Six years ago, I came home from work and said to my husband, \u201cI\u2019d like to run a marathon.\u201d As the most athletic thing I\u2019d ever done to that date was an energetic performance of \u201cGodspell,\u201d he was a bit surprised by my declaration. Ever patient and always tolerant of my hare-brained ideas, however, he jumped on the opportunity to take up a new hobby together. The next day, we laced up our shiny new running shoes and started training together. Almost exactly a year later, we crossed the finish line of our first full marathon. My husband confidently declared at the finish line that he would never again run that far in one day, but I was hooked and I\u2019ve been running one-two marathons or half marathons every year since then.<\/p>\n
Often when people find out I\u2019m a runner, they say things like \u201cI only run if something\u2019s chasing me\u201d or \u201cYou runners are crazy.\u201d From the outside looking in, I\u2019ll admit it\u2019s a strange hobby. It\u2019s hard, sweaty, and often painful. There is so much more to it than simply the exercise, though. That\u2019s what occurred to me when I crossed the finish line in 2010 and couldn\u2019t wait to run the next one. It isn\u2019t the exercise that sold me on marathoning. Sure, it\u2019s nice to be able to eat anything and everything that moves slower than I do during training season (I do love donuts and I may or may not admit to eating Cheetos while blogging), but for me running marathons is so much deeper than a calorie count or bragging rights.<\/p>\n
Hebrews 12:1-7 tells us to \u201crun the race with endurance.\u201d One gains a whole new perspective on that passage when actually physically running for hours on end. It\u2019s a lesson in how to hang on when the going gets tough. When your knee starts to ache at mile 3 of 26.2, you learn a great deal about how much you can actually accomplish when you\u2019re in the thick of things.<\/p>\n
Little did I know when I ran past the Seminary campus during that first marathon that just a few years later, I\u2019d have a bit of a reputation there as a serial student. It was a year after crossing my first marathon finish line that I came home from work and told my husband I was seriously thinking about going to seminary. God bless my husband and his tolerance for my crazy ideas.<\/p>\n
Now, having graduated with my MDiv and rolled straight into the ThM program, I just can\u2019t seem to get enough of this place. While I ran the full Pittsburgh marathon in 2010, I\u2019ve run the half marathon every year since. Because the half marathon course doesn\u2019t pass the Seminary, I haven\u2019t gotten a chance to run past the campus on race day since I\u2019ve been a student here. It\u2019s always felt like I\u2019m missing out on something important by bypassing that part of the full marathon course.<\/p>\n
This year, I\u2019m delighted to be able to participate on a Seminary relay team at the Pittsburgh marathon. The PTS community and distance running are finally coming together at the same time for me and that\u2019s a big deal. I\u2019ve often compared seminary to running a marathon. It takes huge amounts of dedication, perseverance, and training to get to the finish line. And just like in a marathon, some people arrive at the finish line in seminary a better, healthier person, but ready to move on to something else and put academia behind them. Some people \u2013 like yours truly \u2013 just keep coming back for more. But all of us reach the finish line a different person than we were when we started out on the journey.<\/p>\n
The Rev. Charissa Howe completed her MDiv in 2014 and has returned to Pittsburgh Seminary to earn her ThM. She serves as pastor of Liberty Presbyterian Church in McKeesport, Pa., and is a wife and mother.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Six years ago, I came home from work and said to my husband, \u201cI\u2019d like to run a marathon.\u201d As the most athletic thing I\u2019d ever done to that date was an energetic performance of \u201cGodspell,\u201d he was a bit surprised by my declaration. Ever patient and always tolerant of my hare-brained ideas, however, he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[111],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theological-reflection","tag-pittsburgh-marathon"],"yoast_head":"\r\n