Many Small Steps

For years I have wanted to run in a marathon. I realise that this is not a dream that many people have. It is just that something about the idea of running twenty three miles is exciting to me. Actually it is being able to cross the finish line and know that I have done my best is what I look forward to.

Unfortunately running a marathon is not a very easily obtained goal. It is a long and painful race that demands the runner be in good shape. Otherwise they will collapse after running a few miles! That is what makes accomplishing this dream so hard. A person does not go to bed one night and wake up the next morning ready to run a marathon. Instead finishing the race is the result of months spent exercising, dieting, and training. A person would probably need to start preparing for a marathon almost five or six months in advance!

Doing something like this means you have to evaluate many of your decisions with that one goal. When I make a decision I will have to ask myself, “will this help me get stronger physically?”, or “Is this going to make it harder when I run today”? If nothing else keeping that goal of running a marathon in my mind will make me evaluate my decisions. In short it will take discipline and lots of small steps (making the right decisions) to accomplish my goal instead of a few large ones.

That is the way most of our goals or dreams are obtained. And sadly that is why so many of us don't live out those dreams. We aren't willing to spend the necessary time preparing ourselves for the opportunity to accomplish them. Sometimes this is because we are too busy with other things to spend time preparing for something so far in the future. But normally we don't do it because preparation almost always involves hardship and pain.

I will never be able to run a marathon the way I am right now. So this afternoon I am going to start the process of preparing myself. Step one has actually already been accomplished by my beginning to run four to five days a week. But in about two hours I will take another step that for me is much more painful (literally). This afternoon I am going to join a gym.

I have wanted to join a gym and work out with weights for years, but I never did. Partly because of embarrassment over only being able to bench press the bar. But more importantly because weightlifting is a painful experience, especially at first. So I had a long standing argument between my body that did not want to go through pain, and my heart that knew I needed to get stronger in order to run a marathon. I finally decided to join the gym in order to accomplish my goal.

The background on my desktop is a picture of me running a 5k race (3.2 miles) on July 4, 2005. At the time I had lost a lot of weight and ran three 5k races that summer. Right now I am 10 pounds heavier than the person in the picture, and nowhere near as fit. But I am going to become that physically fit again. It won't happen overnight, but take months of hard work. But by God's grace I will be able to get myself back into “running shape”. This is not done by one leap of faith, but by taking one step at a time.