More Powerful Than the Written Word

My friend Barbara flew up from Florida to attend the Greater Philadelphia Christian Writers' Conference with me. After the conference during her visit, we had lunch with her friend Betty who told us about a doctor's appointment she had.

During extensive testing, her doctor discovered the blood pressure in one of her legs was lower than the pressure in the other. He told her he wanted her to walk an hour a day seven days a week. "You'd think he'd at least give me Sundays off," she said.

Betty doesn't walk the hour in one session. Some days she'll walk the length of the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk and back. That takes her 45 minutes. Then she'll walk the other 15 minutes at her home later in the day.

Last Christmas her kids bought her a treadmill so she didn't have to get out in the weather. She's not a TV watcher, she said, so she'd walk 30 minutes during the noon news broadcast and 30 minutes during the evening news. As she told her story, I felt a few pangs of guilt and shame.

I have a treadmill gathering dust in my living room. Sure, I was going to walk while I watched TV, too. "You need to get some kind of exercise," my husband has said. "Why don't you walk?" So we bought a used treadmill.

"You need to walk at least 30 minutes a day three days a week," more than one doctor has told me over the years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've read the articles. I really have. I know the benefits of exercise for physical and mental well-being.

Why did one woman's story over breakfast at IHOP motivate me to get moving? Picture this. Betty is 86. Can you see this dear lady walking along the boardwalk every day or on a treadmill in her living room when weather doesn't permit?

On the way home from our meeting with Betty, Barbara and I had a heart-to-heart. "My doctor thinks I walk every day," she said, "because I lied to him." Ah. My sister. "If Betty can do it, I can do it, too," she said. Barbara turned 82 on her last birthday.

More powerful than the words I read in all those articles on-line and in magazines and pamphlets, more motivational than hearing my husband's, my doctor's, and Dr. Oz's encouragement is the power of example. Who would have thought an 86-year-old woman would be strong enough to get my sedentary body up and moving?

We can't spend all our time in front of the computer. Let's get out there and motivate someone to be her best self. Do you have a motivational story to tell? Write it. Share it. But better than writing it is living it.