You Can't Just Sit There

I pointed the little computer arrow over the button that said "register."  And I hesitated, fully knowing the commitment that single click would mean.  My finger hovered for a minute or two.  "Do I really want to do this?  Again?"

My mind raced back, now nearly ten years ago, when I clicked that marathon registration button for the first time, completely naive about what I was getting into.  It was early August 2003.  I had just turned 50.  We were making a major move with our family to Memphis, a place where I didn't know a soul.  I felt challenged to do something different to celebrate these new beginnings.  The week before, I had just run the longest distance I had ever attempted in my two years of running, eight miles with my sister in law who was training for the Chicago marathon. Eight miles?  "Oh, if I can run eight miles, I can surely do a marathon," I surmised, totally clueless as to what 26.2 miles meant.

Stepping rather boldly outside my box, I signed up for the Chicago marathon which was taking place in eight short weeks, thinking that I was registering for a one-time event and be done with it.  Little did I know where that adventure would take me. I am still feeling its effects.

It encompassed far more than training for a race.  God used it powerfully to stretch me, to develop new relationships I would not have had, to spur me on in my writing, and to deepen my relationship with Him. No, running did not "change my life," as many have claimed.  Running is not my salvation.  But God has used it in my life to encourage me to attempt things a little bigger than what I thought I could do.

When I finished that first marathon, I checked it off a mental list.  Been there, done that.  When I completed my second, I asked my friend Becky to stop me from signing up for another.  And yesterday afternoon, now seven marathons later, as my finger hesitated over the registration button, I knew I needed to come full circle.  I ran Chicago  in 2003.  I need to run it in 2013, a milestone of sorts for where it has taken me.  I have no idea what will happen in these next eight months of training, indeed my knees might give out tomorrow.  But I do know that God will redeem this experience as He always has.  

In the first two hours of registration yesterday, I tried a couple of times to access the website. "Should I do it?  God, stop me if I shouldn't," I prayed.   "Unavailable," the screen read. "Maybe that's a sign that you shouldn't," scoffed the complacent chicken in me.  But then suddenly, one more click, and there appeared the application form.  I filled it out and registered.  A few hours later, I found out that almost immediately after registration began at noon, the computer registration site crashed from an overload.  Very few entrants were able to register at all.  But strangely enough at 2.30 in the afternoon, despite my trepidations and the apparently inoperable website, my application was accepted and confirmed.  Guess I'm committed.

Our grandchildren will not care that their crazy gramma runs at all.  But perhaps it will help them to see how to live unafraid. You can't just sit there. 

Join me on my journey.  Let's see what God will do with it. 

...and let us run with perseverance
       the race that is set before us...

                         Hebrews 12.1