The Wall

Marathon run­ners talk about it. They dread it but are fas­ci­nated by it. It stands as the one obsta­cle between suc­cess and fail­ure. Some­where beyond the two-thirds point of the race the body refuses. The will has noth­ing left, but the run­ner con­tin­ues to run. There is an agony mixed with a sen­sa­tion of numb­ness. The run­ner begins to ques­tion his or her san­ity. A spir­i­tual eupho­ria emerges. The impos­si­ble is being done from a strength beyond.

There are other ver­sions of this. For those of us that are dri­ven per­son­al­i­ties, it is often met as we take on one men­tal load too much or one project too many. Our hap­pi­est days are when we are at the bot­tom of the moun­tain look­ing up at the avalanche. We have been there before. We know we can­not do all we need to do. In that moment there is a sense of grace and tran­scen­dence. We begin the first task with a curi­ous sense of divine absur­dity and a wry smile.

For some the daily marathon is career and fam­ily, but for oth­ers it is the con­tin­u­a­tion of inter­nal bat­tles fought since the trau­mas of early child­hood. Some­how we all do the day. That “some­how” is about God. There is some­thing there beyond endurance. It takes on the impos­si­ble. It signs up for one course too many. It arrives early and leaves late.

How can we know who we are if we have not hit the wall? What is beyond fiber and nerve? What is Don Quixote’s “last ounce of courage” that beck­ons us so?

I hon­estly do not know, but it must have some­thing to do with the “all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength” of which Jesus spoke and out of which he lived. Way too tired but with happy anticipation…