Here in Minnesota, the winter has a way of reminding us what endurance feels like. When I step outside into the below-zero air for the morning jaunt with the dog, the cold doesn’t politely introduce itself. It slaps me a bit. The ground is frozen and unyielding. The darkness lingers. And I want to retreat back inside.
And then a memory hits, triggered by the smell of frigid air.
I’m transported back to November of 1976, to another cold, dark morning. A younger version of me pulling himself out of bed at 6 AM to jog down Greenvale Avenue toward the football field at Saint Olaf College. No one was forcing me. No coach was standing at my bedside. But there I was—half awake, already dreading what I had chosen to do.
Once I reached the field, I would sprint. As fast as I could. As long as I could. It was my homemade conditioning plan before basketball season began. It was hard. I hated it.
What I hated even more were the wind sprints waiting for us in the impending practices. Every basketball player knows the drill: baseline to free-throw line and back, half-court and back, full-court and back—again and again. Lungs burning. Legs heavy. The temptation to collapse growing stronger by the step.
The only thing that made any of it bearable was this: I loved basketball.
There was a deeper drive underneath the dread. A love that made the suffering meaningful. I didn’t love wind sprints. I loved the game. The hard thing was in service to something I cherished.
That question lingers for me now: What are the hard things you are doing because you love something deeper?
Not the pain that arrives uninvited. Life brings plenty of that. Illness. Loss. Disappointment. We don’t choose those.
I’m thinking about the hard things we choose.
The difficult, truth-telling conversation that could bring healing.
The discipline of caring for your body or spirit in a new way.
The courage of doing what needs to get done when your mind or finger would rather scroll.
The stepping out to stand for a cause.
The brave act of thinking more kindly about yourself, or acting more kindly toward others.
These are wind sprints of another kind.
On some mysterious level, I suspect our souls enter this life knowing it will require effort. Growth stretches us. Love asks more of us than comfort ever will. Becoming who we are meant to be demands something of our stamina, our willingness, our trust.
And yet, when the “why” is strong enough, the “how” becomes possible.
There is also another kind of hard - the kind no one would ever choose. The kind that arrives like a flood in the night. This week in the Sacred Living Circle, we will hear from a guest who endured the devastating flooding of his camp along the Guadalupe River. What he faced was not a chosen wind sprint. It was the unthinkable. Loss, chaos, responsibility, grief - compressed into a single unfolding event.
And yet even there, something deeper carried him and carries him still.
As we reflect on doing hard things, may we honor both kinds: the disciplines we choose because love calls us forward, and the trials we never would have chosen but somehow endure. And when you find yourself in the middle of your own wind sprints, whether chosen or not, pause long enough to remember the deeper love beneath them.
Then, quietly, give yourself credit.
You may be doing the work your soul came here to do.