It was Monday morning, o’dark-thirty to be exact, and I was in the pool – along with 20 other wingnuts who couldn’t think of anything better to do at 5:15am than fling themselves into 75-degree water and swim 4,000 yards (that’s over 150 laps but who’s counting?...) :).
This is the winter off-season for triathletes, and the better part of wisdom (along with last season’s performance) tells me I have improvements to make in all three disciplines of swimming, biking, and running. Of the three, swimming is the most complex and requires the most tenacity and patience – something that doesn’t come easily to most of us ordinary mortals.
I have an excellent triathlon coach, Jennifer Harrison (www.jenharrison.com), who is a rock star triathlete, and who has also gently SHOVED me :) into a Masters swim class. The name Masters is a bit misleading. The moment an individual is over the age of 19, they are considered a Masters swimmer. Though some Masters groups have competitive swim teams, there is no requirement to compete and there are swimmers at every ability – both novice and elite -- who are in the Masters category.
My swim coach is Hap Gentry, who is also excellent. He is very interactive with swimmers who want to improve their stroke and he doesn’t hesitate to offer constructive and immediate feedback to those who desire it.
There is a lot I can do to better my swim technique; at present there are no less than 10 things on my list I need to improve. Monday morning I was in the pool working on two of these items and I was getting frustrated by the minute. I’m in the hunt to lower my swim times and for the present it seems as though I’ve plateaued. Hap walked to end of the lane and met me at the wall. His style is very demonstrative, meaning that in addition to words he physically shows the correct technique to employ, sometimes actually lying on the deck to help the swimmer visualize a streamlined position in the water.
Today it was about closing the gap between my shoulder and head to minimize drag in the water. The goal is to move through the water as efficiently as possible, not to muscle your way to the other side. This is especially important for endurance athletes who swim 1-2 miles and then have another 50-100 miles of biking and running ahead of them in a race – you want to exit the water with plenty of energy left in the tank.
Hap showed me the correct technique this morning, but he also showed me what I actually looked like. And seeing what I was doing wrong was a tough realization that what was in my mind’s eye and what was actually going on were wildly disparate. It was also a bit painful, and several “reasons” (really excuses) for incorrect technique immediately sprung to my lips. Then Hap encouraged me to swim to the other end, while he walked along the deck and watched my attempts at correction.
Seeing (and owning) what I was doing wrong was enough to reckon with, but being under scrutiny was even more difficult, and it occurred to me this is a trait shared by all of mankind. Consider the number one fear for most human beings -- aside from the loss of a spouse or child, the biggest dread people have is public speaking. And why? It’s not so bad to be on a stage at a podium, looking at 100 people in the audience; but to have 100 or potentially 1000 pairs of eyes all looking at us causes numerous and pronounced physiological reactions: trembling, severe perspiration, shaky voice, even temporary loss of memory.
French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre once spoke of the discomfort of being “beneath the gaze.” The idea was that we as human beings, with all our flaws and deep secrets, are deeply uncomfortable being looked at by God, other people, even ourselves. Be honest – when was the last time you could hold someone’s gaze for more than 5 seconds? We all have secrets that if found out by someone else would make us want to run or die. And in those occasions that the “real us” becomes exposed, what is our first reaction – do we fight, do we run, or do we live our lives honestly beneath the gaze of God, others, and ourselves?
Being a professing Christian, I have learned firsthand the difference between the human fight or flight impulse and the incredibly liberating feeling of being completely exposed before a perfect and holy God – and being loved and forgiven anyway. If God has seen all my flaws (even the painful ones I’m hard pressed to admit), and has forgiven me through the death of his Son Jesus, it turns my view of the world upside down – full honesty is now a real possibility. Criticism from others can now be seen as a favor instead of a threat. I can now say Thank You to my critics because my standing before God has been declared as “not guilty” when Jesus took my place by dying on the cross.
