The Secret To Finishing Well

A few years ago, Kelley and I flew to Los Angeles to see our oldest daughter Anna, who was a sophomore at Westmont College in nearby Santa Barbara. And since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to run in the Los Angeles Marathon. This was Kelley’s second marathon and my first.

Obviously, this wasn’t a last minute decision. We had dedicated ourselves to training the four months leading up to the race.

Running a marathon is probably the third hardest thing I’ve ever done—after writing a book (16 and counting) and being married. Here are a few thoughts that hit me during the run:

Every Person Runs A Different Race

Despite running the same 26.2 mile route, all 26,000 people ran the Los Angeles Marathon with different concerns in mind. I was concerned about re-injuring my calf (which I tore two weeks earlier). Kelley was concerned about aggravating the plantar fasciitis in her heel. Everyone was concerned about finishing. Ironically, my calf never bothered me while Kelley’s heel refused to cooperate. Nevertheless, I sustained a painful foot injury on mile 13 and hobbled the rest of the way to the end. During a marathon, weird injuries can materialize out of nowhere.

Whatever race you’re running, avoid the temptation to compare yourself to others–because they’re running a different race than you.

Injuries Happen

Days before the race, I explained my concerns about my calf injury to a veteran marathoner. She told me, “Everybody who runs a marathon is dealing with some kind of an injury.”

Most of us begin our lives injury-free, only to sustain bumps and bruises along the way. We all get knocked around in the course of our lives. How we respond to those injuries determines how we finish the race. So don’t be surprised when pain hits. It goes with the territory.

Everyone Who Finishes Wins

While training, veterans advised me, “Don’t try to break any records on your first race—just make it your goal to finish.” When my foot injury materialized out of nowhere, I asked myself, How can I  run another 13 miles with this kind of pain? Everything within me wanted to quit. I actually considered spending the $20 in my pocket to pay for a cab that would transport me to the finish line.

In the middle of my pain, I ran past a café, where a man sat at an outdoor table enjoying his breakfast. When he saw the grimace on my face, he looked at me, pointed at an empty chair next to him. His gesture was an apparent invitation to join him for breakfast. I shook my head, fixed my eyes on the road in front of me, and kept running.

I couldn’t think about mile 15 or mile 21—all I could think about was finishing. But in order to reach my goal, I would need to run one mile at a time. When I completed mile 13, my next goal became mile 14, then mile 15.

Although my time wasn’t as fast as I had hoped, I was relieved once I crossed the finish line. At that point, my time didn’t matter. I finished. Sometimes life is painful…but you just keep going on.

We’re all running in a race, but the goal isn’t to beat everybody else, the goal is to finish. Sometimes you just have to bear down and grind through the pain. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand” (Ephesians 6:13). Sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is stand. You don’t have to look victorious–all you must do is not give up.

We all run in a race. We all sustain injuries along the way and we all can come up with excuses to quit.

So what will you do?

Michael co-pastors The Neighborhood Church in Littleton, Colorado with Eugene Scott. He tried running a second marathon a year ago, which didn’t go nearly as well as the first. After a 15 month hiatus, he’s getting back into shape and focusing on running 10k’s.

One note: The Daily Bible Conversation blog is shuttering its doors at the end of August…at least for now. The blog has run its course, so Michael, Eugene, and Brendan will direct their energies in other areas. Beginning September 7, Michael will begin a new blog entitled “God Meets Culture” at michaeljklassen.com.

Is Your Life Missing a Few Puzzling Pieces?

By Eugene C. Scott

My mom was no longer breathing on her own. Her lungs had collapsed and I was waiting–waiting to see if God intended to let her join us again in this life or take her to join him in the next. The doctor said few people came off the ventilator successfully after this long. Because Dee Dee, my wife, had lost her father just before Easter, losing my mother meant none of our parents would be left with us.

It was June 2002 and I sat worrying and praying in the intensive care waiting room of Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver. Early morning sunlight cut through the tinted solarium windows and glinted off the plexiglass covers on the round, wooden tables. I sat alone staring blankly at the jigsaw puzzle under the plexiglass on my table.

As much as I wanted my mom to remain with us, if God’s healing took her to her true home, I wanted to let her go. My heart sagged. I bowed my head and prayed against my selfishness.

“God, she is yours not mine. If this is the end, take her gently.”

