The coveted journal is leather bound, charcoal gray with brown rust coming through. It has a leather cord that wraps around. In it, on the last day of 2014, Jarryd Wallace wrote with a fine-point Sharpie this word: Freedom.
So when I pose the question, “What do you Live Riveted to?” in our recent interview, Wallace doesn’t have to reach very far for the answer. It’s right there in ink.
“This year has been a very freeing year,” he tells me.
At first glance, it may seem what that means to Wallace would be way different than the rest of us. He is, after all, an amputee athlete and a runner for the U.S. Paralympic Team and I confess to thinking it had something to do with mobility.
But no.
This version of freedom looks a lot like one many of us aspire to.
“It’s about slowly letting go of things I was trying to control,” Wallace says.
Things like his schedule, how he’s going to perform in a race, how he will represent himself as an athlete. He admits these are things that have caused him a lot of unnecessary stress.
“I focus on one day,” Wallace says. “I’m a very joyful person. I get to live on a daily basis. I get to do what I love to do. I’m so grateful.”
That wasn’t always the case for the young man who loves to run. Not by a long shot.
With faith in God as his centering force, he has already had quite a journey at age 24. His competitive running career began in 2005, his freshman year of high school, when he made the varsity cross country team. He was able-bodied and had been running for as long as he could remember. As a sophomore he decided to also run track, but pain in his right leg was diagnosed as a stress reaction.
In his junior year of high school when his leg started bothering him again, it was the same diagnosis. He went for a second opinion and was told he had developed chronic compartment syndrome, which required surgery and a four-to-six week recovery. However, after the surgery in November of 2007 the pain got worse.
“Over the next eight days I had four more surgeries where the doctors went in and slowly removed the dead muscle that was in my lower right leg,” Wallace writes on his website. “I laid in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber every morning for two hours to promote healing and to keep the remaining muscle in my leg alive. After five surgeries, over 20 hours in the hyperbaric chamber, and 15 days later, I finally got released from the hospital to go home.”
Still, the doctor said there was a good chance he would never walk again. After lots of physical therapy, developing problems with his foot, and no positive improvement, he went into a spin. In a fit of rage he ran to the high school track and forced himself to run a lap through his pain.
“I spent the next 18 months running from God, trying to find fulfillment with the things the world says it has to offer: drinking, sex, and drugs,” Wallace writes. “I filled myself up with these ‘worldly desires’ trying to feel something, trying to escape from the pain and reality of my life and ultimately, trying to find answers.”
Go figure that the road to answers would come through amputation. As soon as he heard from the doctor it was not a matter of if but when he would lose his leg, he made the decision to do it. He then Google-d Paralympic Track and Field and called his parents into the room to show them what was on the computer screen. That was his goal.
On August 4, 2010, six weeks and one day after his amputation, he took his first steps on his new leg and he couldn’t believe he was pain free. On September 14 of that year he ran with his new leg.
“The day they let me take my running leg home was the day I started getting ready to run in the 2012 Paralympics in London,” Wallace writes. “My first run lasted eight minutes. My legs were so weak from not running and getting used to my new leg, that eight minutes was all I could handle. Each time I went out to run after that, I went further, and further, and further.”
He hired a coach and their first run was in seven inches of snow and ice. From there it was a performance at Nationals that earned him a spot on the 2011 ParaPan American USA team. There he won a gold medal in the 100m and ranked as the fastest single amputee in the world. He made the 2012 U.S. Paralympic Team for London and placed sixth in the 400m; in a “devastating” turn, the 4x100m relay team he was part of was disqualified.
But the following year brought a gold medal and world record in the 100m (22.08) at the International Paralympic Committee Athletics World Championships in France as well as in the 4x100m relay (40.73).
“I was running relaxed,” Wallace tells me about 2013.
In 2014, though, he felt like he was letting in distractions again. Suddenly it becomes clear that the “freedom” notion didn’t come out of thin air. When Wallace tells me it’s been “building” over time, he’s not kidding.
Going into this year one of his mentors challenged him to journal, read the Bible, do some writing, and have intentional time. He likes having a word to characterize each year. One morning when he was reading his daily devotional, it said, “There’s freedom in rest.” He had not been feeling relaxed in the offseason.
Ding, ding. There was his word for 2015. Freedom.
“This season is all about having so much fun,” Wallace says. “I’m anxious to continue to walk this year in freedom.”
In part of our discussion we talk about how more people feel like they’re failing on a daily basis than succeeding. That calls him. He tells me he sees running as a platform, an opportunity to share his story.
On page one is freedom. It all flows from there.
Written by Nancy Colasurdo
Photo by Tri Nguyen Photography
