Champions don't embrace temporary feelings of inadequacy.
So, here I am. Watching that blinking curser flicker like the strength in my bones. Without having written hardly a personal note in ages in any public fashion, I'm at a loss for what to express and how. Truly I want to share what inspires or blesses me and causes a paradigm shift in my mind and heart, but today I am heavy with the burden of sharing my story. Saying that even sounds funny to me because I am so young and so much of my story is far ahead of me, Lord willing.
It was a Wednesday evening that I remember feeling that feeling of inadequacy. That dreadful knowledge of insufficient strength and ability to communicate. I was seven years old and training for Olympic level gymnastics when the gym rules changed. Knowing full well that my shoulders could not lift my scrawny and long spread body weight two times over every few hours during training, I chose to quit.
Quitting is an absolute recipe for waves of regret and guilt for any serious athlete, but carrying the burden of my eighty something rather pounds seemed light as feathers compared to the swiftly advancing disorder creeping in through my bones. Once an athlete, always an athlete, and high pain tolerance is my middle name. There was, however, a swelling need to articulate the truth: an abnormal pain exists that must be dealt with.
Fast forward to being sick with the flu for months at a time, obscure and easy to obtain injuries lingering for months in the double digits, and staying silent was no longer an option. This year has been so foundational in so many ways, and one of those ways is that I've actually told people when I can't do something. Want to go for a walk? You know, I would love to, but I can't stand right now. Facing and telling my story over and over again has been the truth that has been setting me free. Not complaining, not shaming, but just simply explaining and seeking solutions.
If you don't get into solution mode, your problems will overtake your life.
How amazing and terrifying and wonderful it is to deliberately seek ways of healing myself through managing my thoughts, relationships, diet and activities. I will never be grateful enough. Amidst this blessing, I can now say with full assurance that I know what it is to be able to walk, run, bike, and own the world of all things athletic one day and be face down in the dirt begging for the strength to make it through the day the next. I know what it is to allow others' agenda and expectations to dictate what I do that day and consequently my inability to function the next day. I know what it is to look entirely put together and feel systematically disassembled. I know what it is to live with chronic fatigue, an auto immune disorder, to be physically out of commission for more than six months at a time. To only move my limbs by lifting them with other limbs. I know what it is to rarely ever tell anyone any of these things and then stumble foolishly over words when they ask basic questions.
I know what it is to be able to breathe better by hyperventilating while keeping the spine as still as possible for days at a time. To wonder if your friends know anywhere near the weight of their words when their grandparents, parents and peers all echo, "you're way to young to have that kind of pain. I don't believe you." To have an invisible illness and yet have far more compassion on those who have visible ones than you have even with yourself. I know what it is to feel fine one moment and the next wonder if someone just stabbed you and if they didn't where is the nearest seat hidden in the corner shadows of the room. I know what it is to listen patiently while your friend tells you they couldn't workout yesterday because they have a hangnail when you only wish you could dance or walk or squat or stand for more than two minutes again.
To celebrate being able to bend over and pick something up without collapsing. To do your very best job of not notifying your face only to have a sweet and discerning soul summon your facial waterworks to overflowing with three words, "is everything okay?" I know what it is to pray that God would just take you now or let you chop off your legs at the hip and carry them around with you if he won't give you new ones.
Why do I write to tell you all of this? Because there is power in story.
There is power in our ability and need to relate in weak points and in strong points. Do I believe that God is ever faithful? Without a doubt in my mind. You see, I believe him word for word when he says that he will make all things new. He is making me new and he is making you new. In ways far more intimate and subtle than anyone could ever know because no one ever has to know or even understand. How could they?
He is the only one who can untie all of the knots without breaking a single string.
He is a God of nuance and of stark contrast, a God of justice, truth, healing, faith, and the most satisfying overwhelming love that this world could ever know.
He wants you to know that he loves you. He wants me to know that he loves me. I choose to believe that this is why he lets me experience the pain I experience, because it tunes my ear and beckons me to lean in to his chest and hear his heartbeat for me, for all of his children and all of his creation. That while we were broken, dirty, dark and lonely, he came into this harsh and cold world by way of the dark, lonely and finite flesh of a woman. To be born of the fleeting, carry the image and very nature and power of the infinite, to marry the severed binds between heaven and earth and forgive the sins of the world. Jesus died so we could all be healed.
Every time I experience pain to any degree, his Spirit hovers over my soul and washes me with the timeless truth that he loves me to heaven and hell and back.
This is why I share, because no pain, no gain.
