Parenting is tough, running and training are tough, but parenting is tougher. I love running—what it does for the mind and body, how it clears the head, how it builds heart and grit. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. And I often think that parenting young adults and adult children isn’t unlike training for a big race. Runners train like crazy to prepare for a day that feels both distant and inevitable. There’s a hidden world of preparation, daily training blocks, and micro-decisions that lead to a bigger moment when all the hard work pays off.
Running teaches a truth I keep returning to: you don’t just stumble into race day; you build toward it with intention. A training plan, a block of workouts mapped out weekly, day by day, helps you become the person who can stand at the start line and give your best. When race day finally arrives, you get to see what the preparation was for and why every early alarm, every long run, every uncomfortable stretch of discipline mattered.
Yet even with all that planning and practice, race day brings nerves. Anxiety creeps in. Doubts whisper: Did I train enough? Did I put in the effort I could have, in the days leading up to today? On the course, thoughts surface like: What if I can’t finish? What if my body just gives out? I stink at this. The doubts swirl, and the mind drifts toward defeat before even a single mile is completed.
What does all of this have to do with parenting? Everything. Parenting—especially with young adults and adult children—is rewarding, difficult, and rewarding again, followed by chaos, then more reward, and yes, a dash of disappointment here and there. It’s a constant cycle of effort, growth, and recalibration. You pour into your kids with the same intensity you bring to a training plan. You invest—mentally, emotionally, practically—so they’re ready for life’s big race: their life, their choices, their own paths.
You coach, you guide, you encourage, you model resilience, and you offer the steadying presence that helps them learn how to run their own course the best they can. And just like race day, there are moments of intense anxiety. You worry about whether you’ve done enough, whether your support was present at the right times, whether your voice was heard when it mattered. You might fear you’ve done more harm than good, all the things go through your head.
But there’s a powerful parallel to hold onto: at the end of the day, you let go. You trust the process, you trust your child, and you trust God in the unfolding of their lives. Letting go doesn’t mean to stop caring; it means transferring some of the reins, recognizing that they are running their race with their own legs, pacing, cadence, and breaths. It means letting God guide a path that you might not fully see and isn't really yours to see but you can trust it's being laid out for them.
So we train. We prepare. We invest. We show up with courage, day after day. We teach the value of perseverance, the importance of resilience, and the power of faith that, sometimes, is simply choosing to step back and let them run—to witness their life as it unfolds, to cheer them on from the sidelines, and to trust that the training they received, the values you tried to model and the love we practiced will carry them through, even when the course is uncertain.
Let go. Let God. Let them run.
Motive Runner