It is natural for us to think of ourselves as “pretty ok” when we compare us to other human beings; we can always find someone who is “worse” than we are. But compared to the standard of a holy and perfect God, even the most moral and righteous human being is far from being worthy to come to the Creator on his own merits. God doesn’t just have a perfect standard – He is the perfect standard and breaking even just one law is the same as breaking all of it. If you think that’s harsh, imagine just one drop of H5N1, more commonly known as the bird flu virus, in a gallon of water; it renders the entire amount undrinkable! It’s the same with God’s law – God does not, cannot, grade on a curve. To illustrate with one more example, what would we think of a human judge that “judged on a curve”? Guilt or innocence is an absolute; there is nothing relative about it.
The death of Jesus Christ changed the entire landscape for us flawed human beings. He lived a perfect sinless life and died a criminal’s death an innocent man. The point is he died the death we deserve – we all deserve justice, which is fair treatment for transgressing God, but because of Jesus’ death we instead receive unmerited favor or grace. Believing this in your heart is what makes one a true Christian.
Monday morning in the pool, the excuses for my lack of proficiency in stroke technique never left my lips, and I was reminded that even the most expert scrutiny by a terrific coach is a “favor” to help me become a better swimmer....and to extend that same grace to others who come into my path as God has extended His mercy to an exposed and terribly flawed human being who hardly deserved it.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
What Exactly is Christian Character...???
Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, owns the following quote, but it is so rich and right on point that it is worth repeating here.
"Not only is inner Christian character not the same thing as talents and gifts, it is also NOT the same thing as moral behavior. We must not confuse these things, or think that because I'm leading an exemplary moral life that I am growing in Christian character...Nietzche (rightly) was fond of noticing how much moral behavior was really just a power play, something done so we can feel morally superior...We will never become loving ONLY by trying hard...we'll only become loving through meeting and encountering. Becoming a person of love is not a mechanical process. Something profound must happen to us. We must MEET Love...the gospel humbles me out of my pride, showing me that I am a sinner. But it also VALUES ME out of my fear, showing me what Jesus was willing to do for me....there is no other way to truly change one's character than through the grace of the gospel. No one can change simply through willpower. You will always be controlled by your heart's supreme affection and love -- by your heart's ultimate source of love and meaning. The only way to change a proud and fearful heart is by the grace of God in Christ."
Where does your heart's supreme affection and love rest? Is it on money? Success? Image? Security? Family? YOU?
"Not only is inner Christian character not the same thing as talents and gifts, it is also NOT the same thing as moral behavior. We must not confuse these things, or think that because I'm leading an exemplary moral life that I am growing in Christian character...Nietzche (rightly) was fond of noticing how much moral behavior was really just a power play, something done so we can feel morally superior...We will never become loving ONLY by trying hard...we'll only become loving through meeting and encountering. Becoming a person of love is not a mechanical process. Something profound must happen to us. We must MEET Love...the gospel humbles me out of my pride, showing me that I am a sinner. But it also VALUES ME out of my fear, showing me what Jesus was willing to do for me....there is no other way to truly change one's character than through the grace of the gospel. No one can change simply through willpower. You will always be controlled by your heart's supreme affection and love -- by your heart's ultimate source of love and meaning. The only way to change a proud and fearful heart is by the grace of God in Christ."
Where does your heart's supreme affection and love rest? Is it on money? Success? Image? Security? Family? YOU?
Thursday, November 15, 2007
A Long Line of Iron (Part 2)
My grandparents bought their first house in St. Louis a few years after they emigrated from Hungary following the Communist Revolution in 1956. I was born in 1964, in New Jersey, where my parents had moved shortly after arriving in the United States. My father wanted to be near New York City, where the opportunities didn’t get any better or more plentiful. My mother had a hard time cutting the apron strings, but there was more to it than that. They divorced when I was 2, and my mother and I moved back to St. Louis to live with my grandparents. Through a sad turn of events, I would not see my dad again until just a few weeks before my mother’s suicide in July 1980. I was 15 years old and an only child. Though some by my own hand, the years ahead would bring more sorrow and adversity than I had yet known in my thus-far short life.
