Jean Driscoll: Champion for the Disabled
Matt Schnepf

(The following is a continuation of Matt Schnepf's interview with wheelchair athlete Jean Driscoll, which appears in the July/August 2004 Light & Life magazine.)

Competing in the Boston Marathon provided treasured times of Christian fellowship for Jean Driscoll. From 1996-2000, a group of women from Driscoll's home church supported her in the days preceding the event. This included worship and prayer the day before the race. "It was a wonderful, new way to experience the Boston Marathon," she recalls.

As a child, Driscoll attended church with her family but perceived God as being judgmental. "I always felt distant from God, unworthy," she says. As time passed, He used several people to impact her spiritually — "Too many to name," she confesses.

Of two particular women she does mention, one was a nurse who used to walk through the hospital singing familiar Bible songs. Driscoll became the nurse's live-in mother's helper. "I did that for a year and started going to church with her and her family," she says. "That's when I learned about a relationship with Christ." Still, Driscoll based her relationship with the Lord more on a fear of going to hell than on an understanding of His sanctifying power and forgiveness.

Years later the University of Illinois sponsored a "Jean Driscoll Day." The woman who planned the ceremony exhibited a peace that Driscoll had never witnessed before. "I found myself wanting to spend time with her," she says. The woman shared about her faith as the two spent time together. "God used her to soften my heart to Him and understand what Christianity was all about," Driscoll says. And it's her love for Christ that she shares wherever she goes — whether it's through speaking engagements or advancing the cause of the disabled at home and abroad.

World Class Champion
As a professional athlete from 1987-2000, Driscoll captured multiple titles and medals while breaking world, American and course records. The sidebar provides just a mere sample of her achievements.

More on Driscoll
To learn more about Jean Driscoll, her achievements and ministry, visit her Web site: www.jeandriscoll.com. Or order her autobiography,
Determined to Win, available from Light and Life Communications,
1 (800) 348-2513.