The Rat Race 5k

Consensual exhaustion dressed as ambition.

They handed me a bib, and I didn’t remember signing up.

The crowd was already moving.
Fast. Focused. Determined.

Everyone looked like they knew exactly where they were going.

So I ran too.

There were sponsors everywhere. The big logos - you know, the usual culprits.

Achievement.
Recognition.
Money.
Status.

And they even had swag.

Titles. Promotions. Performance reviews.
“High Capacity Operator.”
“Top 1%.”
“Crushing it.”

The better you ran, the more they handed you.

And somewhere along the way, I started believing my own press.

I can carry more.
Work longer.
Answer faster.
Need less.

If only I knew I wasn't a god.

Mile 1: Just getting started. This is exciting.
Mile 2: You find your pace. You tell yourself this is sustainable.
Mile 3.1: Finish line.

Mile 4: You're still running.

Nobody knows why.

You're expecting entirely too much of caffeine.

Maybe this is what Haggai was getting at.

You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it. ~Haggai 1:6

Gosh, what?

Read the whole thing:

You have planted much but harvest little.
You eat but are not satisfied.
You drink but are still thirsty.
You put on clothes but cannot keep warm.
Your wages disappear as though you were putting them
in pockets filled with holes!

Running to earn.
Earning to acquire.
Acquiring and somehow still needing.

A purse with holes.

A finish line that keeps moving.

And God's response isn't to run faster.

He's essentially saying: Look at what you're doing.

“Give careful thought to your ways.”

Somewhere around Mile 5, it hits you...

The finish line was back there, nearly 2 miles ago...

Why in the world am I still running?

Because I never decided what enough looked like.

So I kept going.

Besides, stopping would mean admitting something I don't want to say out loud:

I chose to be here.

But Have You Tried Running Faster?

The world's answer to dissatisfaction is almost always more.

Work harder.
Optimize.
Scale.
Level up.
Get disciplined.
Build the morning routine.
Wake up at 4:30.
Cold plunge yourself into oblivion.

God's response in Haggai is completely different.

Consider.

Look at your life.

Look at what you're spending.

Look at what you're getting back.

What if the problem isn't that I haven't done enough?

Signed Waiver on File

I don’t think most of us are trapped.

I think we’re committed.

Committed to the race.
Committed to the identity it gives us.
Committed to being seen as capable, reliable, exceptional.

Listen, I know this runner.

I like being capable.

I like being the person who can figure it out.
The one you can hand something messy to.
The one who will carry it across the finish line.

There are worse things to be known for.

But somewhere along the way, being capable can become being endlessly available.
When you're good at carrying things, people tend to hand you more things to carry.

Nobody says:
Please sacrifice your peace and sense of self for this quarterly objective.

The sacrifice gets disguised beneath more respectable words.

Drive, excellence, stewardship.

We baptize overwork.

God gave me these gifts.
I should use them.
I want to work with excellence.
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.

All true.

But biblical stewardship doesn't mean every ounce of capacity has to be spent.

If we're honest... a lot of this is fear dressed up in better language.

Fear of being overlooked.
Fear of not mattering.
Fear that if we slow down, we’ll disappear.
Fear of finding out we're replaceable.

So we consent.
Or, at least, I did.

Nobody stood over me and demanded every extra hour.
Nobody forced me to make usefulness part of my identity.
Nobody made me feel a tiny jolt of satisfaction every time someone said, 
I knew you'd handle it.

That was mine.

I ran hard because I was good at running.

And because, if I'm being honest, I liked what running said about me.

Capable.
Needed.
Trusted.
Valuable.

That's the sneaky thing about the Rat Race 5K.

Registration isn't a one-time event.

I sign up again every dang morning.

Purses, Holes & Other Bad Investments

Eventually, you have to look inside the bag.

I have spent a lot of years running.

To be clear, the running gave me some really good things.

A career I'm proud of.
Opportunities I never expected.
People I genuinely love.
The ability to provide for my family.
The deep satisfaction of discovering I'm actually pretty good at the things.

I don't regret ambition.
I don't regret working hard.
I don't even regret most of the miles.

But I've had enough career upheaval to learn something I wish I'd understood sooner:

You can be deeply valued and still be replaceable.
You can do excellent work and still lose the job.
You can give an organization years of your life, and the organization [quite literally] cannot give them back.

It's just math, guys.

Time is an expense.
Attention is an expense.
Peace is an expense.

Being physically present with the people you love while mentally answering an email is an expense.
Taking somebody else's problem to bed with you is an expense.

One more thing before dinner.
One more thing before bed.
One more thing before I can rest.

And I think that's where the purse with holes gets me.

Because Haggai isn't condemning people for working.

He's asking them to notice what all that work is producing.

They have food, but aren't satisfied.
Drink, but aren't filled.
Clothes, but aren't warm.
Wages, but nothing seems to stay in the bag.

Always acquiring. Never arriving.

And then God says something almost offensively simple:

"Give careful thought to your ways."

Not run faster.
Not optimize the purse.
Not wake up at 4:30 and develop a better morning routine.

Look at the ledger.

What did you gain?
What did it cost?

Did you actually mean to spend that much?

Mile Marker 6

I've learned a few things out here on these streets.

Not all movement is progress.

You can be extraordinarily productive while moving further away from the life you actually want.

You can hit the deadline and miss dinner.
Earn the promotion and lose your peace.
Become incredibly good at being available to everyone except the people standing in your kitchen.

None of that makes achievement bad.

It just means achievement isn't qualified to tell you whether your life is good.

I've also learned that just because something can be done right now doesn't mean it needs to be.

