Keep Running

After dinner my friend and I take our boys outside to play while the wives enjoy some quiet conversation inside. The boys run and chase and race, taking turns making up new courses to sprint. After a good while I notice my oldest, Reed, age 8, sitting on the curb, elbows on knees, face in hands, dark cloud descending.

Putting my fatherly skills to work, I ask, “What’s up?”

Reed says, “If I’m two years older than Drew, why is he faster than me?”

Hmmmm … I explain that God gives different gifts and talents to each of us and technically he wasn’t a full two years older and some other stuff that took a lot longer to say than it needed to. Apparently hearing you’re good in math doesn’t do much for the kid who keeps finishing behind his younger brother in the race.

I should have said, “Keep running.”

Jump forward five years. Reed is now 13. I invite him to run a 5K with me. I imagine us spending time training together and talking and sharing life. That lasted about a quarter mile. He says, “Mind if I run ahead?”

As a dad you know your athleticism is in decline while your kid’s is on the rise. You know at some point the lines will cross and your son will be faster and stronger, but still, I thought I would see that day coming. Turns out it had passed me some time ago.

Turns out Reed is a plodder. He doesn’t have much sprint, but he can keep going and going and going. He ran cross country in high school. Up and down hills, through mud and grass and dirt, in cold and in heat, he ran. His 6’5” frame isn’t exactly ideal for cross country, though it did make him easy to pick out in the crowd. It didn’t matter, he kept on running. Running and working and persevering.

At the end of the season banquet the cross country coach shares a little about each runner. He says this about Reed:

“Reed is a worker, the hardest worker on the team. He works and works and works. He doesn’t have the most talent, but he gets more out of the talent he has than any other runner on the team.”

Reed challenges me: Keep running. When discouragement pushes you to the curb, keep running. When the race isn’t turning out as you hoped, keep running. You may never be the best, but you can be the best you can be, if you keep running.

Reed graduates today from high school with something far more valuable than top 10 finishes. Reed graduates knowing the gut check of discouragement, the strength of perseverance, the satisfaction of overcoming, and the joy of finding your race, qualities I’m confident will serve him well in every endeavor in life he pursues. Count me very proud to call him my son.

“God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” Philippians 1:6