THE FINISH LINE IS CLOSER THAN IT FEELS
I shared a YouTube video earlier today about running a half marathon I only trained two weeks for. I truly didn’t know if I would finish. If you haven’t watched it yet, you can watch it here.
I almost didn’t sign up because I kept thinking, I’m not a runner. I lift, I do Pilates, I stay consistent, but running has never been the thing that comes naturally to me. I assumed that meant this would feel impossible.
What actually surprised me was that it didn’t feel impossible. It just felt uncomfortable.
There were miles where I felt good, and then long stretches where I felt tired, unsure, and very aware that I could stop if I wanted to. Nothing dramatic was happening and I wasn't injured or in danger. I was just in that very normal space where something is harder than you expected and you’re not sure if you’re going to keep going.
I think a lot of life feels like that - just ordinary stretches of time where things are harder than you thought they would be. Where you wake up and you don’t feel especially strong or motivated, but the day still asks something from you anyway.
Those seasons don’t look hard or challenging from the outside. They mostly look like doing what you said you’d do, even when you don’t really feel like it. Sticking to your routines, your commitments, your goals, even when the excitement is gone and it just feels like effort.
During the race, I kept deciding, step after step, to keep going even when stopping would have felt easier in the moment. And it made me realize how often we confuse “hard” with “not meant for me.”
I’ve actually seen this same pattern with Strong in Six. No one starts it feeling perfectly ready or confident. They just decide to begin, and then they keep going on the days it feels easy and on the days it really doesn’t. Somewhere along the way, that consistency starts to change how they see themselves.
There’s a verse I come back to often: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:14) To me, that doesn’t just mean we were made beautifully. It means we were made with intention and capacity - capacity to handle things we didn’t think we could handle, and to endure seasons that feel long and uncertain.
Finishing the race didn’t feel like some huge, triumphant moment. It felt more like relief and a quiet sense of, okay...I stayed. That was harder than I expected, and I still stayed with it.
That feeling has stayed with me more than the race itself.
If you’re in a hard season right now - physically, mentally, or just in life - it doesn’t always mean you’re not strong enough for it. Sometimes it just means you’re in the middle of it, and that’s usually the point where you start wondering if you should just give up.
Hard seasons can feel like running a long distance. You’re no longer at the beginning, but you’re not at the finish either. You’re just in that in-between space where things feel slow, uncomfortable, and a little uncertain.
But that part still counts. The steps you take there still matter. And most of the time, you don’t get through something hard by having one big, powerful moment. You get through it the same way I got through those miles: by deciding, over and over again, to keep moving forward even when you’d rather be done.
So this is just a reminder that hard doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t meant for you. It might simply mean you’re being stretched in a way you haven’t been before.
You can get through hard things. Not because they suddenly feel easy, but because you stay with them long enough to see the finish line.
Love,
Sienna xx