My father wanted to re-insert himself into my life, and I would have none of it. Things were not easy, and I clung to the familiar – my home, school, friends, activities. Thankfully he did not force me to move to New Jersey to live with him.
I continued to live with my grandmother where the generational and cultural gap between us rivaled the Grand Canyon. Every day was fraught with arguments that often dissolved into outright screaming matches. She was the picture of “tough love” – rarely did words of encouragement flow from her lips but she was generous with putdowns that were meant to shake some sense into me. It wasn’t until much later that I would realize what she herself had been through growing up, and what a terrible weight it must’ve been for her -- at 70 years of age -- to raise an angry, strong-willed, rebellious teenager – alone -- in a country where she didn’t speak the language, didn’t have much money, and had just suffered the loss of her only child. We were both devastated by my mother’s death but we carried on nonetheless, despite our differences.
It made me crazy that she would make a statement that could be incredibly wrong and she would absolutely insist what she said was right. Once we went shopping for a new car for her and apparently she had browsed the lot a few days earlier. The car she had looked at was within her budget but the one she insisted she had looked at was not the same model – and clearly not within her budget. We argued about it (while the salesman was completely entertained by two women catfighting in Hungarian), and neither of us budged, both of us sure about being right. We went home with nothing accomplished -- me seething with accumulated anger, and her muttering something about how disrespectful children can be.
We had a washing machine but no dryer. She would gather up my laundry despite me insisting I could do it myself. She would soak my socks in near-undiluted bleach (after all they were white and MORE is better!), then throw them into the wash. We had no dryer, so she would hang them up outside in the hot sun to dry. When I put on a pair that had been through this cycle my thumbs went right through the sides, they were utterly disintegrated from the bleaching and sun drying.
Nicer shirts I owned suffered a similar fate – inevitably they would end up with frayed edges or mystery spots, where most likely they had shared residence with the bleach-drenched socks. If our washer had a “Stun the Stain Out!” setting, I’m sure she was perpetually dialed into it.
My indignation-outrage-whining (in that order) was to no avail. She plowed right ahead, single-mindedly undeterred in her daily endeavors. She was over the top on EVERYTHING.
She also did things that amazed me, though at the time I thought they were plain stupid: she drove a car despite not being able to read English (though she “talked” her way out of countless traffic tickets), shopped for her own groceries (she could read numbers), cut the grass, grew beautiful flowers that were the envy of the neighborhood, cultivated a thriving vegetable garden, handmade her own phyllo dough (the paper-thin pastry used in baklava), assembled ginormous care packages for relatives still in Hungary and hauled them to the Post Office, painted our frame garage, tuckpointed the bricks on our house, and masoned the stones in our basement to minimize flooding from heavy rains – all in her 70s and on into her 80s.
At 74, she was diagnosed with rectal cancer and had the tumors removed. After radiation treatments, she was pronounced cancer-free but she would have a permanent colostomy (rerouting the lower intestine and its “output” through a surgically created hole in the lower abdomen and into an ostomy pouch) for the rest of her life. She recovered from major surgery in less than 3 weeks and within a month was oriented to her new personal care routine. Anyone else would’ve taken twice as long, or longer, to recover and get on their feet again.
She was the unstoppable freight train that had long ago left the station – God was the only Conductor who could put the brakes on now.
It seemed only fitting that she gave me away at my wedding in 1993. I realized that somewhere along the line the tables had turned and I was now her caregiver, where earlier in my life she had been mine. I wondered if she ever regretted taking me in; at times I’m sure we mutually wished Very Bad Things on each other, but to this day I am still realizing how much of my strength has come from her countless examples of undaunted perseverance.
