Soul Surfer vs. the Running Dream (No Conclusion!!!)

Bethany’s eyes fluttered open as she woke up in the hospital room. She reached over to touch her arm, even though she knew it was gone. She’d seen the blood in the water, heard the splash made by the shark as it jumped out of the water. She had felt her dream of being a pro surfer shatter as it swam away with her arm in its stomach. She closed her eyes and thought back to that day, that moment when her way of life had been taken from her. She and Alana were laying on their boards, out past the coral reef, exhausted from the surfing they had been doing. One of her arms lay in the water, the other rested on her board. She couldn’t have known what would happen next. The shark had jumped out of the water and grabbed onto her arm, ripping it from her body. Alana screamed for her dad as the water around Bethany was stained crimson with blood. She wouldn’t feel her arm, or anything for that matter. Pain lets our body know that something is wrong, but Bethany had seen the shark leap out of the water, she was seeing the blood, and she could touch the ridged edge of her surfboard, where the shark had clenched its teeth around Bethany’s flesh, and then ripped her life apart, as it had seemingly taken away Bethany’s ability to surf forever. A similar trauma occurred in The Running Dream, a book about a young track star named Jessica Carlisle who lost her leg in a school bus accident when returning to her school from a track meet. Jessica Carlisle was like any other teenage girl. She had a crush, a best friend, and was pretty much oblivious to the rest of the world’s pain and struggles. Sure, she knew about 9/11, and the Oklahoma bombings, and Isis. Big things. But she’d never really experienced a loss like the one that was coming. She’d never experienced a loss that truly affected her, one that changed her life. Like Bethany’s passion for surfing, Jessica too felt as if her life would not be the same without her special ability, running. She didn’t know why she loved...