Impact

Sometimes life gives you little reminders of places were you may have had an impact. It's easy to get caught up in your personal and professional events and forget that the things you do, have a lasting impression on others. And when you need to remember, life has a funny way of putting a reminder right in front of your face...literally. So as I sat in an EC classroom this week to do a teacher observation, I saw a student wearing a t-shirt that I hadn't seen in a very long time. The shirt was one that runners and supporters received for the Bo Run. The Bo Run is an annual high school cross-country race held in memorial for a student, Bo Thompson, who had passed away in the early 2000s. While I did not coach Bo, I knew him fairly well. I coached for another school and we partnered together to host a summer running camp in the mountains. In the wake of his death, several of the teams with runners who knew him started the memorial race in his honor with proceeds going to charity. The race is still an annual event and will be held on September 28th this year. It's a pretty big deal now with tons of schools and individual runners participating. I honestly hadn't thought about it in a long time until seeing the shirt.

It's strange to think back to the kids I coached who were there when it started. To think about how they grieved his death. We watched at the first race, and students from many different schools joined in prayer and support for one another. They overcame an obstacle and helped start something that continues to make an impact today. In the moment, we knew that we were helping kids grieve and supporting a good cause. Those "kids" are all in their 30s now and a whole new generation participates in the event. Today's runners didn't know Bo and if they start the race in traditional fashion, only hear a short story about how the race came to be. But seeing that old tshirt reminded me that the things we do to support kids really do mean something. The phrase on the bottom of that shirt served as a powerful reminder that the actions we take for kids matter in their lives and while we often share comforting words with them, it's the things we do that mean more.