I’m Lighting the Night!

On October 29, I’ll be walking in support of the Virginia Chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in the Richmond version of Light the Night! As a blood cancer survivor, I will be walking with a white balloon in a sea of red balloons. I have joined a LTN team: Faith’s Hope. This team was formed by a local lady named Faith who was diagnosed this spring with Stage 4 Hodgkin Lymphoma, and is undergoing heavy-duty chemotherapy as we speak. Faith has raised over $5,500 for this cause while battling cancer, which I think is pretty amazing, and I am honored to join her team.

I just joined up for Light the Night today, and therefore won’t have time for a little while to customize my Light the Night page, which can be reached at:

http://pages.lightthenight.org/va/Richmond09/ARitter

After being done with fundraising for Team in Training for just four months, I am not going to do heavy duty fundraising for a Light the Night Campaign. I just can’t. Friends and family would shoot me, assuming that they stayed around long enough to shoot me. More likely, I would walk up to them and say “Hey! Guess what? I’m fundraising for the Light the Night, and I was wondering ...” Suddenly, I would realize that the only sound was crickets calling, and that I was by myself. I would notice my friend, now appearing no larger than an ant in the distance, sprinting away with a running pace that Usain Bolt would envy.

Of course, if anyone seeing this is led to make a donation, that would be great. But I am doing this primarily to support LLS in spirit, to support Faith, and to walk proudly as a fortunate and grateful survivor of a blood cancer. If I can somehow raise a couple of hundred bucks along the way, then that would be a wonderful exclamation point to my Light the Night experience. But that will not be the focus of my efforts. I’ll be happy to be out there among hundreds or hopefully thousands of others, showing support for a great cause and for the many, many people dealing with blood cancers.