A Marathon, a Novel and a Marriage

What do these three have in common? Several things. For one thing, me. I’m training for a marathon, writing my first novel and married to my wife, Sharlene, for more than thirty-seven years now. 

Another common element is that they all require perseverance. A marathon involves about 70,000 steps; a novel is about 140,000 words; and a thirty-eight-year marriage equals almost 14,000 days. Each step, each word, each day is critical. Each one is a risk, and each one is also an opportunity.

Here are some things I’ve learned in my marathon prep and writing life that also apply to marriage. 

• Start. Don’t Stop. Finish. One morning I ran a half marathon before work. I started my run at 4:00 a.m., knowing it would take me nearly three hours. (My pace is pretty slow.) The thought came to my mind, it doesn’t matter what happens in the next three hours – blisters, fatigue, pain, road surface, weather, anything – I’m just running. I’m not stopping, no matter what, until I reach the 13.1-mile point. My thoughts had to be consumed with one idea: run; just run.

There’s a scene in one of my very favorite movies, Cinderella Man, in which the comeback fighter’s manager scales everything down to one word. With all the pressures, opportunities and risks, the manager reveals the solution to all fighter Jim Braddock’s problems. The solution is one word: win. In the course of writing my two previous books, Brilliant Faith and Interwoven Love, I’ve often settled my thoughts on one single instructive word for myself: write. You’ll never publish a book without the daily discipline of opening up the computer and writing; it’s just that simple. 

In marriage, it’s often helpful to settle on a single word. The word may be a different one from one season to another; it may be love, it could be forgive, listen or simply stay.

• It’s Hard. I have a friend, Willy Pascua, who recently ran a double marathon; that’s 52.4 miles. Fascinated, I picked Willy’s brain about such a feat. His simple answer to me was, running’s hard. He said that, even though he’d run that very long distance, he still found it hard running a 5k. It’s just hard, Willy said, on the human body to run. I found comfort in the words of this retired U.S. Marine Corps Master Gunnery Seargeant, hearing a super hero admit that something I find difficult is also difficult to him. 

A conversation writers often have is about the many obstacles to completing a major writing project, like publishing a novel. Author and Director of the annual Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writer’s Conference, Edie Melson, writes a very helpful daily blog, to which I subscribe, that often targets one of the many common challenges for writers. The common thread running through every solution Edie gives is: don’t be thrown off by the surprise that writing is hard; just stay with it. 

Married couples often find themselves in trouble by the element of surprise. They didn’t anticipate the difficulties that awaited them a few weeks, months or years into their marriage. 

There’s a saying: you can’t prepare for war. The reason that’s true is that, while you can train for war, you can’t duplicate it; trainees would die if they used real war to train for real war. So, inevitably, warriors will be met by surprise. 

Marriage is similar. A couple can do their best to think through, talk through, and pray through every marriage scenario they can fathom, but they can’t imagine all the situations they’ll find themselves facing as a married couple. One of the best things newlyweds can do is expect to be surprised. Fairy tales are not their friend; naiveté is their enemy. If you’re someone in the midst of marriage difficulty, perhaps you can find comfort in knowing that every married couple, at times, finds marriage difficult.

Marriage, like running and writing, has its challenges; but, like those two pursuits, it also has its rewards. May God help us learn these and other lessons and apply them to our all-important marriages.