When she passed away in 2001, she was only 7 days shy of her 90th birthday. In a span of 18 months, she had deteriorated significantly both in her physical and mental faculties, losing over half her body weight as well as her speech. After nearly 40 years of having an ever-present column of iron in my life, I had “assumed” she would live forever. In fact the inside family joke was that she would outlive me. Watching her decline was exceedingly painful, both from a compassion standpoint as well as being forced to face my own mortality.
I had visited her one last time in the nursing facility. She was in hospice and not expected to live much longer. I left her sleeping, knowing full well it would likely be the last time we would see each other on this side of eternity. I remember standing at the nurses’ station weeping. An older nurse put her arm around me and said “The Lord allowed her to raise you and take care of you, and now He wants her back.” It was a dreadfully pointed and painfully accurate thing to say. God is sovereign. He rules His own creation and is the embodiment of truth. In the same way gravity is true whether we like it or not, God’s authority over His creatures is true no matter how we feel about it; it’s not an option and we must all sooner or later concede this important reality. It’s no accident the word “authority” has the word author as its root.
It was a year before I visited her grave. As far back as I could remember I had seen her signature on countless papers and documents; later as her Power of Attorney, I myself had signed her name numerous times. Standing at her gravesite, I saw her name one more time -- in the very last place I expected to see it – etched permanently into a marker of her very full life but also an indicator of her very real mortality. The realization of the latter, that our bodies as we know them today will come to an end, and that our lives are but a dot on the line of eternity, poured over me in torrents of emotion; the last time I wept this uncontrollably was upon learning of my mother’s death over 20 years earlier.
Though I have no desire to repeat the trials of my earlier years, I will never regret who I’ve become as a result of my grandmother’s influence. She taught me to never say quit, to follow through on whatever I put my mind to, and to never blame someone else for my problems. She was truly a column of iron.
Phil 3:13-14 “…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.”
My father wanted to re-insert himself into my life, and I would have none of it. Things were not easy, and I clung to the familiar – my home, school, friends, activities. Thankfully he did not force me to move to New Jersey to live with him.
I continued to live with my grandmother where the generational and cultural gap between us rivaled the Grand Canyon. Every day was fraught with arguments that often dissolved into outright screaming matches. She was the picture of “tough love” – rarely did words of encouragement flow from her lips but she was generous with putdowns that were meant to shake some sense into me. It wasn’t until much later that I would realize what she herself had been through growing up, and what a terrible weight it must’ve been for her -- at 70 years of age -- to raise an angry, strong-willed, rebellious teenager – alone -- in a country where she didn’t speak the language, didn’t have much money, and had just suffered the loss of her only child. We were both devastated by my mother’s death but we carried on nonetheless, despite our differences.
It made me crazy that she would make a statement that could be incredibly wrong and she would absolutely insist what she said was right. Once we went shopping for a new car for her and apparently she had browsed the lot a few days earlier. The car she had looked at was within her budget but the one she insisted she had looked at was not the same model – and clearly not within her budget. We argued about it (while the salesman was completely entertained by two women catfighting in Hungarian), and neither of us budged, both of us sure about being right. We went home with nothing accomplished -- me seething with accumulated anger, and her muttering something about how disrespectful children can be.
We had a washing machine but no dryer. She would gather up my laundry despite me insisting I could do it myself. She would soak my socks in near-undiluted bleach (after all they were white and MORE is better!), then throw them into the wash. We had no dryer, so she would hang them up outside in the hot sun to dry. When I put on a pair that had been through this cycle my thumbs went right through the sides, they were utterly disintegrated from the bleaching and sun drying.
Nicer shirts I owned suffered a similar fate – inevitably they would end up with frayed edges or mystery spots, where most likely they had shared residence with the bleach-drenched socks. If our washer had a “Stun the Stain Out!” setting, I’m sure she was perpetually dialed into it.
My indignation-outrage-whining (in that order) was to no avail. She plowed right ahead, single-mindedly undeterred in her daily endeavors. She was over the top on EVERYTHING.
