I ran a 5k last Saturday.

I can still feel it.

Mainly because, having not run at all for nearly 4 months I had no business putting my 53 year old body through it.

But I did it because racing, for me, is an icon. It is representative of something much bigger. Just like the icon on your computer represents Word or Chrome, for me running is about working my way through the pain and hurts of life as an integral part of getting to the finish line.

Most of us try to speed through hardship as quickly as possible. We loathe it. We curse it. I do all I can to banish it.

But I have found that obsessing over cessation is not the best way to handle pain. I do better to calm down, acknowledge its part in the race, then pull up a chair, sit at its feet, and say ‘Teach me.’

One of the grand lessons I learn and re-learn is that pain has never killed me - I can endure - and if that, then what else? I have found and that my continued perseverance through the pain has actually rewarded me. Like my 3^rd place medal?

So I ask in what ways am I a student of hardship? What are our trials teaching us? The Book of James tells us to ‘rejoice’ and be grateful in our difficulties for just this reason: hardship is a classroom outside of which many important lessons go unlearned.