I’m not sure why I tried running track my first year of high school. Maybe it was because my older brother ran, and I wanted to be more like him, more confident and outgoing, less socially awkward. Maybe I needed an activity to channel the anxiety buzzing within me like a mosquito zapper in a swarm.
My first workout included running intervals with older girls who had been competing for a few years. I told myself I’d just try to keep up. But my legs surprised me, wanting, needing to go faster. I pulled away from the pack, and for the first time in my life took the lead, a pace and a position I didn’t realize I had in me.
When you discover you have athletic gifts in a culture where those gifts are supremely prized, your sport can become an obsession, even in the face of slim chances. I dreamed of “going pro,” pictured waving from the Olympic podium, fell asleep nightly beneath posters of my heroes: Florence Griffith Joyner, Joan Benoit Samuelson, Jackie Joyner-Kersee. I prayed: God, give me the strength to win. God, make my dreams come true.
When I hit my ceiling in college, I grieved the loss of competing in a sport I loved. Athlete was not just what I did, but who I was. When you reach the ceiling of your athletic gifts, as every athlete does, the inevitable question arises:
Now what?
Many flounder at this point, sinking into depression, reliving past athletic glory, not knowing who they are and what to do with themselves now. This is the problem with our propensity to create and worship idols — whether it be the idolatry of sports, or celebrity, or wealth, or our own achievement that we’ve served for so long. Gods of our own making are limited and limiting.
I’m thankful for my athletic background. I learned self-discipline and trained myself to push through discomfort. Exercise is still part of my mental and physical health. (No more running, though. My joints protest too much.) But I’m not sure where I’d be, or who I’d be, without the God who claimed me in the waters of baptism, without my identity as a Christian, and my call to ministry. I’m not sure who I’d be without the God who continuously calls me to a meaningful life.
Our Reformed Christian tradition teaches that we are all called by God and given unique gifts to fulfill that calling. Serving as a college chaplain, some of my most important work was helping students discern their call. Together, we explored what I referred to as the “Frederick Buechner formula” — finding that holy place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger. Sitting with college students on the brink of a new life, watching for that spark of excitement and passion in their eyes as they considered a vocational path, helped me fulfill my calling, and our church’s, to be a nurturer of God’s gifts.
Every kid deserves this nurturing. Every kid deserves the abundant, meaningful life God desires to give. Living into my own sense of call taught me how to help others live into theirs.
“Chariots of Fire,” my favorite running movie, includes a scene where Eric Liddel, Scotland’s fastest man, explains to his sister Jenny why he needs to compete in the Olympic Games before following his call to missionary work in China. He tells Jenny, “I believe God made me for a purpose. For China. But he also made me fast.” Liddel’s emphasis on fast still gives me goosebumps. But now, in my 50s, I prefer to emphasize the word also. Yes, God made Eric Liddel fast. But God also called him to missionary work. God claims us and calls us to the “also” of a faithful life — a life where we never have to grieve the loss of purpose, because our lives are grounded in an unlimited, abundantly loving, abundantly generous God.