She also did things that amazed me, though at the time I thought they were plain stupid: she drove a car despite not being able to read English (though she “talked” her way out of countless traffic tickets), shopped for her own groceries (she could read numbers), cut the grass, grew beautiful flowers that were the envy of the neighborhood, cultivated a thriving vegetable garden, handmade her own phyllo dough (the paper-thin pastry used in baklava), assembled ginormous care packages for relatives still in Hungary and hauled them to the Post Office, painted our frame garage, tuckpointed the bricks on our house, and masoned the stones in our basement to minimize flooding from heavy rains – all in her 70s and on into her 80s.
At 74, she was diagnosed with rectal cancer and had the tumors removed. After radiation treatments, she was pronounced cancer-free but she would have a permanent colostomy (rerouting the lower intestine and its “output” through a surgically created hole in the lower abdomen and into an ostomy pouch) for the rest of her life. She recovered from major surgery in less than 3 weeks and within a month was oriented to her new personal care routine. Anyone else would’ve taken twice as long, or longer, to recover and get on their feet again.
She was the unstoppable freight train that had long ago left the station – God was the only Conductor who could put the brakes on now.
It seemed only fitting that she gave me away at my wedding in 1993. I realized that somewhere along the line the tables had turned and I was now her caregiver, where earlier in my life she had been mine. I wondered if she ever regretted taking me in; at times I’m sure we mutually wished Very Bad Things on each other, but to this day I am still realizing how much of my strength has come from her countless examples of undaunted perseverance.
When she passed away in 2001, she was only 7 days shy of her 90th birthday. In a span of 18 months, she had deteriorated significantly both in her physical and mental faculties, losing over half her body weight as well as her speech. After nearly 40 years of having an ever-present column of iron in my life, I had “assumed” she would live forever. In fact the inside family joke was that she would outlive me. Watching her decline was exceedingly painful, both from a compassion standpoint as well as being forced to face my own mortality.
I had visited her one last time in the nursing facility. She was in hospice and not expected to live much longer. I left her sleeping, knowing full well it would likely be the last time we would see each other on this side of eternity. I remember standing at the nurses’ station weeping. An older nurse put her arm around me and said “The Lord allowed her to raise you and take care of you, and now He wants her back.” It was a dreadfully pointed and painfully accurate thing to say. God is sovereign. He rules His own creation and is the embodiment of truth. In the same way gravity is true whether we like it or not, God’s authority over His creatures is true no matter how we feel about it; it’s not an option and we must all sooner or later concede this important reality. It’s no accident the word “authority” has the word author as its root.
It was a year before I visited her grave. As far back as I could remember I had seen her signature on countless papers and documents; later as her Power of Attorney, I myself had signed her name numerous times. Standing at her gravesite, I saw her name one more time -- in the very last place I expected to see it – etched permanently into a marker of her very full life but also an indicator of her very real mortality. The realization of the latter, that our bodies as we know them today will come to an end, and that our lives are but a dot on the line of eternity, poured over me in torrents of emotion; the last time I wept this uncontrollably was upon learning of my mother’s death over 20 years earlier.
Though I have no desire to repeat the trials of my earlier years, I will never regret who I’ve become as a result of my grandmother’s influence. She taught me to never say quit, to follow through on whatever I put my mind to, and to never blame someone else for my problems. She was truly a column of iron.
Phil 3:13-14 “…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.”
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
A Long Line of Iron
Training for and finishing an Ironman triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile marathon) brings with it endless opportunities for personal reflection.
This post is the product of one of those opportunities.
Now 7 weeks after the race, the effect of having finished one of the most grueling multisport distances still hasn’t sunk in. I got a tattoo (read our earlier post for a funny account – all at my expense of course :)) just to remind myself continuously that I actually “did it.” As a celebration, we even took a 2-week cruise to Alaska less than a week after the race and that was spectacular – it was our 4th visit to the Eskimo state and the largely untouched landscape continues to astonish us. Majestic mountains rise up from fjords that are hundreds of feet deep and easily provide passage for some of the world’s largest cruise ships, such as the one we were on in early October. Some of the passages are so narrow, it seemed we could reach out and touch the mountainside on either side of the ship.
