What I Gained Running a Half-Marathon

In the height of COVID, I ran a half-marathon.

It wasn’t pretty. I didn’t make good time. I could barely move for a week after. And I couldn’t do it again tomorrow if you asked me to, so please don’t.

I’m not telling you this to convince you to run a half- marathon (though if that suits you, you do you, girl), nor am I telling you so I can receive recognition or praise. Quite the opposite in fact.

I didn’t receive a medal for my half-marathon. But what I did receive from the Lord was worth even more.

I remember as the finish line was looming near, an anticipated excitement began rushing through my exhausted muscles. I am almost done. I have run a half-marathon. I can tell people I’ve run a half-marathon. I can get one of those cool stickers and flaunt it on the back of my car. Fitness queen status? Achieved.

What an accomplishment. What a triumph. Surely I’ll get some recognition for this one.

And then I crossed the finish line.

Maybe it’s a different feeling when running in an organized race, but for me on my neighborhood trail, there were no adoring fans. There was no cheering, no picture-taking, no ceremony, no nothing.

I remember I collapsed on to the earth, genuinely proud of myself and the workout I had just endured, but more aware of a different feeling than my aching joints and muscles. This was a deeper feeling.

I had completed the race. I had done the thing I had set out to do. I could now post about it online and find security in the likes and the comments.

And yet, I felt a deep emptiness inside me.

In the following days and weeks, I did share the news with some people. But I grew hesitant, as with each comment and brag, the uneasiness and emptiness within me only continued to grow.

I was genuinely frustrated. Had I worked so hard on something only to feel so strange about it? Had I so desperately wanted to gain recognition, but now somehow couldn’t stand myself when I got it?

That was the moment that the Lord stepped in to my mind and my heart regarding my half-marathon.

The truth He taught me was very simple, and yet something I had never grasped before.

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To do anything in life only to gain acknowledgement and recognition from people, will always leave you feeling empty.

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I had ran that half-marathon solely with the goal of impressing people and gaining a positive image in their eyes. I had done it for the likes, the praise, the high-fives and the looks of admiration.

And those things did bring me momentary happiness. But just momentary. I was left with an uneasiness more encompassing than the seconds of ego boost.

Matthew 5:5 says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

It’s a Beatitude that I’ve always struggled with, but I think I understand more clearly now.

Too frequently, we think that celebrities, sports stars, actresses, musicians, and anyone who has the attention of the world, are the people who are living the fullest lives. We thing we need to gain recognition in order to feel validated and important in life. But when we take a closer look, we see that many of these people are genuinely very unhappy and dissatisfied in their lives, despite the attention.

When we think our happiness comes from recognition, it can be easy to flaunt our successes, rub them in everyone’s faces, and do our best to make sure the whole wide world knows. But in my (albeit limited) experience, we actually can feel more satisfaction when we keep some of our greatest successes between us and God.

God made each of us very talented and capable of amazing things. Don’t get me wrong, you and I have done and will do some amazing things in our lives. Being meek doesn’t mean that we disregard our talents and abilities. Rather, it means that we acknowledge that the only reason we are capable in the first place, is because God made us that way.

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When we realize that all of our talents are gifts from God, it becomes much easier to find joy in sometimes sharing them with Him alone.

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Don’t hear what I’m not saying: it’s ok to share accomplishments and successes with our family and friends. I just think we can all tell the difference between sharing good news and bragging in order to get attention. And we can definitely all check our motivations at the beginning of the race.

So yes, I ran a half-marathon. Thank you for acknowledging how epic that is. But really, shouldn’t we both be thanking God for making all of us capable of greatness?