Breaking the SOMEDAY Cycle
How Grace Ends the Race You Never Had to Run
Content Note: This article contains reflections on childhood bereavement and personal grief. While shared in the context of finding hope and faith, these narratives may be emotionally challenging for some readers.
What someday are you living for?
When I finally lose the weight... When I finally have enough saved... When I finally find the right relationship…
We're all running toward some finish line, believing what we need waits on the other side.
Over the years, I've chased after many somedays. The finish line of my first half-marathon was one of them.
Chasing Finish Lines
One-two, one-two. My feet pound pavement as the Pensacola Beach Ball Water Tower grows larger with each stride. One-two, one-two. Thirteen-point-one miles nearly complete.
One-two, one-two. My husband and son cheer me across the finish line. When the race official drapes that medal around my neck, it feels like validation, proof that I am strong, capable, worthy. I beam, soaking in the moment, clutching the beverage-opener medal like treasure.
One-two, one-two. One short race becomes five. 5Ks grow into half-marathons, and finally a 100-mile Ragnar Relay at the age of fifty—until chronic illness interrupts my carefully constructed trajectory, transforming me from runner to grateful walker, each step now a gift rather than a given.
A month later, I'm scrolling through race calendars again. One-two, one-two. The thrill of achievement has already faded as I hunt for the next finish line, the next someday.
You know this cycle, don't you?
One-two, one-two. When I find the perfect relationship, I will finally be fulfilled.
One-two, one-two. When I reach my financial goal, I will finally be at peace.
One-two, one-two. When I achieve my physical transformation, I will finally be comfortable in my own skin.
We keep chasing someday, looking to finish lines for what God has already placed within our reach.
Psychologists and personal development experts often refer to this habit as "Someday Syndrome"—believing happiness and fulfillment stay just out of reach, always one more achievement away.”
Maybe you've felt it. One-two, one-two. You strain for the next version of yourself, the next milestone, the next moment of validation. Every new achievement promises what the last one couldn’t deliver.
We’ve all reached for finish lines that left us saying, “When I finally…”
Until—screeech—something stops us in our tracks. Illness, failure, or maybe grace itself forces us to pause—not to plan the next finish line, but to ask a question we’ve been too busy to notice: What am I really chasing after?
Hitting the Wall
My forced surrender to chronic illness wasn’t my first lesson in the fragility of someday. That came decades earlier, when I was just a child myself.
One day, Stephanie and I were planning our somedays. One-two, one-two. The next, I’m walking toward her casket. The rhythm of life suddenly fractured.
Stephanie was the only girl my age in our neighborhood. One day, we were sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, imagining all the things we would do someday when we grew up. Then next, during a sudden summer storm, she was struck by lightning while walking home from school. Just like that, her somedays vanished.
One-two, one-two. My Sunday shoes mark each step down the funeral home aisle. One-two, one-two. The sound echoes in the hollow silence as I approach her casket.
Everything feels wrong—the too-sweet flower scent, the hushed voices, the impossible stillness of my vibrant friend. Where has she gone? What does “passing” even mean when you’ve barely begun living?
I don’t remember running from the casket or how I got home. Only the shocking absence that followed, and the silence of adults who couldn’t explain why some people don’t get their someday.
The years unfolded with more unwelcome lessons. My grandfather’s eyes closed forever when I was seventeen. A high school classmate stepped into a parking lot and never reached graduation. A young mother down the street—her children still believing in Santa—lost her battle with cancer.
Over time, these moments collected like stones in my pocket, each one whispering the same truth: tomorrow isn’t promised. Yet for decades between Stephanie’s funeral and my final race, I lived as though my supply of tomorrows were unlimited—always chasing the next achievement, the next milestone, the next upgrade.
During my first half marathon, around mile ten, I hit what is known as “the wall”.
One-two, one-two. My legs begin to tire, my breath grows shallow, but the finish remains distant. Doubt rises with every step.
Another runner falters beside me, our struggles perfectly matched. One-two, one-two. Without a word, we fall into step together. For the remainder of the race, we become each other’s cadence, each other’s reason to keep moving. Neither of us could have maintained that rhythm alone, but together, we push through to the finish. No names exchanged. No stories shared. Just presence.
Hitting the wall does that. It strips away pretense. It reveals what’s underneath all our striving. It forces us to face the question we’ve been outrunning all along: What am I running from?
The Ground Beneath Your Feet
When my legs faltered during a run, what mattered most wasn’t the miles ahead, but the ground beneath my feet. The foundation determines everything.
On my running journey, some of the most significant changes happened invisibly. My body transformed in ways I couldn’t see as muscles strengthened and capacity increased. None of these changes showed up in the mirror. Yet they prepared me for distances that once seemed impossible.
One-two, one-two. Already here, not yet fully realized. One-two, one-two. Present reality, future promise. The kingdom’s perfect cadence keeps time.
This is how the kingdom of God unfolds, already at work before we recognise its presence. Jesus described it with this same paradox: “The kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:21, NIV). Yet He also taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10, ESV). Already here. Not yet fully realized. A present reality and future promise dancing in divine tension.
From the cross, Jesus declared, “It is finished” (John 19:30, NIV). With those words, Jesus declared that His sacrificial death ended the exhausting cycle of trying to save ourselves. He dismantled the lie that our worth depends on what we achieve.
The finish line you're chasing was already crossed at Calvary—not by our performance, but by His sacrifice. Already accomplished. Forever secured. Present reality. Eternal promise.
Colossians 2 reminds us that at the cross, Jesus canceled “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Colossians 2:14-15, ESV). He won the race we could never win on our own.
Yet even knowing this, I wobble between belief and unbelief at times. Some days, my failures and fears feel more real than His finished work. Some days, I forget that I’m already running from victory, not for it.
And yet, Jesus never stops interceding and advocating for us.
As Dane Ortlund writes in Gentle and Lowly, “The atonement accomplished our salvation; intercession is the moment-by-moment application of that atoning work. In the past Jesus did what He now talks about; in the present, Jesus talks about what He then did.”1
Even when I stumble, His saving always goes further still. His advocacy always outpaces and overwhelms my sin, because He never stops applying what He already accomplished.
This is the foundation we’re called to run on and from—not our achievements or efforts, but His finished work and ongoing intercession. We aren’t running for Jesus; we’re running with Jesus, from the place of His completed work.
Living from Enough
Today, my pace is slower. The mirror reflects the honest math of days gone by, where the subtraction of youth makes space for the addition of mercy. The world calls this decline, but Scripture speaks differently: “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (2 Corinthians 4:16, NIV).
One-two, one-two. I lace up my shoes—not to chase a finish line, but to enjoy the ground beneath me. No GPS tracking pace. No training plan dictating distance. Just the rhythm of breath, the kiss of sun on skin, the miracle of legs that still carry me forward.
I no longer run toward some future version of myself who might finally matter once crossing another finish line. I run from the place of already-enough in Christ, each stride not a means to an end, but a gift in itself.
My tarnished half-marathon medal hangs quietly in my closet. It no longer whispers validation. It simply reminds me of days when achievement defined me—and how gently, patiently, Christ has redefined me.
Hebrews invites us to “…throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith…” (12:1-2, NIV).
I find a new rhythm now.
Not running for Jesus—looking to Jesus.
Breath in... breath out...
Not running to earn approval—running because we’ve already received it.
Breath in... breath out...
Not running from emptiness toward fullness, but from fullness into a world desperate for hope.
Breath in... breath out...
In the gospel, as Ortlund reminds us, "…we are not given a thing; we are given a person. The grace of God comes to us no more and no less than Jesus Christ comes to us."2 And when we falter in this race, when sin causes us to stumble, as Ortlund says, those sins and failures "are in fact causing His grace to surge forward all the more."3 The One who saved us completely continues to intercede for us completely.
One-two, one-two.
I walk forward now from a place of already-enough.
Breath in... breath out...
Each step a gift rather than a means to an end.
How long it took to understand that truth.
How many somedays sacrificed on the altar of not-yet-enough.
The enough you’ve been desperately seeking in someday is already yours now in Christ.
This is how we break the cycle—by living from God's promises for God's purposes, rather than for our elusive earthly somedays.
This is the rhythm of grace—and it changes everything.
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Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 79.
Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 69.
Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 68.