During our trip, I took a lot of walks and spent a lot of time on our cabin balcony. Reflecting back on the race and the 9 months of physical and mental preparation required, it occurred to me that I’m not the first “Ironwoman” in my family. I may be the first generation born here in the United States, and I may be the first to finish college, but I come from a very long line of “iron” where endurance and perseverance were the norm for everyday living.
My mother and father, in addition to my mother’s parents and extended family, were immigrants from Hungary, in fact, refugees from the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Since World War II, Hungary had been under Communist control, with Soviet troops stationed all over the country. Student protests on October 22, 1956 led to larger demonstrations, and finally to outright revolt as the Hungarians disabled the Communist government and ousted the Soviet military on October 23rd.
For 10 days Hungary knew the kind of peace and democracy that has been ours in the United States for over 200 years.
Then on November 4, 1956, the troops returned, this time with tanks; thousands died or were imprisoned as the Soviets crushed the uprising. My family fled across the border to Austria and waited several months in a refugee camp to be allowed to immigrate to the United States.
Once here, life was no cakewalk. There were no handouts, but there were wage earning jobs to be had. 6 family members crowded into a small flat in the South Side of St. Louis – it was all they could afford. When the workday was done, there were night classes to learn English. My grandmother’s own education was poor (she didn’t learn to read and write until she was 17), so she was unable to keep up with the instructor and eventually dropped out. She continued to work as a seamstress and earned just enough to put food on the table and set a tiny bit aside for savings. It was a contribution they all made to make ends meet.
By today’s standards, it is amazing they endured as they did. We microwave our meals and expect everything else to work the same way – earning money, acquiring possessions, even health and fitness. I’m a triathlete who devotes her winter off-season training to bettering her swim stroke mechanics. Swimming is only 20% conditioning and 80% technique – improvement requires getting reacquainted with the lost arts of perseverance, consistency, and patience. A good friend and colleague of mine, also a triathlete, once said “Patience my A--; I want it now!” when encouraged to be patient in improving his swim times. My swim coach concurs, saying that in the class she teaches, very few people are interested in improving through patience and perseverance. We all want it NOW.
It appears we have moved from being masters in the art of delayed gratification to a society that idolizes “instant GETification.” Where has the “iron” gone? What dignity or lesson is there in having everything come easy or right away? We live in a fallen world – 5 minutes of watching CNN is enough to convince anyone of the depths to which human depravity can extend. Adversity and trials come to everyone, no matter how much we try to avoid them or control our circumstances. And when they come and we’ve had everything easy, living on the peaks of life as it were, how well are we prepared to handle the valleys? Do we blame others for our problems or do we dig in and realize that for valleys to exist there must be peaks at either end? Do we understand that in EVERY adversity there is a seed of EQUAL or GREATER benefit?
A seed, yes…not a ready-made, greenhouse-grown blooming flower. Seeds take time to mature, but within them rest not just one flower, but rolling meadows and mountain upon mountain of astonishing beauty – all on the other side of the valleys of adversity -- but just as easily missed if we roll over and wet ourselves in despair and self pity.
Take a look at your calendar and your checkbook. Where are you spending your two most valuable commodities – your time and your money? Are you avoiding trials at all costs? Or are you taking stock of where you are now and understanding that every trial you experience will ultimately prepare you for a magnificent and resilient future, able to withstand the fiercest storm and still remain standing.
Perseverance is born in the pit -- not on the podium -- of life.
This post is the product of one of those opportunities.
