From Youthful Stock

I’m not sure how to describe what Breanna McMahon of Freedom High School in Orlando, Florida represents. Bree suffered harrowing injuries to both of her legs at a fundraiser for her soccer team  recently and now is fighting to keep one of the legs after having the other amputated.

She spent days in a drug-induced coma and has undergone eight surgeries. Now conscious, she says she’ll walk and even run again. She admits the painful reality she now faces but says her goal is to compete for the opportunity to play college soccer once she is fitted for prosthetic limbs. Who the heck says that while they’re struggling to feel their foot?

I was weird enough as a kid to think quite often about what life would be like without an arm, eyesight or my hearing. But there must be a grace that God gives when the time comes to endure a gross mishap. Even if one possesses tenacity and resolve, how do you avoid stewing in the juices of blame, anger and dejection?

Bree is one of many stories in which young people, in particular, triumph over fear and disability. Remember Bethany Hamilton the teen phenom of a surfer who was viciously attacked by shark in 2003. Yeah, uh…she’s still surfing. She just avoids the shark feeding time of the day, according to mom. Or consider that in my six years of teaching I’ve watched the resilience of kids who lose one or both parents to cancer  and who endure unexpected divorce. Many of these kids credit their faith when asked how they sustain hope. Teens have this uncanny ability to not only cope with misfortune but thrive in the midst of it and it’s different than what I see in adults. They ask, “Why me?” like an adult would. The difference is, they follow that question with, “How long does it take to learn how to play soccer on legs that didn’t belong to me a couple of weeks earlier.”