Hitting "The Wall"

My wife is a marathon runner.  That means she runs 26.2 miles at a time.  On purpose.  She talks about a “runner’s high,” but I’ve never experienced one.  What I have experiences is a “runners (want to) die.”

This phenomenon is commonly referred to as “The Wall.”    For me it happens at mile ½, but for trained marathon runners, this tends to happen around mile 20.  At this point they have been running for hours, and their body is trying to tell them that this wasn’t a very good idea (something their brain should have deduced several months before).  Many runners, upon hitting “The Wall” determine that they can no longer take another step.  Others collapse under the intense strain of running a marathon.  Still others, on the other hand, keep running through “The Wall” to find what is known as the “Second Wind,” or as I call it “To Crazy to Care.”

In life, we experience “Wall” moments as well, times when we feel like we can’t keep going.  Graduation was this past weekend, and I am so proud of all of our graduates.  But I know that there were times over this past year when you felt like you couldn’t do it, like you just could not bring yourself to take another step. 

But you did. 

You found a way to finish that report, complete that project, and make it to work on time.  You kept going in the face of adversity and difficulty.  I wish I could say it was all downhill from here, but you know that it won’t be.  Those difficulties will only compound with time, but there is something that, when understood and applies, becomes life changing.  The sooner we can learn how to run through “The Wall” and find that second wind, the better off we will become.  Faith gives us the spiritual sight to see God’s hand on our lives, even if we don’t exactly know what lies before us.  We don’t always know what is coming on the other side of “The Wall,” but we know that God doesn’t want us to give up before we get there.