The Run Before the Run

I did my last training run this morning before the big one on Sunday. Thinking about Sunday's marathon as I was running 5 miles this morning I started to feel a little scared. "What have I gotten myself into?" I asked myself.

I remember the feeling from a few years ago the night before I began a 500 mile, week-long, bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles also as a fundriaser for HIV/AIDS services. It's exhilerating to face a big challenge like that, but not exactly fun.

That sense of embarking on something new, something difficult that will force you to face your limits and that carries a risk of failure and humiliation (personal humiliation even if all my friends still love me) is enough to keep a lot of us from attempting new things, or from attempting more new things than we otherwise would.

It's a shame, though, because the sense of accomplishment, if you do suceed in something you never had done before, is well worth the pre-experience fear of failure. And how could I really fail, anyway? Who would say that I had failed even if I turned my ankle on mile three and road the subway to the finish line? How is training for six months, raising over $2,000 for a good cause, and showing up at the starting line a failure?

And the world needs us to do more and be more. The old habits aren't enough. God's enjoyment of the world depends on our having the kinds of deep, rich experiences we can only have if we say yes to the full extent of our potential.