I opened my eyes to the puzzle decorating my table. It featured an early American scene, the stars and stripes, Colonial buildings, and a powerful white stallion prancing with a patriot on its back. Strangely though, the horse had a puzzle piece missing from its belly. For that matter, there were several pieces missing from the picture.

“Why decorate the table with an unfinished puzzle?” I wondered. Maybe it was simply a project to distract the minds of those waiting. I needed some distracting. I searched for the box that might contain the missing pieces. The solarium book shelves held board games, videos, and books, but no puzzle boxes. I looked at the puzzles under the plastic on the other tables. They too were unfinished. I sat down wondering again, “Why unfinished puzzles?”

Were the puzzles subtle reminders that life, especially as it exists in an intensive care waiting room, is always unfinished? Maybe they pictured what the Hebrew proverb said: “Hope deferred makes the heart-sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

I knew my mother’s longing, though she was seventy-five, wasn’t fulfilled yet. She still had a spectacular rose garden to tend. People from blocks away came to admire it. They would ask, “How did you get such a beautiful garden?”

“Simple,” she’d answer. “Plant some roses and pour your heart and soul into them for ten or fifteen years and presto there you have it.” She always was a smart aleck.

She also had her longer term and more crucial unfinished projects: her children and grandchildren. Some of us were grown but none of us in full bloom. Her grandchildren still needed serious spoiling! We had graduations, weddings, and a myriad of tiny life celebrations pending. She was our matriarch and we still needed her wise pruning and fertilizing. “God, don’t take her yet,” I prayed.

Then again, the puzzles were only a few pieces short. Maybe they were unfinished as a reminder that, though all lives lack a few pieces, they are as beautiful and complete as humanly possible. As Solomon wrote, “There is a time for everything . . . a time to be born and a time to die . . . a time to search and a time to give up . . . .”

My mother survived the Great Depression and wars like the world had never known. After my father died in 1968, she raised four challenging children during a time when addiction and rebellion left many of our generation dead or emotionally, mentally, or physically disabled. Without any help from the government, she carved out a life-like a sculptor chiseling away at a flawed but potentially beautiful piece of marble. That piece of art became the stable center for us. She had lived a rich and hard life. Who was I to say her life was unfinished? I studied the puzzle and mumbled, “God, forgive my selfishness.”

Maybe the missing pieces of our lives are incidental. After all, the missing piece in the white stallion’s belly didn’t detract from his beauty. The absent piece actually produced a sense of depth, mystery, and reality. Thus is life.

So, what’s all this ruminating have to do with God and life and growth and faith? Frankly, if you’ll forgive the pun, I’m still puzzled. That June God saw fit to answer our selfish prayers and turn my mother back from heaven’s gate and grant us fourteen more months with her. I’m grateful. In that year she swung between a desire to complete the puzzle of her life, to ”finish the race,” as Paul said, and a deep belief that’s she had done all she could, or “finished the race.” She seemed more than willing to let God finish the picture.

This month, on April 19, my mom would have been 84. We lost her too soon. There’s a crucial piece to my life’s puzzle missing. Others may not notice, but I feel her absence. I look and she is not here. I miss her.

In August of 2003 she whispered she was ready to go home. She had made it to the wedding and the graduation. She was finished. I remembered that unfinished puzzle from the year before and wanted to argue with her and with God. Mom slipped away the next day. Arguing with God seldom succeeds.

But she is not gone entirely. Finish well, her life says. What do I need to finish? What have I not said and done? I am only a man, and know I cannot say or do it all. I cannot piece together the perfect life. Real life is much more complicated than even a fifteen hundred piece jigsaw puzzle. And perfection is God’s domain.

Eugene C. Scott writes the Wednesday Neighborhood Cafe blog.  If you’re reading this on Facebook and you’d like to join the conversation, click here. www.bibleconversation.com. Eugene co-pastors The Neighborhood Church in Littleton, CO

Beginning on March 13–the Sunday following Ash Wednesday–we will begin a Lenten series titled “Embrace: Discover, Desire . . . Jesus” at The Neighborhood Church.  During worship we will explore those things of God we can embrace and add to our lives as a response of love to Jesus.  These worship gatherings will also include hands-on opportunities to practice these things God asks us to add to our lives.  Join us.  See tnc3.org for worship times.