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Madeline Manning Mims: The Miracle Across the Finish Line

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CBN.com Madeline Manning Mims endured sickness and personal heartbreak to become one of the most decorated female athletes in Olympic history. Growing up in inner city Cleveland, Madeline had to be a fighter early in life.

“The whole attitude was ‘you ain’t nothing. You ain’t never going to be nothing, so don’t even try.’ That’s how people lived,” she tells The 700 Club.

Madeline was the youngest of four children, and her family didn’t have much. So when the doctors diagnosed Madeline with Spinal Meningitis at age three, she quickly found out that what she did have: a praying mother.

“She listened to what they had to say, but when they went out, she said, ‘I prayed and I made a bargain with God. If He would give me my little girl back, I’ll raise her up in the ways of the Lord the best way I know how.’ The next day when the doctors came in to re-diagnose me, they said, ‘We don’t know what’s happening. She has a 50/50 chance. There’s been a turnaround. She might make it.’ They told her I would never be normal as the normal kids walk or play. I would be mentally retarded.”

But Madeline defied the doctor’s prognosis. She studied hard, played and ran until all evidence of her illness was gone. When she was in high school, President Kennedy established the presidential fitness challenge. Every student was required to take the test. Madeline’s results were a 14-year surprise in the making.

“When they tabulated my scores, they realized, ‘Wait a minute. She is not only the top female in the school, she’s one of the top in the nation.’ I had set some top scores in the nation. That’s when they said, ‘We need to put you into some type of sports.’”

Soon the little girl that was never supposed to walk again began outrunning everyone in the nation. That’s when Coach Edward Temple, the man responsible for the winningest women’s track program in history, offered her a scholarship to run for the Tennessee State Tigerbelles.

“As a sophomore, all eight of us made the Olympic team,” Madeline says. “That’s how I became an Olympian. Thank God the first year I made the Olympic team I also became a gold medalist for the United States. That was in Mexico City. It was that time when the myth was that black girls couldn’t run long distances. So for me to be in an 800, even though I had been undefeated in the world for two years, nobody believed that I was going to win.”

The year after her first Olympics, Madeline married and soon had her son John. But her husband became physically and verbally abusive.

“It was horrible to be with a man that you loved who hated you -- do things so horrible that you just didn’t want to live anymore. I never thought that I would ever get to that place. I was a woman who had gone all the way to the top, broken and set history, broken myths, and there I was at one point in hiding in a basement to keep from being killed. It was a bizarre, dark time. During those times, I questioned God. I really questioned God.”

Fearing for her life, she turned to the courts for protection.

“I never thought that I would be a statistic,” she says. “It was horrible to stand before a judge and have him tell you what you were going to do with your life.”

Within a year, Madeline was divorced. With a newborn son and an unfinished education, a once promising future now seemed bleak. That’s when Madeline cried out to God, and He answered.

“Soon after that I got a call from my coach, and he said, ‘If you want to come back and finish your degree, you don’t have to run. I’ll put you on scholarship.’ I said, ‘Well, I can be manager. I can work.’ He said, ‘You don’t have to do anything. I just want you to get that piece of paper.’”

Madeline went back to school to finish her degree. It wasn’t long before she was back on the track.

She recalls, “I was there to show [that] you can’t keep a good woman down. I was angry. At that time, I set a world record in the 2000. I was just crashing stuff.”

Madeline made it back to the Olympics. As her emotional healing began to take place, she remembered the prayer and support of her mother that had helped her get to where she was.

“I’ll never forget. She was directly up from where I crossed the finish line. I remember I could hear her voice screaming, ‘Thank you, Jesus! That’s my baby!’ This was resounding throughout the whole stadium. I just kind of looked up and saw her. She had her hands raised, and she was just blessing the Lord, because she had seen where I had come from. She knew that this was a miracle to come out of death and sickness and to be the champion in the world. That was her baby.”

Today Madeline is reaching out to young athletes as an athletic chaplain.

“I didn’t know that I was an athlete,” she says. “Who knew that these big feet and long legs were made to run around in circles to glorify Jesus.”

She recently made the trip to Beijing, China as the chaplain to the U.S. Olympic team. Madeline’s work takes her all over the world, but no matter where she goes her message is the same. She says, “Come to Him with all your brokenness and broken-heartedness, because He will heal you. He’ll open a path for you to walk that you can’t open for yourself. You don’t even know that there’s a door there. All of a sudden, His favor will open it up to you. There is a way out. There is a way of escape. God’s got that way.”

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Jonathan
Cyprowski

The 700 Club