Now 7 weeks after the race, the effect of having finished one of the most grueling multisport distances still hasn’t sunk in. I got a tattoo (read our earlier post for a funny account – all at my expense of course :)) just to remind myself continuously that I actually “did it.” As a celebration, we even took a 2-week cruise to Alaska less than a week after the race and that was spectacular – it was our 4th visit to the Eskimo state and the largely untouched landscape continues to astonish us. Majestic mountains rise up from fjords that are hundreds of feet deep and easily provide passage for some of the world’s largest cruise ships, such as the one we were on in early October. Some of the passages are so narrow, it seemed we could reach out and touch the mountainside on either side of the ship.
During our trip, I took a lot of walks and spent a lot of time on our cabin balcony. Reflecting back on the race and the 9 months of physical and mental preparation required, it occurred to me that I’m not the first “Ironwoman” in my family. I may be the first generation born here in the United States, and I may be the first to finish college, but I come from a very long line of “iron” where endurance and perseverance were the norm for everyday living.
My mother and father, in addition to my mother’s parents and extended family, were immigrants from Hungary, in fact, refugees from the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Since World War II, Hungary had been under Communist control, with Soviet troops stationed all over the country. Student protests on October 22, 1956 led to larger demonstrations, and finally to outright revolt as the Hungarians disabled the Communist government and ousted the Soviet military on October 23rd.
For 10 days Hungary knew the kind of peace and democracy that has been ours in the United States for over 200 years.
Then on November 4, 1956, the troops returned, this time with tanks; thousands died or were imprisoned as the Soviets crushed the uprising. My family fled across the border to Austria and waited several months in a refugee camp to be allowed to immigrate to the United States.
Once here, life was no cakewalk. There were no handouts, but there were wage earning jobs to be had. 6 family members crowded into a small flat in the South Side of St. Louis – it was all they could afford. When the workday was done, there were night classes to learn English. My grandmother’s own education was poor (she didn’t learn to read and write until she was 17), so she was unable to keep up with the instructor and eventually dropped out. She continued to work as a seamstress and earned just enough to put food on the table and set a tiny bit aside for savings. It was a contribution they all made to make ends meet.
By today’s standards, it is amazing they endured as they did. We microwave our meals and expect everything else to work the same way – earning money, acquiring possessions, even health and fitness. I’m a triathlete who devotes her winter off-season training to bettering her swim stroke mechanics. Swimming is only 20% conditioning and 80% technique – improvement requires getting reacquainted with the lost arts of perseverance, consistency, and patience. A good friend and colleague of mine, also a triathlete, once said “Patience my A--; I want it now!” when encouraged to be patient in improving his swim times. My swim coach concurs, saying that in the class she teaches, very few people are interested in improving through patience and perseverance. We all want it NOW.
It appears we have moved from being masters in the art of delayed gratification to a society that idolizes “instant GETification.” Where has the “iron” gone? What dignity or lesson is there in having everything come easy or right away? We live in a fallen world – 5 minutes of watching CNN is enough to convince anyone of the depths to which human depravity can extend. Adversity and trials come to everyone, no matter how much we try to avoid them or control our circumstances. And when they come and we’ve had everything easy, living on the peaks of life as it were, how well are we prepared to handle the valleys? Do we blame others for our problems or do we dig in and realize that for valleys to exist there must be peaks at either end? Do we understand that in EVERY adversity there is a seed of EQUAL or GREATER benefit?
A seed, yes…not a ready-made, greenhouse-grown blooming flower. Seeds take time to mature, but within them rest not just one flower, but rolling meadows and mountain upon mountain of astonishing beauty – all on the other side of the valleys of adversity -- but just as easily missed if we roll over and wet ourselves in despair and self pity.
Take a look at your calendar and your checkbook. Where are you spending your two most valuable commodities – your time and your money? Are you avoiding trials at all costs? Or are you taking stock of where you are now and understanding that every trial you experience will ultimately prepare you for a magnificent and resilient future, able to withstand the fiercest storm and still remain standing.
Perseverance is born in the pit -- not on the podium -- of life.
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