Double-knot your laces and always carry a Snickers in your pocket

I am now five days out from running another marathon.  Yea, I know.  “Don’t you remember the disaster in last fall?”  (See my October 2011 post “Woman Hit By Train”).   But this one promises to be different.  The route will not be lined with surging crowds, asphalt and tall buildings, but adorned by all the radiance of springtime in the mountains, meandering over an old converted railway bed along a river.  Only one hundred runners are registered, no t-shirts, no medals, no timing chips, and just ten dollars to enter.  The aid stations consist of card tables set up by the local  Boy Scouts and the ladies at the Methodist Church.  I expect plenty of homemade goodies to fuel us on.  Quite a contrast to the pressure of a big city marathon, none of the stress, but all of the fun.  Just run and enjoy it.  I may not even wear a watch.

At this point, there is nothing more I can do to be ready.  Eighteen weeks of preparation are done – a total of 547 miles of slogging through mud and sleet since mid November.  Every day I marked my little notebook with mileage or rest, carefully following a plan to get me ready for the big one and stretch me to the brink and back again.  

The race date has been circled on my calendar since last fall, but in real life, we don’t always know what marathon we are headed for - – a life-changing event that arrives unannounced on the most ordinary of days, difficult family situations that emerge at inconvenient times, an unanticipated blow that knocks the wind out of you, those sudden frightening monsters who actually live under the bed after all, a thousand things that we never expect in a million years and lack the endurance to carry alone.

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers remarks about the preparation that really counts:  “If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis.”  

What’s on my training plan for life?  Be ready for what appears to be ordinary.  Because it’s ALL big stuff.  First things first.  Read God’s Word and follow Him into His day for me.  That is the most important thing I can do.

 

Train yourself in godliness;

for while bodily training is of some value,

godliness is of value in every way,

as it holds promise for the present life

and also for the life to come.

…For to this end we toil and strive,

because we have

our hope set on the living God…

                    1 Timothy 4. 7-8,10