I’ll Push You: ‘God Was Saying I Need to Do This’

Justin Skeesuck and Patrick Gray from I’ll Push You

“Before we went on this journey, this pilgrimage, Patrick and I decided we’d be all in,” Justin said. “You get all of us.”

For Justin, that meant sometimes exposing more of him—quite literally—than he’d like.

Justin suffers from a degenerative nerve disease that looks a lot like ALS: He’s lost the use of most of his body, which means he can’t hitch up his pants when he might like. “Thousands of people are going to be seeing my butt crack!” He thought after seeing some of the footage.

But Justin didn’t just expose a little skin. He exposed his own weakness, and that was even more difficult.

“Not only are we walking 15, 17, sometimes 20-plus miles a day, (Patrick has to get me up in the morning. He has to dress me, he has to feed me … it’s a lot of work.” He says that showing that side of him—his helplessness—was a “bitter pill.”

But Justin had no doubt that it was what he was meant to do. “I’ve always learned to trust my instincts,” he said. “I didn’t look at the pilgrimage and ask, how am I going to do this or how am I going to do that. … I believe God was saying, You need to do this.

But he couldn’t do it without Patrick. Born in the same hospital 36 hours apart, the two have, quite literally, been lifelong best friends. They’ve been practically inseparable for 42 years and counting, with their friendship only growing after Justin was diagnosed with his disease. There was no doubt that Patrick would be all in, too.