Marathons have been on my mind since my husband just finished his first 1/2 marathon this past weekend. I also did my marathon in the form of a one-woman show. We planned it that way. We are now relaxing and reflecting on the whole experience. The question that comes up for me is “What is a finish line, and who determines it?” Now I’m talking about it in a metaphorical sense.  What is our individual finish line?

I’ve run on and off for the past 40 years. I even ran a 1/2 marathon several years back. I told myself I’d never do it again. However, last week when we were picking up my husband’s registration stuff for the marathon, I met “the Marathon Goddess.” Perhaps you’ve heard of her. She ran 52 marathons in 52 weeks to raise money for pancreatic cancer, which took her father’s life. Her name is Julie Weiss. She got me thinking about finish lines and limits and why people do what they do. She got me thinking of those us us who give up before we even start, and those of us who just keep challenging ourselves in some capacity or another..

I’ve read about a few people who have run the furtherest, the fastest and the longest and I’ve found one common thread. One day, when they’d reached their bottom due to some life situation, they just randomly started running. This struck me with the question, “What made them just start running.” Well, I’ve come up with my own answer. It’s that part of ourselves that is our own savior, our own salvation that takes over when we surrender to it.

After meeting Julie, I decided to just start running. I’ve been running/walking for the past couple of years. But, all of a sudden I just decided to start running again. It’s not something I can force myself to do, because I’ve tried. It’s something within that just says, “Run.” It’s happened to me as I recall, about five or six times in my 40 years of running when I’d gotten off my mark. It happened to me on Saturday, August 31. “Run,” the voice said, so I did.

At first I was able to sustain it for a little over a mile. Not bad. I walked the rest of the way. Then, Saturday, I just started running and every time, I wanted to walk, I heard a voice saying, “Why walk, you are already running?” So, I just kept running, completing almost 4 miles. I knew I was on my way back to running again.

So, the question is, who sets our finish lines and limits? There is only one answer. We do. We can take this into anything in our life. It’s all mind over matter no matter which way we look at it. I read about Dean Karnazes, who runs days without stopping. There are indigenous cultures who run for the fun of it. It all begins with belief. Who sets those beliefs? The consciousness of all of us in the one unified field of intelligence. We get to choose who we want to believe and what we want to believe in. We can look at our lives, as hard as it might be to, and see what we believe. The good news is beliefs can be changed.

I’ve written a lot here to get to one point. We are the ones who set our finish lines, expand them or move them backward. We can’t get away from this. We can say its heredity and, yes, that can be part of it. We can say it is the environment, and yes, that is part of it. But, we cannot argue with those who have gone the furtherest and endured all of it to find themselves at the pinnacle of yet another summit. They’ve proven that there is more than heredity and environment. There is freedom from it all in our belief system.

We are being of expansion There is one Infinite Source that can never be expanded or used up. We get to use more and more of it, as we allow ourselves to recognize it as our Source of everything. It’s perfect, it has no limits and it is done unto us as we believe. As Ernest Holmes once wrote, “Our belief sets the limit of our demonstrations.”

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Rita