The Hill

During off season when I was in Junior High our coaches made us run the hill three days a week. The hill was basically the stretch of street that ran beside the school. We would run a mile and a quarter to a stop sign and then turn around and run back. The distinctive thing about this particular stretch of road was that it was two big hills. Literally half of the time you were running down one hill and the other half back up another. Because we back tracked it was the same process repeated down then up and down then up. Have you ever run down a hill before? It sounds great right! You have gravity in your favor. It can be fun at first, but after a while it becomes a beating. The tendency to over stretch and get ahead of yourself starts to wear on you. Then there is the uphill climb. Wow, you feel like your going no where fast.

Life often seems to be like running the hill. Things are either going faster than it feels like you can handle or so slow and tedious you’re not sure if you’re making progress. One thing I learned from running the hill was that the only way to finish was to keep putting one foot in front of another. If I just kept putting one foot in front of another I always finished. Always! Most of the time you can’t control the terrain or even the pace of life, but you can control if you finish.