The Marathon Runner Who Learned to Love the Hills

In 2018, Des Linden crossed the finish line of the Boston Marathon in a freezing downpour, becoming the first American woman to win in thirty-three years. What most people forget is that at mile five, she nearly quit. The rain was sideways. Her legs felt dead. She told a fellow runner she was dropping out.

But she didn't. She decided to stay in it one more mile. Then one more. Somewhere around mile eighteen, the suffering she had endured became something else entirely — a quiet, stubborn confidence that the worst had already come and she was still standing. By mile twenty-two, she wasn't just surviving. She was surging.

Paul maps this exact journey in Romans 5. We who have peace with God through Christ don't get a life without rain. We get something better — a process that transforms us from the inside out. Suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance forges character. And character, tested and proven, gives birth to a hope that will never disappoint us.

Des Linden didn't win because the storm let up. She won because the storm remade her. That's the logic of grace. God doesn't remove every hill from the course. He uses the hills to build the kind of heart that can carry hope into the headwind — because His love has already been poured out within us through the Holy Spirit, steady as a runner's pulse, mile after relentless mile.