By Lois Flowers 
“I want to do running club,” my daughter Molly announced a few days after school started. Excited that my then third-grade daughter was enthused about an extracurricular activity after a long phase of deciding what she did not want to try, I did my best to sound supportive.
“Great, sweetie,” I said, noticing the call for parent volunteers as I scanned the permission slip. “Do you want me to do it with you?”
No answer. I was hoping for something a little bit more definitive like, “Oh, yes, Mommy, please do!” or “No thanks, I’m good.”
Truthfully, I was really hoping for the second response because, at that time in my life, I couldn’t think of a single thing more ridiculous than me volunteering to help with running club.
You could have asked me to coach a battle of the books team of lively fifth graders or do flashcards with second graders for hours on end, and I would have been there in a heartbeat. But running club? Nope, nope, nope.
It’s not that I was out of shape. Someone even told me once that I look like a runner. But back then, driven by the need for serotonin and the desire to eat more, I preferred to run in the privacy of my basement, on my treadmill, with a book. Any other kind of running was just too hard.
I wished with all my heart that I could proclaim with Eric Liddell of Chariots of Fire fame that God made me fast, and when I run outside, I feel His pleasure. But He didn’t, and I don’t. (Years later, I did learn to run outside. And though I came to enjoy the experience, I only ever had one speed: slow.)
Then Molly brought home the permission slip for running club. As a third grader, this was the first time she was eligible. With her big sister off to middle school, I was thrilled that she wanted to try something new—something all her own.
Later, when I questioned her again about my possible participation (I’ll do it if you want, but it’s totally okay if you say no; it really won’t hurt my feelings), she finally offered the answer I was secretly hoping for: No.
I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be off the hook. One less thing to fit into my schedule. One less opportunity to get sweaty and look awkward and experience pain. One more chance to put off marking “run 5K” from my bucket list. The next evening, though, Molly dropped the bombshell.
“Mom, I do want you to do running club,” she said casually as she completed her vocabulary homework. Oh dear.
She didn’t want me to walk her into school on the first day after crying about missing me every day for two weeks straight, but she wanted me to do running club with her. Go figure.
As I thought about all the reasons why I couldn’t do it, I suddenly thought of my friend who had lost her son a few years earlier. And it suddenly became quite clear. I must do it.
She’s only little for a little while. It’s a sweet sentiment from a favorite lullaby CD, but it’s more than that. All I have to do is look at how fast her big sister has grown and changed and embraced the excitement of middle school to see the stark truth. I must cherish the moments I have with her as they come even if they make me hot and sweaty and uncomfortable.
Soon Molly would move on—maybe clad in running shoes, maybe not—to adolescence, and her obvious need for me—for my actual presence, that is—would decline. That’s as it should be in this wonderful adventure of parenting. I secretly hope it will take her longer to move on than it did big sister, but I can’t stop the natural progression of life even if I wanted to.
Would she go on to excel in track or cross country, or would running club help her find one more thing to add to her list of things she didn’t want to do? As it turned out, the answer was a hard no to athletics of any sort beyond the third grade. But it didn’t really matter either way.
At the time, the only thing that mattered was that I cast aside my carefully planned after-school schedule and my desire for unsore muscles and ran with Molly. I knew for sure I wouldn’t run fast, but I had a feeling that, in doing this together, somehow both Molly and I would feel God’s pleasure. And you know what? Looking back, I think we did.
by Evi Wusk 
by Sarah Trombley 
