My children regularly update me on the progress of my graying hair. Nothing makes them more excited than the opportunity to gleefully point out the advancing signs of old age on their dear old father’s head. Not too long ago, someone asked me how old I am and when I responded that I’m 43, he seemed surprised. I asked why and he replied, “Because of all the gray hair.”
I suppose I can look on the bright side and claim I’m looking more distinguished and respectable every day. The truth, though, is that while it’s hardly time to throw dirt on my grave I am starting to show symptoms of advancing years.
Stubbornly keeping at it
I notice it particularly when it comes to exercise. When I was a younger man, I ran cross country in the spring, played on the high school basketball team in the winter, and lifted weights four times a week. I could recover from a hard workout and barely even feel it the next day. I ate constantly, piles and piles of food, including fast food and junk food which, by the miraculous metabolism of teenage boys, was immediately converted into pure energy.
Today, I still run and lift weights, but if I do hard workouts on back-to-back days, I feel terrible fatigue. I show signs of over-training and have even injured myself. I’ve never been particularly flexible but these days I can barely sit down on the ground and get back up off the floor. I moan and complain while my joints creak and the children laugh with glee. If I eat at a fast-food place, it’ll ruin my ability to exercise for days, and the calories aren’t so easy to burn off.
It’s very possible I’m in denial. I think I’m going to be young forever. In my more clear-headed moments, though, I do have the ability to moderate my expectations. I understand that, at least partly, the reason I keep at it is from the improvement that outdoor exercise makes in my mental health and general well-being.
I need the sun on my skin and the quiet time alone. Even if I slow down a little more each year, I figure I’ll be stubbornly running around the block well into old age.
Why bother exercising?
There are times when my legendary stubbornness fails me, though. I had such a moment not too long ago while out on a run. It’s getting cold here in St. Louis and the sidewalks are currently iced over from a winter storm. Even when it warmed up above freezing, the only result was the formation of ice-cold puddles at every intersection where the sidewalk meets the road. As I run my socks become soaking wet.
These were the conditions recently and I was feeling particularly old and useless. My socks were freezing wet, and my pace was painfully slow. All motivation evaporated as I thought about sitting by the fireplace with dry feet and a cup of coffee. Suddenly I experienced a rare moment of piercing doubt. Why am I doing this to myself?
I’m not a spring chicken anymore. My mile times are getting slower. The weight I lift is getting lighter. Maybe it’s time to relax inside for a while. And yet, day after day I find myself still tying on my running shoes. It’s almost like a form of self-imposed penance.
Exercise as a form of penance
To answer my own question: Believe it or not, the reason I do it is indeed for the penance. I could reference all sorts of online health studies about how important exercise is to age gracefully and stay healthy, and I’m not unappreciative of the fact that hard work does have practical results. I’m certainly hopeful that I’ll remain physically active for as long as possible. Those benefits, however, aren’t really why I’m so stubborn about exercise.
The increasing struggle of the effort, learning to cope with diminished physical abilities, coming to a truce with my limitations, pushing through discouragement and accepting discomfort…these are the real reasons I exercise.
Whatever physical peak I had is long gone. I am no longer young. My relationship with my body is one of reconciliation. I am coming to terms with the reality that this is who I am -- flawed in many ways, not only physically but also spiritually. I cannot accomplish all the things that, in my delusional pride, I might have once-upon-a-time convinced myself I could accomplish.
Finding hope on a run
These realizations don’t lead to discouragement. They create hope. Day after day I run my race. I do my best and God meets me there, frozen-footed and breathless, sore to the point of quitting. But if I can just keep getting one foot past the other and moving forward, God will meet me in my weakness. In fact, the more weak I am, the stronger his grace.
Even as my physical strength diminishes and I go gray, the resulting penance is transformative. This life we’ve been given is short. It is marked by sin and death and our days are measured out. And yet, our time on earth is so heart-breakingly beautiful I hardly know how to respond, so every day I’ll give my best effort, and every day I’ll find the limit of my strength, and in that failure, God will meet me.
He is slowly changing my stubborn pride and self-reliance into the penitential acceptance that everything I have arrives from him. All we need to do to receive his gifts is keep running the best we possibly can.
