I had the honor of being guest speaker at my parents’ church last Sunday. It’s a small church comprised of Taiwanese and English ministries. I was asked to speak at the English service about my faith and running.

Seemed simple enough. After all, I have blogged about this exact topic for the last three and a half years, led the charge at my school in a “Run God’s Race with Endurance” theme, written several run-related devotions for publication, and can talk for hours to anybody who will listen about this passion of mine.

But when I finally sat down to draft an outline of what I would say to this young congregation, it was harder than I thought. Why? First off, I had to assume that no one in the audience was a runner or would ever become one. Stop. That fact alone was hard for me to wrap my little brain around. Up until then, the audience I typically shared my stories with were folks that had some connection with the running world. It might even be a second or third hand connection like a friend’s sister who ran Boston or my husband’s client’s spouse who is training for her first 5k.

Essentially, it was like starting from square one as I was also a “stranger” to them. They’d only met me a few months ago since I started driving my parents to church. I got to work on the outline for my message with four questions:  1) Why run?  2) How does running draw me closer to Jesus?  3) What is YOUR version of running?  4) How will that lead you?

I figured if I could answer all four in a somewhat engaging manner in the twenty minutes I was given, mission accomplished.

As I added sub points and Scripture references to my outline, I got more and more excited about sharing what running has come to mean in my life. It didn’t take long for this outline to look more like a full-blown master’s dissertation. I couldn’t help it; I just had so much I wanted to share about this journey of faith and all the valuable, life-changing lessons God has taught me first hand through running and racing.

I once mentored a new teacher who was passionate about teaching and bringing in all sorts of technology, experiments, and real-life examples into his classroom for every lesson. I’ve never met a teacher with more zeal and pure heart for his craft. However, his enthusiasm was also his weakness. Lack of focus and bunny trailing off lesson objectives made for confusing themes as well as not covering “depth” of topics.

I realized I was big time bunny trailing in my own message.

I was trying to cover more territory and hit more points than was feasible or necessary in a twenty-minute time slot.

Something hit me as I was talking to my husband yesterday. Dave travels a lot for business, so our time together has become more and more valuable lately. When he’s away, texting is our main mode of conversation, and often, it’s a group text with our daughters or with our management team. I hadn’t planned out what I was gonna share with Dave yesterday – that would be weird, right? I mean, after thirty years of marriage, I should be able to just say what’s on my mind, what’s most important to me (or even unimportant), and not worry about time constraints, wording, filters, or keeping to a theme.

What a contrast to preparing for a church sermon or a classroom lesson!

So, in the five minutes it took to drive to the restaurant we were meeting our daughter and her friend for dinner, I shared perhaps one of the biggest breakthroughs in my faith and my running that I’ve ever experienced which happened earlier that day:

I told Dave about how I’d set a progression run goal this year and that I wasn’t “feeling it” when I started out this morning. I said I would’ve been content just matching last week’s lap times. When I set out on today’s first lap around the reservoir, I thought about the friend Dave had recently shared about who desperately needed to do a 180 in his life. I spent that first lap praying for this person. When I finished that lap and looked at my Garmin, I was shocked to see it was my fastest on an opening progression lap. Ever. Now the challenge was to do the next lap faster. Still wasn’t “feeling it” when I hit the Garmin for lap two. I spent that lap focused on unloading a bunch of stuff I’d been dealing with that week that I realized was weighing me down and keeping me from praising Jesus. Exhale me, inhale Jesus. It’s my version of John 3:30 “He must increase, I must decrease.” At the end of lap two, I had hit my fastest lap since I started progression training. Now the pressure was really on. I said to myself “There’s no way I’m gonna beat that time.” Again, I would’ve been okay just coming close. But as I started my Garmin for the third lap, the Lord brought Dave’s friend back to mind. It would literally take a miracle to turn the situation and him around. I started praying for Jesus to do a miracle in his life. After all, this is what Jesus specializes in – and He could do it by just saying the word. Nothing is too hard for Him, right? I had about a mile to go on this third lap around the reservoir, and I was definitely not feeling like I could ramp up the speed for a true progression run. That didn’t bother me, although my burning lungs did. So, I spent the last mile focused on putting the spotlight back on Jesus and not my running. When I stopped my Garmin, I couldn’t believe it. A solid PR.

As we pulled into the restaurant parking lot, I wrapped up my story by telling Dave with tears in my eyes that I learned this verse in a very real way today:

“Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?” Matthew 9:5 NIV

I had to ask myself, what is harder for God: “To turn a man’s life around or to get me to a run PR?”

Jesus has a way of getting His point across poignantly and succinctly. I have much to learn about that. By the way, last Sunday’s message… I went fifteen minutes over time.