Woeful Wednesday.

It had started as a prompting. After previously discussing our plans for the long run, I quickly shot down my husband’s suggestion that I run around the lake alone while he waited until the kids woke up. All of my intentions of purchasing pepper spray were put aside for the sake of the other daily things that got in the way, and I was uncomfortable running around the lake in the early hours of the morning by myself. Instead, the plan was to wait until the kids woke up, and I would run in the heat of the day. It seemed like a better alternative than having something happen.

The husband knew my anxiety. The years of working on the receiving end of a rape crisis line had taken its toll on my paranoia, and having children only increased the nerves dramatically. So he kept quiet when he was preparing the kids and had the prompting to bring his knife. His assumption was that it was for our protection, and he didn’t want to frighten me. 

At about 7:45 a.m., I took off, alone, while the husband set up his bike with the kids in the bike trailer to ride counter to the path I was taking around the lake. Every time we would intercept, he would give me water. The plan was a good one, and meant I wouldn’t have to wear a hydration belt (pushing the stroller has spoiled me—I’m used to not having to wear anything around my waist anymore). 

I was about a mile and a half into my run, still warming up, but feeling good. I was careful not to push too hard and burn out quickly, but I was feeling anxious about the temperature increasing. I was running alongside the road just outside of the park, one of two parts where traffic was something to be more mindful of. My eyes traveled across the scenic surroundings until they stopped on an opossum in the middle of the road.

Sad, I thought. At one point in my life, I would have expended more energy mourning the loss of the furry creature. Having been raised as the daughter of a veterinarian, anything with fur merited a great deal of caring. Since working at a couple domestic violence shelters and as a therapist hearing about countless stories of abuse and other awful things, it takes a bit more than roadkill to cause me to feel invested. So any thought used on the opossum was meant to be a flighty one, and then I would continue on with my run, probably with this song in my head:

But before I could hum a few bars, I heard it. The tiniest little gasping sound you could imagine.

My eyes darted back to the dead opossum, and just a foot behind it was a tiny, pink baby opossum.

Suck.

I stopped in my tracks. The baby was barely holding up its weight, its eyes still tightly shut, and seemed far too young to understand that it was in any kind of danger. The debate started: Take the baby to the side of the road? Wait for the husband to come by with the trailer and the phone? Try to run and meet my husband further into the loop, and tell him about the opossum? Or just keep running and write off this experience as natural selection at its finest?

This debate lasted long enough for my legs to feel they were losing all the benefits of the warm-up. Finally I decided to try to catch my husband and tell him about the baby to see if there was anything he could do. As I started running, though, I saw several cars headed in the direction of where the baby lay. A tenth of a mile up the road, I saw the blue plastic wrap encasing a newspaper, and I rushed forward to retrieve it. I took the plastic wrap and left the paper, and used it to carry the baby to the shoulder of the road. 

Brilliant, I thought. The blue plastic will make it easy for my husband to find it. 

I ran ahead, my pace quickening drastically from the warm-up. I was eager to get to my husband, thinking the baby had a ticking clock that was quickly running out. When I caught up to him, he thought I was looking strong, and told me to keep going. He yelled when I stopped and flagged him down.

“No! Keep going!”

“No, no! I need to talk to you!”

I told him about the baby. He made a face, and said, “I’m not touching it. Those things are riddled with disease.” When he saw the sorrow in my eyes, though, he said, “I’ll look at it. But it’s probably not going to make it. When they’re that young, they can’t.” 

I continued running, allowing myself to feel both realistic and hopeful. We had done enough research in rescuing baby animals to know that when their eyes are still closed, they cannot survive without the mother—bottle feeding isn’t even an option. I pondered about the blessing it was that there was only one baby, which was odd to me. Aren’t there always a gaggle of them in all the pictures?

I continued running, humming the song stuck in my head, and came across my husband at about 4 miles in. I was grateful and feeling parched, and assumed his stopping was to give me the water bottle. Instead, he told me about the prompting he’d had about the knife before coming out that morning.

“I thought it was because we’d need protection. I didn’t think it was for the mercy killing of six baby opossums.”

My heart dropped. Six?! He then went on to explain that he saw the baby, and knew it wouldn’t survive. He had a similar debate in his head about what to do, but his options were to kill it himself, or let it die of starvation or be eaten by another animal. He knew the quickest way with the least amount of suffering was to do it himself. It was hard enough, but after the one I had found, he heard five more wiggling in the mother’s pouch, trying to nurse. 

I hugged him. He’d had to do this once before when he’d found a dead mouse and its litter of baby mice, some still in their sacks. I know it affects him deeply, and he feels silly talking about it because of the negative reactions he’s gotten before—about not being “tough” or “man enough” to just do it and not care.

I continued with my run, and thought about the events that had just taken place. If I had gone running earlier, I may have been done before the opossum was hit. If I’d found someone to run with me in Lawrence, I wouldn’t have come out to Olathe to do my run around that lake. If my husband hadn’t followed the prompting to take his knife, he may have decided there was nothing he could do and not investigated further.

We are tools in the Lord’s hands if we allow ourselves to be. I am grateful running gives me those opportunities, even if it’s difficult. 

And today, I’m buying some frakkin’ pepper spray.