Why I Run

I started running this past November.  I'd tried training with the C25K program the summer before but had been benched by an orthopedic doctor for a knee problem, and I thought the responsible thing to do was to quit.  By the end of this past year, the chronic pain in my stomach was driving me crazy, and I tried running again as a trial for pain relief.

I was starting to give up on the medical community for answers, and I needed a healthy way to handle the stress of it all.  

After jogging one mile out of shape and gasping, I realized that my stomach ache was almost completely cured.  I was hooked.

My running partner and me after a jog last November.

It's mid January now, and I am still running.  I shoot for jogging at least a couple of miles three times a week. Sometimes, I get to do it more often, and sometimes, life happens and I get benched.  But, I keep going.

I run in the sunshine.  I run in the rain.  I run when it's warm and nice, and I run when it is so cold that the neighborhood dogs refuse to chase me.

I don't run because I find it easy.  I don't run because it makes me look cool.  Every run, I have to decide that I am going to finish it before I start.  I'm pretty sure I look like a flapping, skinny crane going down a runway every time I pass someone on the street.  Sometimes, I even laugh at myself, because I know I look awkward.  But, I don't care.

When I run, it helps me cope with life.  It reminds me of what it means to be a Christian.  In the good times and the bad, I run, because it reminds me that even when life seems impossible and overwhelming, the reward is coming.  Through the gasping and the struggling, I am being transformed into a newer, stronger person each time I stick it out.

At the end of every run as I cool down, I am glad that I didn't give up.

In the same way, I pray that at the end of my life, I will look back at this race have run and sigh with satisfaction knowing that I did my best in Christ's strength and that I ran my course well.  I didn't give up.  I finished by God's grace.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.(Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV)