A Limp to a Strut

It’s 7:00 p.m. on Monday, March 28, 2022, and I’m sitting in my new home in Texas with my leg elevated and my ankle wrapped in ice after spraining it on a training run a few days ago. I’ll be honest, this one hurts, but it’s not the physical pain that has me down. It’s the mental setback of having to deal with another injury after I spent the last three months rehabbing the opposite ankle, which I severely sprained last Halloween.

Ankle sprains are nothing new for me. They started in high school while playing summer pickup basketball at the local YMCA. I can still remember howling in pain after it happened the first time. Despite my swollen foot, my brother teased me and even made me wait on the sideline until the game was over before he drove me home. He claims he brought me a bag of ice, which I suppose is true if I overlook the fact there was only one ice cube inside…but I digress.

Ankle sprains continued to haunt me in college and beyond, forcing me to eventually give up on pickup games all together and transition into long-distance running as a safer alternative. As a result of the cumulative injuries, however, I now have stretched ligaments in both of my ankles that makes them susceptible to reinjury, so when I awkwardly stepped on a rock during my last run, you can imagine how things ended for me that day.

I suppose there is some upside because the injury gave me a great excuse to catch up on some NCAA March Madness tournament games over the weekend. I had been rooting for this year’s Cinderella team, the St. Peter’s Peacocks, not just because they are the first 15-seed to ever advance to an Elite Eight game, but also because the university is located in Jersey City, NJ, about a half hour from where I used to live.

I stress “used to live” because my wife and I recently relocated from Jersey to Texas in January after a three-day journey across country in a jam-packed SUV. It’s been a little bit of an adjustment for both of us since we arrived. For her, it’s been acclimating to Texas culture and a new southern way of life. For me, it’s been getting used to the static views of working from my home office instead of the ever-changing scenery of the open road.

Believe it or not, I even considered selling Honcho, my van, rather than leave it parked indefinitely, but I decided against it in the end. I figured I still have some adventure left in me and had recently started training for a half-marathon with an extended goal of hiking the high points of New Mexico and Arizona later this spring.

Ironically, just before I sprained my ankle, I was thinking about some of the items I wanted to include on a couple of “vision boards” I plan to make for my home office, things like motivational quotes and pictures of what I hope to accomplish in the future. A few moments later, I was on the ground clutching my ankle in pain and yelling “No! No! No!” as I came to grips with what had just happened.

Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” It wasn’t long before doubt began to creep in and I began to question some of the goals I had laid out just weeks before. Thankfully, my wife has been encouraging me daily to keep a positive attitude. Since I won’t be able to run for a good minute, she suggested I increase the mileage on my stationary bike and start swimming laps with her at the local pool as soon as I’m able. Who knows, maybe I’ll add a picture of a triathlon to my vision board instead of a half-marathon.

Vision is also an important theme in my book, The Search for the Last Imperial. I recently finished writing a new prologue, in which one of the main characters, a scarlet macaw named Perce, finds himself in the middle of a ceremonial vision quest, a traditional rite of passage into adulthood. The vision Perce sees is directly tied to his identity as a warrior and also guides him throughout his individual journey.

As for the peacocks of St. Peter’s, their 2022 tournament run unfortunately came to an end this past weekend with a loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels. I read a Sports Illustrated article this morning by Jeremy Woo titled, An Ode to Saint Peter’s. The article discussed how the Peacocks’ success may have come as a surprise to most of the country, but not to themselves or their head coach, Shaheen Holloway. Junior guard Daryl Banks III explained it like this: “Coming [into the tournament], Coach established the vision that he had. All of us went on board with that vision.”

The peacocks may have limped into the tournament as a 15-seed, but they exited with quite the strut after giving a performance for the ages that only they saw coming.

Follow me on Instagram at @Joshua_Maven or @HonchotheVan, on Twitter @MaventheRaven or Facebook at Facebook/TheLastImperial.