xNjc1NDUwNzEw*_ga_QH42Y1N34C*MTY4NTU0MzQwMC4xNS4xLjE2ODU1NDM2MTcuNTUuMC4w [page 60.]