Lessons on perseverance from the Centennial Trail

Last week my friend Eric and I hiked the entirety of the Centennial Trail in South Dakota, 125 miles over the course of seven days. We started our hike in Wind Cave National Park and ended a week later atop Bear Butte, a sacred site for the Lakota and Cheyenne peoples native to the region. This hike was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, and I still have the sunburn, turf toe, and sore feet to show for it.

But, as I was hiking, or rather, shortly after I finished hiking, I was reminded that resilience and perseverance are not qualities that human beings possess automatically but are in fact spiritual practices.

As a neurodivergent person with ADHD, perseverance in the face of difficult things can be a real challenge for me. My brain is always on the hunt for dopamine, that feel-good drug that gets released in our brain when we experience new and exciting things and tasty food. When my brain encounters resistance, or when things become difficult, it’s first instinct is to ditch the hard thing and go looking for something new, exciting, tasty, or interesting. Everyone experiences this to an extent, but for folks with neurodivergence, the impulse to quit, to avoid the difficult thing, is often overwhelmingly strong.

Going into this hike I really doubted that I would be able to finish the whole trail. And there were many points along the way, usually about halfway up a steep incline or down a treacherous descent, when I heard my inner voice demanding that I quit, find a hotel, and wait for Eric on the other end.

But I didn’t quit. I kept going. When my feet hurt, I kept going. When my sunburn started to blister, I kept going. And when the hills seemed never-ending and the trail unrelenting, I kept going.

I wish I could say it was sheer force of will that kept me going, but it wasn’t. However, I believe the things that did keep me going are lessons that can apply across many contexts, including within Christian community and the neighborhood.

Here are three things that helped me keep going along the Centennial Trail:

1. I didn’t go alone. Having my best friend with me on the trail, modeling his own perseverance, experience, and drive inspired me to follow suit. And, even in those moments where I was more annoyed with his drive than inspired by it, I pushed myself on because he and I had made a commitment to one another that we would finish. This push and pull kept me going and helped me to overcome the impulse to walk away.
2. I learned to look at the few steps ahead of me, not at the top of the hill I was attempting to climb. It didn’t take long for me to notice the sincere despair that washed over me when Eric and I found ourselves at the bottom of several miles of steep incline. When I kept my vision fixed on the top of the hill (or what I foolishly assumed was the top of the hill) I always felt more tired, sorer, and less confident and capable. But, when I focused my attention on the few steps ahead of my feet, on the steady rhythm of my own breath, or the repetitions of the Jesus Prayer, I was always (ALWAYS) struck by how quickly and efficiently the miles and the climb seemed to pass.
3. I embraced my own pace. Eric is in better shape than I am and has a drive for physical exertion that I am pretty confident has never been present in the DNA of my lineage. We Tangens, like the Dwarves of Middle Earth, are very dangerous over short distances. I could have spent the entire week comparing myself to Eric or the many seasoned thru-hikers I’ve read about or met. I could have been discouraged by moving slower than someone else or needing to take a short break. But instead, by the end of the hike, I had learned to go the pace that allowed me to move forward, to push me beyond my comfort zone, but that was still firmly within my own ability. I hiked my own hike.

As Eric and I reflected on our many miles hiked in South Dakota over a hearty breakfast, I was prayerful that these lessons would remain with me and find their way towards influencing the other challenges I face in my life and work.

These three lessons offer wisdom useful for congregations and Jesus followers looking to deepen their own call to be faithful neighbors.

1. Don’t go alone. Living out Christ’s call to community in the places where we live and worship is not a solitary undertaking. This is work that is done with and alongside our faith community members and our neighbors. Who are the friends, guides, and motivators who can accompany you on your call to be the neighbor, to discover what God is up to in the neighborhood?
2. Don’t preoccupy yourself with the outcomes. Instead of constantly looking at how much further you have to go, how much more must be done to create a just and healthy neighborhood, how insurmountable the challenges of living in community, focus instead on the small simple steps you can take every day that cast a vote for the possibility you want to see. Talk to your neighbors, break bread together, walk the neighborhood, question the structures and institutions that profit from division and disempowerment. Small steps over time will continue to move you forward, and will ultimately carry you over the hill, whatever that means for you and your neighborhood.
3. Push yourself but go at your own pace. While this work of faithful neighboring is communal, it is also true that each of us has our own particular calls, styles, and gifts. Comparison is the thief of joy, said Teddy Roosevelt. So pay attention instead to the pace and style that God is calling you to follow as you seek to live as a faithful neighbor in the community where God has placed you.

I know there is always a danger of corny and saccharine sentimentality when drawing lessons from one context and applying them to another, but for me this hike really did challenge me to think about how I face difficult and challenging things. And the work that I am called to, that I am passionate about, is animating the culture and practice of the neighborhood church, which I’m sure you know can often feel like an insurmountable uphill climb.

I pray that I’ll be able to look back at this hike and my experience on the trail in those moments when I feel like quitting. When it seems like neighbors and churches just have no interest in being in deeper relationship, when decision makers betray or abandon citizens, when the resources and the energy for church seems to all together dry up. I hope I can look to the friends who are walking with me, pay attention to the next small steps ahead of me, and slow down and move forward at a pace that is sustainable for me. And, one day, I hope I can return to the Centennial Trail with the knowledge that I am more than capable of walking it end to end, tough climbs and all.