Trusting the Race Director

 A week ago, I spoke at our school chapel. The theme for the month of March was "Running the Race God Has for Us." So, obviously, as the only crazy runner on staff, I got asked to speak, being deemed the most "qualified" person on the subject of racing. I was excited to do it. Any time I am allowed to talk about running and Jesus, I will take it. But while I prepared to walk students--sixth grade to twelfth grade--through this very unsettling question, I, too, had to grapple: "What does it look like to run the race God has set before us?"

Most of you in the running world have no doubt heard of the Barkley Marathons. Ya know? “The Race that Eats Its Young.” Did Gary Cantrell give it that subtitle, or did runners come up with that? Either way. It has a super inviting descriptor. For those of you who have never heard of it or only heard of it in passing or scrolling, "it takes place in Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee, and the idea for the race was conceived by Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell and Karl “Raw Dog” Henn. (Just the two guys' nicknames already give the race a less-than-ideal feel.) Well, it was inspired from the escape of James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary and his ability to evade law enforcement through the rugged mountains of the state park for two and a half days (CBC Radio). The race reportedly starts when Gary Cantrell lights a cigarette, runners must complete “five marathons in sixty hours through rough, unmarked terrain,” and the elevation gain is equivalent to climbing Mount Everest twice (CBC Radio). This just sounds better and better. The race has been run since 1986 but only twenty runners have ever completed it. Interesting. Runners must touch a medal gate for the finish. Some miss touching the gate by mere minutes. The first woman did not complete it until 2024 when British ultrarunner Jasmine Paris did the unthinkable (BBC). There were no finishers this year. Yikes!

In a weird way, the Barkley Marathons actually reminds me of life and the race director of God. Don't stone me yet! There's a point coming. For those of you who do not know, a race director has many different responsibilities. He/she plans and marks the course, advertises the race, puts people in charge of the aid stations along the course, helps to keep tabs on all runners, and hands out awards at the end of the race. Ultimately, he/she sees that the race goes “smoothly” and runners have everything they need. Sort of. Doesn't that sound very similar to what God does? Hebrews 12:2 describes Jesus as "the author and finisher of our faith." Psalm 119:105 says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." And Ephesians 1:4 says that we (believers) were chosen before the beginning of the world. God is a race director. Okay...

But for me, and maybe it is the same for some of you other runners, the thought of God as a race director is a little unnerving, too. No. It's flat out scary. Did you read anything about Gary Cantrell, the director of the Barkley Marathons?! His idea of a start to a race is lighting a cigarette! While I have never done anything as bonkers as the Barkley Marathons, at least not yet, I can tell you from experience that trusting race directors with their courses and markings is not always the great time they advertise it to be. (At least Cantrell is honest about the brutality of his race.) Racecourses often lead you up rock outcroppings, being hounded by wind, in the middle of the night for a freakin’ blue flag that you then have to carry to the next aid station to prove that you went up the stupidly dangerous, could-possibly-fall-and-die outcropping. I'm talking about you, Hal Koerner, and the crazy climb at mile 80ish at Pine to Palm 100M. It can lead you over countless ridges that put together equals a greater amount of climb than doing Mount Everest. You know who you are, Teanaway Country 100 race director. And it usually involves running a few “bonus” miles that were undisclosed in the race description and are generously called “free miles”, because I didn’t have to pay for them. My wallet didn’t, but my legs did. You know your names, race directors! You get the point. I don’t always like race directors. 

So perhaps you can understand my hesitation when thinking of God in such a capacity as a race director. Because if God is truly our race director, then we must follow His course wherever it leads. Are we willing to do that? In life we don’t know where we’re going sometimes (most times) nor where we’ll end up. And if we did, if we were allowed to know, would any of us go on the run we call life? It is an unsettling question; one I have had to grapple with, and still am. Do we trust God enough to venture into the unknown?

I can tell you that if I had had a choice, I think I would have skipped the hard parts of my life–having a nervous breakdown at eighteen due to severe anxiety and clinical depression resulting from an unresolved sin in my life and an incredible lack of understanding of the Gospel; resigning at twenty-five from my teaching job that I loved in Indonesia because of my rapidly deteriorating mental health and then spending months seeing doctors and specialists about my condition; being asked to step away from pursuing overseas missions, what God had seemed to make so clear that I was supposed to do, at twenty-seven until my health improved. And the list could go on. My life has not been the greatest of racecourses. It’s been hard. It’s been bloody. It’s been discouraging. It’s been confusing. It’s been a lot like the unmarked course of the Barkley Marathons.

But I then have to ponder: if I was allowed to skip the hard parts of my life, would I find it so beautiful? The funny thing about ultra running is that there is a lot of suffering–excruciating pain, where every step feels like a knife is being stabbed into the side of your knee; tripping on rocks on a desert trail and nearly falling into a cactus; running on top of a mountain in a lightning and hail storm; hallucinations; grumpy individuals removing course markings in the night which causes you to get lost and add extra miles during the night portion of a race; falling asleep while walking on a ridge trail of shale and nearly falling down it; and malnutrition that leads to your face and hands going numb. (And that is just naming some of my suffering. That does not account for my husband's suffering as he waits at the aid station, wondering if I am dead.) But there is an immense amount of beauty to ultra running as well! Because of the pain I endure, I have been able to see some of the most beautiful places that many will never be able to access, unless they want to hike for a really, really long time. And the same goes for life. We could say, “Nah. I am good, God. I would rather not go that way. It looks hard, costly, and painful.” But as a result, what beauty are you choosing to miss?

I can say with full honesty that the things I spoke about happening in my life were the most terrifying, heart-wrenching, and painful things I have ever experienced. A student once asked me, “On a scale of hardest things you have done in your life, how does a hundred-mile race rank?” It doesn’t. Running a hundred miles cannot begin to compare to what I have gone through in my life. But the scenery of my ultras cannot begin to compare to the beauty I have seen result from those same hard life experiences–a relationship with God and the wonders of His love and grace that He has caused to result from my story, thus giving me confidence to recite Psalm 27:13, “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.” 

It just so happened that when I was preparing this talk for my students that I was in the middle of making a decision whether to return to teaching or not next year (2026-2027). My superintendent and my principal needed a final answer, I had already gotten an extension. But I don't have a job lined up yet? I can't just say I'm done with teaching, lose my position in the hiring process, and then come summer have no job? Because it is way too early to apply for jobs now. I still have to teach for three more months! What was I supposed to do? Then the answer came: follow the course, trust the race director. Because unlike the human race directors that I race for or Gary Cantrell who designs races to simply test human endurance and grit, God knows me intimately and my racecourse eternally. He sees the pain and the beauty. He sees the mountains in my life, the ones I am unsure I will make it up, and gently encourages, “Just wait until you see the view from the top.” And when I do make it up, I can say with confidence, “To God be the glory.”

So “I run in the paths of your commands, [Lord], for you have broadened my understanding” (Psalm 119:32). The understanding that the ultimate beauty to come out of life is a relationship with God and walking in intimacy with Him no matter where He leads.