3 months ago Autrey's mission buddy/BYU roomie, Pat Hobbs, found out his 6 year old had leukemia (2 days after Anndalyn had baby Braddock, mind you). Our hearts broke and we started praying for Cam every night. He is now doing well with his chemo and started going back to school again. We flew out with our corporate sponsors, Doug and Mona, to see the Hobbs family, to be part of baby Braddock's blessing, and to run in the 5k to fight children's cancer with Pat and Anndalyn. An added bonus is that Ali lives in Arizona too, just 30 minutes from Pat, so she was my running buddy for the race. She just had another ACL revision surgery and was fighting the flu, and I am horribly out of shape and am having quite a bit of pain in my joints, but we battled the cold and did it. Team Gimpy finished in 35 minutes. We weren't going very fast, but we finished 35th and 36th out of 120 in our age group. Not too shabby. Autrey reached his goal to get under 30 minutes with 30 seconds to spare. All 3 of us finished in the 200s out of 3,000 runners. I should mention that we started near the front. And old people and people pushing strollers still beat us. Just finishing without injury was a victory in my book.
See that little red heart on my hoodie? For me, this run was also for my friend, Jody Montierth. She got sick on Valentine's day and died suddenly on Wednesday morning. The bloodwork came back on Thursday that she had a rare acute case of leukemia, and she never knew it. This weekend I was still in denial. I didn't really talk about it because I didn't want to cry. It was easy to pretend she was still alive since I was out of town and away from my ward friends in Texas. Her funeral was today. The pretending is over. Though I've cried a lot today, her funeral was an uplifting spiritual experience. I know it wasn't a coincidence her husband was released from being our Bishop a few months ago so they could spend more time together. Or that Elder Bednar came to Dallas a week ago and her son attended his CES fireside about having the faith NOT to be healed, sharing a story about a young man with cancer. I also know Jody was worried that she would miss her son's wedding because she was in the hospital. He gets married in the temple tomorrow. And she will be there.
Autrey was trying to get his namesake to look my way for a picture. As soon as he was looking I said, "Autrey, get your hand down." Poor little Autrey thought I was talking to him. Oops.
Little Autrey is blonde, fearless, messy, and eats everything. They named him well.
A singing cowboy must have followed us from Texas.