I have manufactured plenty of my own urgency.

An email comes in. Nobody said right now.
But I can answer it right now.
So I do.

Do that often enough and responsiveness becomes expectation - sometimes everyone else's, but plenty of times, my own.

And somewhere along the course, I've had to learn that capacity is not a calling.

Just because I can carry something doesn't mean it's mine to carry.

That's a hard one for those of us who take pride in being capable.
We talk a lot about using our gifts well, and we should.
But discernment can't only ask, Can I do this?

I think the holier question is:

Is this mine to do?

And then there's rest.
It's a whole 4-letter weighty word, y'all

I've spent too much of my life treating rest like a reward for finishing everything while simultaneously constructing a life in which everything is never finished.

There will always be another email.
Another project.
Another problem.
Another person who needs something.

Another mile.

But guys - God Himself rested.

Meanwhile, I apparently have an email that simply cannot wait until Monday.

Hubris, thy name is Jenika.

Maybe that's what I've misunderstood about limits.

They aren't evidence that I'm incapable.

They're evidence that I'm human.

And I don't think I need to become less ambitious to honor them. I don't need to stop working hard, wanting to do excellent things, or using every beautiful gift God has given me.

I just need to stop asking ambition to tell me when I've done enough.

Because ambition is remarkably bad at that.

There's always another milestone.

Another accomplishment.

Another version of me a little farther down the road who is supposedly more successful, more secure, more impressive, more enough.

And I already know what happens when I chase her.

I run right past the finish line.

That's the part I can't blame entirely on work culture, bad bosses, capitalism, technology, or the tiny red notification bubble designed by Satan himself.

I have mistaken exhaustion for evidence that I was working hard enough.

I have worn busy like it meant important.

And perhaps worst of all, I've sometimes given the leftovers of myself to the things I would tell you matter most to me.

That's the trick of the Rat Race 5K.

You don't wake up one morning and decide:

Today I shall exchange the most meaningful parts of my life for professional validation.

You make tiny trades.
Five minutes here.
Dinner there.
One email.
One more yes.
One more thing you'll carry because you're capable of carrying it.
One more lap.

Until eventually you look down - and you're still wearing the bib.

The Finish Line

I wish I could tell you I've stepped out of the race.

That I learned all of this, unlaced my shoes, tossed the bib in the trash, and now spend my mornings drinking coffee slowly while ignoring my phone and radiating an irritating amount of inner peace.

I have not.

In fact, I think the Lord has been trying to get my attention about this for a while now.

Didn't I get laid off last year? Say less.

A few weeks ago, my pastor said something that lodged itself somewhere uncomfortable:

Not every season is a record-breaking season.

Excuse me?

Some part of me still believes every season should be.

If I'm not climbing, producing, earning, building, leading, achieving, becoming more, then surely I'm falling behind.

And I'm starting to recognize just how deeply that thinking got into me.

Maybe brainwashed is dramatic.
But... maybe it isn't.

Because I don't just miss some of what I had.
I miss the notoriety.
I miss the status.
I miss the power.

There. I fricking said it.

I miss walking into rooms knowing my title carried weight. I miss being close to the decisions. I miss the money. I miss being important in ways the corporate world knows how to measure.

And I'm struggling more than I'd like to admit with not having all of it right now.

I'm still salty.
But I know I'm healing.

And somewhere in the middle of being pissed and healing, God keeps sending people across my path who are saying, in one way or another:

Jenika, stop running.

Not stop working.
Not stop being ambitious.
Not stop using what He gave me.

Just – stop running like my life depends on catching something.

Because it doesn't.

Heck, even writing this is shaking me right out of my freaking corporate shoes.
Even though my corporate shoes are always Chucks.

It has me confronting the possibility that I've spent years being formed by a definition of success I don't actually believe.

Or at least don't want to believe.

Because Scripture says something very different.

Paul doesn't say Christ is an important part of my life.

He says:

“Christ, Who is your life...” ~Colossians 3:4

My [whole gosh darn] life.
Not my career.
Not my title.
Not my reputation.
Not my salary.
Not whether somebody important knows my name.

Him.

And Scripture tells me something else I'm going to have to keep relearning:

“And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.” ~Philippians 4:19

God supplies my needs.

Not the next promotion.
Not another zero.
Not another title.

God.

And listen -
I've made six figures.
It wasn't enough.
It's never enough, guys.

That's the cruel little secret of this race: whatever number you thought would make you feel safe eventually becomes the number you can't imagine living without.

Then you need the next number.
The next title.
The next room.

Enough is always another mile down the road.

So maybe this season isn't supposed to be record-breaking.

Lord, I hate even typing that.
Maybe some seasons are for healing.

For getting angry about the right things.

For figuring out which desires are actually mine and which ones were handed to me with the bib.

For remembering that being known is not the same as being important.

For relearning that provision and abundance aren't synonyms.

For discovering that I can lose status without losing significance.

And maybe for allowing God to pry my white-knuckled little hands off things I had started calling mine.

I don't think I'm finished with the Rat Race 5K.

I'm writing this from Mile Seven.

Still ambitious.
Still mostly pissed.
Still healing.

Still tempted to turn around and chase the version of myself who had more money, more status, more power, more proof.

But increasingly aware that Jesus is standing somewhere entirely different.

And that He is my [whole gosh darn] life.

So when I catch myself running another mile in a race that ended at 3.1, I'm trying to remember:

I don't have to prove that I'm enough.

I don't have to earn what God has already promised to provide.

I don't have to make every season a record-breaking season.

And I sure don't have to win the Rat Race 5K.

But I have to know when to go home. 🤍