While my daughter has always been athletic and a bit on the speedy side, this cross country thing was a new beast for her.  We watched her struggle for weeks as she fought hard for both physical and emotional endurance, only to lose it to illness near the end and have to rebuild it all over again.  Endurance, she’s learned, is hard-won.  She knew that already.  But she didn’t know she knew.

For as much as she’d learned at the gym about the mental part of the game, you’d think this would have been easy for her.  But twelve year olds don’t know that those mental skills transfer.  And so, like a forgotten remainder on her math test, they don’t get carried over and factored in to the equation.

She apparently forgot that you don’t begin something in championship shape—you arrive there over the course of a season. She didn’t remember it’s all about personal best—improving your own score, one meet at a time.  She lost the part about conditioning long and hard to be ready for anything.  She did not recall the formula: sustained effort over time equals results.  But, one of these days, she’ll remember.

In the midst of finding her stride, there was much groaning and grumbling and threatening to quit.  Not that she ever would, mind you.  Nor that we would allow her.  But there’s a tendency, when the run is long and hard and the breath is shallow and weak, to want to slow it down.  To walk.  To rest.  To maybe even quit.

And there is a fear, in those moments—when you can’t catch your breath and you can’t see the end and you can’t keep up with your own expectations and you just don’t know if you have it in you—that you don’t have it in you.  That you don’t have what it takes.  That you can’t finish this race.  That you aren’t going to make it.

I get this fear.

I get it not only because I, myself, have fought long and hard over mileage and asthma and weak knees and cardiovascular limits, but because I live it every day.

Can I do this writing thing?

Can I do this motherhood thing?

Can I do this marriage thing?

Can I do this pursuing God thing?

Sustained effort over time equals results. I wrote that equation.  Do I believe it?

Yes.  Yes, I do.

I must remember, as must my daughter—as must we all—that endurance builds over time.  That suffering produces perseverance.  And perseverance builds character.  And character gives ignition to hope.

Hope.

How much easier a long run is when done with hope.

My daughter and I, we will learn this.

Perhaps even together.

courage discipline endurance hope inspiration perseverance spiritual growth