Suffering and discomfort either reveal who you are or bring you closer to God. More often than not, they do both. They've certainly done both for me. ~ Von Holbrook, 2025
Two weeks ago I finished my second 50K ultramarathon.
If you have never run one, let me save you the suspense. At some point it is going to hurt. For me it was the last six miles. The heat had taken over, my legs were done, and running simply was not on the menu anymore. So I walked. Me and just about everybody else out there, heads down, shuffling it in.
And the whole time, this conversation is running on a loop in my head.
“Keep going. Slow down. Why are you doing this? Just finish.” on repeat.
Here is the strange part. That stretch, the miserable one, is the part I keep coming back to. Not because I enjoyed it. Because something happens out there when everything else gets stripped away.
This is the first post in a new section of the blog I'm calling The Walk. It is about my walk with God. And I think it is fitting that it starts with me literally walking, because I am learning that the walk is where the real work happens. When I could still run, I was performing. When I was reduced to walking, I was praying. I’m not embarrassed to say that some of those prayers were for the finish line to be around the next corner.
Guess what? Eventually, my prayer was answered.
We've Gotten Too Comfortable Being Comfortable
I just finished a book called The Comfort Crisis, and it put language to something I have been feeling for a while.
Everything around us is engineered to remove discomfort. Climate controlled homes. Food that shows up at the door. Entertainment on demand. We have built lives where we almost never have to feel anything hard, and we have gotten so comfortable with being comfortable that the smallest discomfort feels like a crisis.
And yet look around. We are more anxious, more restless, and more disconnected than ever.
I don't think that is a coincidence. Comfort is quietly making a promise it can't keep. It whispers that we are in control, that we are self sufficient, that we don't need anything or anyone. Discomfort tells the truth. You are capable of more than you think, and you are not in control. Both of those things point me straight back to God.
Honest truth? Inside discomfort, we need God, CONSTANTLY. Inside comfort, he’s rarely on our minds.
This Is Not a New Idea
This morning at church we talked about suffering. About Jesus dying for our sins, yes, but also about being prepared to suffer as part of following Him. And it hit me that the Bible has been saying out loud what our culture spends billions trying to avoid.
Our instinct is to run from suffering. God keeps using it to do His best work.
David wrote many of the Psalms hiding in caves, running for his life. Joseph sat forgotten in a prison for years before he became the man God was building him into. Paul was beaten, shipwrecked, and imprisoned, and somehow wrote that he had learned to be content in any circumstance.
Paul also wrote this, and I can't stop thinking about it:
"We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." (Romans 5:3-4)
James says to consider it pure joy when we face trials, because the testing of our faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2-4)
Notice what none of these passages say. They don't say suffering is punishment. They don't celebrate pain for its own sake. They describe suffering as refinement. It burns off the excess. It exposes what we actually trust. And Jesus didn't just suffer for us. He showed us how to suffer. With surrender. With obedience. With love.
Our culture says the goal is comfort. The Christian life says the goal is Christlikeness. Those are not the same road, and lately I have had to be honest with myself about which one I am on.
Why I Keep Signing Up for This
People ask why I do these races. Why jiu-jitsu four or five days a week. Why the cold water and the long climbs and the hard things I keep volunteering for.
I used to not have a great answer. I think I do now.
I am not chasing pain. I am putting myself in places where the noise dies and the truth gets loud. When your body is exhausted and your mind is negotiating and your ego finally shuts up, you find out what is actually underneath. Every single time, what I find underneath is need. Need for God. Need for something bigger than my own willpower, which I can tell you from experience runs out somewhere around mile 25.
Choosing suffering on purpose, in small controlled doses, is training for the suffering I don't get to choose. Because that suffering is coming for all of us. Nobody escapes it. The question is not whether we will suffer. The question is whether we will have met God in it before it arrives.
The Finish Line
The feeling of crossing that finish line a couple weeks ago was incredible. But I have learned not to misread it. The joy doesn't come after the suffering, like a reward handed out at the end. It comes through it. It is woven into it. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13) is not a verse about winning. Paul wrote it about contentment in every circumstance, the good miles and the brutal ones.
So this is The Walk. Some posts here will come from the trail, some from the mat, some from a quiet morning with my Bible and a cup of coffee. But the thread is the same.
Our culture teaches us to avoid suffering. God teaches us to redeem it.
I would rather learn that at mile 26, on purpose, than have life teach it to me cold.
See you out there.