Getting back on track
Bethel University freshman Reanna Cruz faces a possible heart condition and her faith is tested.
By Sadie Buteyn | Clarion Reporter
Legacy Christian Academy junior Reanna Cruz pushed herself toward the finish line as she heard the cardiologist’s words echoing in her head, “If you push yourself, you’ll die.” The cross country runner disregarded her thoughts and kept her pace in the sections 5K race, sprinting towards a new personal record and a chance to qualify for state. Fifty feet from the finish, she felt her muscles begin to break down. Her vision started to blur, but she pushed forward, now 40 feet away. Twenty feet from the finish line, she collapsed.
After Cruz hit the ground, someone moved her to the side so the other racers could finish. As she lay there, Cruz came to a realization. She thought about how she had been living her life, and who she had been living it for. She realized that her reason for running needed to change. And decided then and there that it would.
“It wasn’t about winning the race,” Cruz said. “It was never about succeeding in life, grades. The reason to live is to know Christ and make Him known.”
After being carried away in an ambulance, Cruz spent time in four hospitals trying to figure out what was wrong, along with her brother Delfin, who had collapsed at his own race a month earlier. They found out that they may have Long QT syndrome, a genetic heart condition.
Cruz looked at the diagnosis as a miracle, saying that 10% of people who are diagnosed with LQTS die on the spot, but she and her brother were still alive. Even while Cruz was faced with the possibility of not being able to run again, she didn’t let her faith waver, but accepted that whatever happened was God’s plan for her.
“Anytime anyone goes through something like that, and sees God’s faithfulness, it just changes them, just forever,” said Heather Cruz, Reanna’s mother.
After the initial diagnosis, Cruz and her brother were blessed with another miracle. Their mom got them into the Mayo Clinic to see a specialist within two weeks, when it should have taken months. The specialist there ran tests and then told the Cruz siblings the unexpected.
“[It] was just incredible to see God working in this way to teach me this lesson of why I’m here, what my purpose is. And it was really, really scary in the moment, but I think the greater purpose was served.” –Reanna Cruz, Bethel University freshman
They were healthy. Her brother had collapsed from heatstroke, and she had been affected by psychosomatic stress, but neither one had a heart condition.
“[It] was just incredible to see God working in this way to teach me this lesson of why I’m here, what my purpose is,” said Cruz. “And it was really, really scary in the moment, but I think the greater purpose was served.
Cruz found herself returning to cross country again her senior year. She was wary after what had happened during her junior season, but she prayed and came to the conclusion that God wanted her to run again. Not to make it to state, but to mentor other girls on the team and pour into them.
She found an unexpected gift. As a senior, Cruz made friends that she wouldn’t have if she wasn’t on the team. Her new friends made the season worthwhile, and she felt more connected and known by her team. They prayed over the course with her when she found out that she was competing in the same race, on the same course, that she never got to finish. They asked God to free her from the experience and the struggles she had faced. But this didn’t stop her from being nervous before the race began.
“When it came time to have the gun go off I was so nervous. I don’t think I’ve ever been more nervous in my entire life,” said Cruz.
She took off when the gunshot sounded and made it past the point where she had fallen the year before, and then continued across the finish line. Her time hovered on the edge of qualifying for state. She, her teammates and her coach weren’t sure. But a few minutes later she had her answer.
Cruz had made it. She was going to state.
After her senior year of high school, Cruz chose to go to the same college as her brother, Bethel University. She was excited to run track in college, but realized once she arrived it was going to be very different from her cross country and track experiences in high school.
“The three words that I realized that I used to describe myself, were smart, fast and known. And those three things were kind of taken away from me as I went throughout the year.” –Reanna Cruz, Bethel University freshman
Instead of being one of the fastest and the smartest, like she was in high school, Cruz found that she was struggling to keep up academically. Track practice was also more difficult than she expected.
“The three words that I realized that I used to describe myself, were smart, fast and known. And those three things were kind of taken away from me as I went throughout the year,” Cruz said.
She had a hard time with the fact that she was no longer known like she had been, and had trouble forming relationships with her teammates when the season started. A few weeks into the season her high school turned college teammate, junior Larissa Minshull, had a talk with her about trusting her team.
Minshull knew it was harder for Cruz to let herself be part of the team because she sometimes struggled with being over-competitive and that could cause a disconnect between teammates.
“It’s super important to learn how to be competitive against yourself, and not to diminish your achievements or other people’s achievements by comparing them,” Minshull said.
After her talk with Minshull, Cruz remembered what God had taught her during her health scare, that she needed to seek God first and do things for Him, not herself. She chose to enjoy the community of track and found she was starting to see her teammates as people, not competition.
“I actually got less nervous before races and I still time-wise was doing better than I had before, it just didn’t feel like it in comparison,” Cruz said. “But then I was able to see it for other people and get excited about their successes.”
Cruz learned the value of a team, and realized that every race that she runs, she runs for God.
