In our cynical age, we tend not to believe in miracles—inexplicable events that save lives or answer prayers. I don’t believe in miracles, and I don’t believe in ghosts. But there is no other word to describe a story printed in the Boston Globe not long after the famous Boston Marathon.

It’s the story of a woman who lives in Oklahoma City who loves running marathons and had qualified to run in the 2023 Boston Marathon. Rachel Foster and her husband John own an Italian restaurant where she was the head chef. Five months before the Boston Marathon, they decided to take a night off and go for a ride on their electric scooters.

As they were riding, she had some sort of seizure, accelerated, and fell off her scooter. She had 17 broken bones and a catastrophic brain injury. She underwent brain surgery but didn’t wake up. For 10 days, she showed no consciousness.

The doctors told her husband that she had no brain activity, and that if she regained consciousness, she would likely be in a persistent vegetative state. They said there was no hope.

Her husband regretfully agreed to take her off life support the next day.

But then she opened her eyes.

A nurse ran in, and then the doctor, who instructed Rachel to blink twice if she could hear him. She did. He told her to squeeze his hand and move her feet on command. She did. The doctor turned the ventilator off and asked her to breathe on her own. For the first time since the accident, she did.

When a neurosurgeon who had operated on Rachel visited her hospital room a few weeks later, watching as she interacted with the nurses, he was stunned, John said.

“I looked at him and I said, ‘Isn’t this amazing?’ He went to approach her bed and he said, ‘No, this isn’t amazing. This is a miracle, and nothing that I did and nothing that my team did would cause an outcome like this,’” John recalled

Rachel had no memory of the accident. After a month of rehab, she transferred to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta to continue her rehabilitation. She had to learn how to stand, how to walk, how to balance, There, doctors decided that she needed another round of brain surgery “to restructure her skull and alleviate the discomfort.”

The surgery was a success, and as Rachel embarked on a grueling rehabilitation, she set her sights on a seemingly impossible goal — to run the Boston Marathon in April. She had run nine marathons and had qualified for Boston a second time by finishing the 2022 Oklahoma City Marathon the previous spring with a time of 3:17:15.

From the end of January to the end of March, she was in outpatient therapy, and her goal was to run in the Marathon, then only three weeks away. Her husband constantly encouraged her, cheering her on.

In addition, she had a running partner, 66-year-old Tim Altendorf, some three decades her senior. They had met in the local YMCA in spin class. Tim agreed to enter the Boston Marathon and run with her. They had a father-daughter bond. He understood how much it meant to her to run the Marathon.

When she returned to Oklahoma City, she and Altendorf ran together just once, a few weeks before the Marathon. The next day, Rachel suffered a groin injury that forced her to modify her training and bothered her throughout the race. She also continued to struggle with her vision and coordination, and during the Marathon Altendorf would ask how she was feeling….

After such adversity, running the Marathon felt like redemption. Rachel soaked in the cheers along the way, even as the miles took a toll. But her pace quickened as the roar of the crowd grew and she saw John jumping up and down on Boylston Street, shouting so loud he lost his voice. Rachel blew him kisses and said she loved him.

As rain fell, Rachel and Altendorf crossed with a time of 5:44:46.

“We held our hands and lifted both of our hands up in the air,” she said. “No matter what craziness has come at us, here we are. We’re finishing together as friends. It was amazing.”

Rachel said it will take time before she is fully recovered. But after finishing a marathon, she feels no task is too daunting.

“I feel so blessed and thankful,” she said. “I feel invincible. I do believe that it was a miracle. Miraculous things have happened and are happening every day.”

Crossing the finish line at the Boston Marathon!