Opinions expressed in this piece are solely those of the author.
Here in the Midwest, we’re deep into August with its heat, humidity, and cicadas. In the garden, tomatoes hang, heavy and ripe, in brilliant reds and yellows. Beside them, the cantaloupes have sent runners everywhere. It’s a ground invasion of the juiciest kind. And out on the road, the school buses are back.
On the first day of school, I made The Cub pose with his backpack that was roughly the size and weight of a Buick. He smiled stiffly and managed not to blink when the camera flashed, then hopped in his red truck with the loud muffler and disappeared up the road.
I shared it with my friends. “The last First Day of School photo for the Schrocks. Our first day of first grade was in 1995, so we’re wrapping it up 29 years later. This was not our script, clearly. But it’s been a great one.”
The advent of the new school year, of course, means the start of cross-country. For weeks, the kid ran and ate and ran and ate again, and as the actual season approached, there came the old anxiety. “Mom,” he said, slipping up to me one day, “will you pray for me? I’m dreading the pain.”
Ah, that. The dread of the actual pain of running long distance in the heat with all the attendant pressure of a thundering race had dogged him every year. For weeks as the season progressed, he would stagger across the finish line, face pale, collapsing on the grass, and we looked for answers. By the end of his junior year, we had made some tweaks that worked. But that fear was raising its old, ugly head one more time.
The other night he came home, the second race now behind him, and from his end of the couch came these words. “I talked to Coach. I told him I felt like I should’ve pushed myself harder.” His father and I were tuned in.
“Coach said that maybe I need to embrace the pain. He said that maybe I need to take a broader view, that learning to embrace the pain might help me in other ways, like in relationships or jobs.”
A pause. “I think Coach was teaching me about life.”
“Yes, buddy. I think he was,” I said, my maternal heart thrilling to the wise words of his beloved coach. Happy that Cub had received them.
“Embrace the pain.” Today, those words return to me, and I’m thinking about how much energy we expend, flailing and twisting and dodging to avoid the hard things that cause us pain.
In the sport of running, there is no way to build one’s stamina and endurance without discomfort. It is not possible to go from the recliner to the finish line of the Boston Marathon without extensive training. No one lays the Cheetos aside, puts the footrest down, and runs that far without stopping. There are countless punishing miles to run first, and that will mean some pain.
You cannot eat whatever you want and win a race. Knowledge and experience will instruct you on how to fuel the body, and self-control will keep you on track. For Cub, we figured out that he wasn’t eating enough of the right things before racing. Now, he eats some good carbs for breakfast with a bit of protein. He snarfs a honey stinger waffle 30 minutes before the gun sounds, and he feels much stronger.
The same is true in life. We must pay close attention to what we’re ingesting—what we see, and hear, and receive. What voices are we opening our ears to? Are they true, good, lovely, and noble? If so, it will strengthen the soul, and we can run.
“Embrace the pain.” Moving from avoidance to acceptance is a transformational shift. Now, instead of being locked in a tense, fighting stance, we begin to relax and give ourselves over to what life has brought us, believing that it holds some great good.
For a team of running boys, they know that all their training and effort will result in better finish times. It’s a happy day when they P.R., i.e., set a personal record, and they celebrate together.
They run for each other. Seeing a buddy up ahead, passing one, or knowing that one is following behind is motivation to run their best race. And when they reach the chute, they know the team will be there, too, and Coach, receiving them with high fives and big grins.
They know, these brave, sweaty boys, that every race has an end. That the pain of the course won’t last forever, and so they press on.
And now, you and I. We, too, can know that our training and effort in the race of life will result in some incredible good, things like patience, endurance, inner strength, and greater character. We, too, can run for each other. What a gift.
We also know that the race has an end, that the pain of our course won’t last forever. We, too, can press on to the finish. Run with me?
America’s small, caffeinated mom is a weekly contributor on the James Golden Show (unless, of course, she’s following her kid on a cross-country course somewhere). Grab your coffee and tune in weekly to see what she and James are up to.
