003 - Identity

I want to tell you the story of a woman named Katherine Switzer.

In 1967, five years before it was legal for women to do so, Katherine ran in the Boston Marathon. On the morning of the race, her boyfriend, Tom, noticed the lipstick she had put on in her hotel room and insisted she remove it. “I will not take off my lipstick,” Katherine declared. The matter was settled.

As Katherine, Tom, and her trainer, Arnie, hit mile four of the twenty-six mile marathon, a sudden commotion behind them caught their attention. The owner of the race, Jock Semple, leapt out of a vehicle and lunged for Katherine, yelling, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers!” and clawing for the race numbers pinned to her chest and back. After escaping Semple’s grip, Katherine realized that she could not stop running; it was too important to her and to the women running the race in the future that she not give up.

When reporters shouted questions at her like, “What are you trying to prove?” and “When are you going to quit?” Katherine responded that she wasn’t trying to prove anything; she just wanted to run. She set her mind on the finish line, and she finished in four hours, twenty minutes – just two hours and five minutes behind that year’s winner. Katherine’s experience and passion for running encouraged her to advocate for women’s rights in marathon running, and she was part of implementing the women’s marathon in the Olympic Games.

What I love about Katherine’s story is that she refused to give up on herself. From refusing to take off the lipstick to refusing to quit the race, Katherine stood her ground when it came to her identity, and she didn’t let anyone cause her to doubt that she was enough, lipstick, tennis shoes, and all.

Imagine if Katherine had quit the race, if she had let others tell her she wasn’t good enough to do the thing she loved. How much longer would it have taken for women to be allowed to run the Boston Marathon? Would someone else have advocated for the women’s marathon to be an Olympic event? Yet, because of one decision, Katherine impacted millions of women around the world. It wasn’t her goal to change the world when she signed up for the Boston Marathon in 1967; it was just a by-product of her choice to look inward instead of outward to find her definition.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be like Katherine. I want to thrive in pursuit of the person God created me to be, not worrying about whether I make mistakes or disappoint others and ignoring the people who shout at me to stop. Don’t you?

Just as Katherine fixed her eyes on what she wanted out of that race, despite being literally manhandled and the reporters shouting degrading questions at her, let’s you and me fix our eyes on who God created us to be, and let’s you and me throw out anything that stands in opposition to the definition God has given us. We don’t have to strive to please others; we already please our Father. We don’t have to do things we wouldn’t normally do just to get others to like us; God really likes us already. And we don’t have to feel as though it is impossible to measure up to those around us; God isn’t even keeping score.

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Published in the 003 - April 14 issue of TuesdayTribe

Written by Hannah Hladek

Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash