My thoughts keep returning today to events from long ago, back when I was young, idealistic, and hoping for a bright future. I remember sitting in my Afrikaans class during my senior year at Kalahari High School, writing an essay about a hypothetical class reunion twenty years into the future. That date would have been 2009, which is already seventeen years in the past.

In that essay, I projected what I knew about my classmates onto their adult selves. Lennie arrived at the reunion with seven children piled into an old Volkswagen van. Walter had become a famous lawyer, and Sophie a brain surgeon. Our young teacher, Ms. de Villiers, read the story aloud. I can still hear her distinct Malmesbury “brei” – that French-like “r” sound – as she read with such relish. The class erupted in laughter at every funny reference, and I sat there feeling as though I might explode with pride and joy.

How differently our lives must have turned out. I don’t think I even wrote myself into that story because I hadn’t the slightest idea of what I wanted to be. In those days, I played five different musical instruments and performed in both a school band and a marching band. I played every sport available: squash, golf, rugby, cricket, table tennis, and, during the athletics season, a bit of running. School came easily to me, and I never had to work very hard to achieve good results.

Despite being a leader in my school and church youth group, I suffered from very low self-esteem. Perhaps it was because I was shorter than all the other boys in my class, or because I was the youngest of three sons. I remember refusing to ask anyone to our matric dance because I simply could not imagine a girl saying yes.

I was also very religious, though I regret to say I was quite legalistic. I looked down on those who cursed, smoked, or drank. To me, religion was a list of things to be done. Everything changed the day I realized that Jesus had already “done” it. He kept the requirements of God’s law of love perfectly and then paid the price for my sins. This meant I no longer had to attempt the impossible to be acceptable to God. I opened my heart and accepted this gift.

Slowly, He began shaping my life in line with His will. He is still doing that work today. No one can predict the turns a life will take, but I know He is with me, guiding me through every curve. He was the one who opened the door for me to move to India. He prepared me for this chapter of my life and continues to refine me through the challenges of living and working in a different culture. And He keeps on preparing me for my real life once this “trial run” is over.

Some days I still feel like an imposter. In those moments, I remind myself that I was bought with a price. I am a citizen of heaven—royalty, because I am a child of the King. More and more, I try to put the talents He gave me to use for His glory and the benefit of others.

I know I still have a long way to go. In my youth, I ran for the school team, focusing on the immediate results on the track. But this life with Christ is a different kind of race. It is a distance run that requires a steady pace and while we sometimes look back to see what God has accomplished we don’t dwell on it, but keep stretching, keep straining forward. I have taken the words of the apostle Paul as my own, finding in them the ultimate runner’s manual for life:

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”