Hey brothers and sisters!
It has now been two months since I got accepted to the World Race and I think the prolonged procrastination in writing my first blog post should finally come to an end.
I feel it is necessary that my first post tell of my Father’s sovereignty. I am going to tell of how God broke my back in order to lead me to the World Race and magnify the glory of His Kingdom.
In high school, wrestling was my life. It’s what consumed my thoughts throughout the day and is what every ounce of daily motivation was directed towards. I lived each week thinking about how I would perform that weekend and how I would finish that season. I “cut weight” which meant consuming only enough food and water to live through each practice, gaining fifteen pounds after weigh-ins, then starting all over again. I was a good wrestler but my ego was larger than my talent though some would argue differently, the affirmation I received from wrestling is what my life revolved around. I “tried” to give the glory I received in wrestling to Christ but fell pitifully short in my half-hearted efforts.
The thirteen years of my wrestling career led me to my senior year at Blair High School. My eyes were set on winning the Nebraska State wrestling tournament. I had previously placed third at the State tournament my sophomore year but my junior year I did not meet the required weight during the District qualifying meet and was unable to compete at the state tournament. I then watched as a freshman competitor, who I had already beaten in a match earlier that year, won the state title. (I do not write this to degrade his ability but rather to give you a sense of my situation and emotion. He is an outstanding wrestler and completely earned his victory.) This produced an insatiable desire to achieve victory my senior year but how petty are my desires compared to the will of God.
During a football game my senior year, I suffered an injury to my lower back that caused me a tremendous amount of pain. Instead of trying to heal my back I used my tremendous amount of stubbornness to counteract this affliction. I continued to play football despite this pain that would consistently cause me to secretly writhe in agony on the sidelines. I would continually deny anything being wrong when people noticed something obviously to the contrary. I finished season even though I should not have which leads me to my senior wrestling season.
After the few weeks of rest between the football and wrestling seasons, I began the long and arduous wrestling season. I thought that I could rest my back enough during those weeks to have minimal pain during the season but I was wrong. The pain was back immediately and was there to stay. The pain would come and go throughout each day and would vary from practice to practice. Some days it was minimal, others it was unbearable.I probably used the same amount of advil and ice as the entire wrestling team combined. Each week consisted of me trying to recover from the tournament in the week prior in order to make it through the next.
Through all of this pain I refused to go to the doctor for it. I knew that it would require me to either take a break from my season or to stop all together. Since my parents wouldn’t let me do nothing about my back, they sent me to a Chiropractor who provided me with some relief but it would always be short lived because of the brutal nature of wrestling.
Going into the state tournament I only had a few close losses that I knew I could win if I wrestled my best. I easily won my first match without hurting my back but my second match did not follow in the same manner. Within fifteen seconds I was thrown to my back and for the rest of the first period fought to not get pinned. In doing so I strained and contorted my back so much that I barely finished the match, losing by only two points. After the match I was barely able walk so I laid down under the stadium until my trainer and coach found me and took me to the training room where I laid and wept for over an hour. My goal to win the state tournament was no longer possible.
It took a lot of work by my coach, my brother, and my parents to get me to realize that my season was not yet at an end. I was still able to get third place but that meant winning two more matches just to be able to place and then wrestling a semi-final and a finals match. So I went on to win the two matches to enable me to place but lost my semi-finals match by two points which meant that my last match of the season was to see if I placed either fifth or sixth. I ended up beating a wrestler that I had already beaten earlier in the year to get fifth place. My season was finally over.
After a few weeks I got into contact with Rik Dahl, the head coach for the Northwestern College wrestling team, who my brother had also wrestled for in college. My brother had told me about how great of a coach he was but I did not understand until I attended one of his practices in the middle of my senior season. I was unsure about wrestling in college but when the first thing he did in his practice was pray I had decided right then that I was going to wrestle for him. In the one practice that I had with him he fixed about three small details in my wrestling that made huge impacts on the remainder of my senior season. The only thing I had to do was get my back fixed.
I went to a spinal specialist in Omaha to get it checked out and after many x-rays and an MRI I was told that I had a Pars fracture in my third lumbar vertebrae and had arthritis above and below that same vertebrae. They told me that I should not do anything for at least three months in order for the vertebrae to heal properly. I then asked about wrestling in college and what they said to me brought me to my knees. “You can wrestle in college” he said, “or you can be able to walk when you’re fifty. It’s up to you.” After a few seconds of debating (yes I actually debated it, don’t judge me) I knew that my wrestling career had come to an abrupt end.
I called Coach Dahl a few days after that to tell him how much I wanted to wrestle for him but was not going to be able to. After I kept apologizing he assured me that God was calling me elsewhere and now as I write this he could not have been more right.
If I had gone to wrestle at Northwestern, which I still think about often, then I would have not gone to my current church, I would not have gone to South Africa with my church, and I would not have been challenged through it to go on the World Race.
My wrestling career has been a long and painful experience but I would not forfeit it in order to avoid its pain because I know the fruit that has been produced because of it. So if you are ever going through pain or suffering and question why God would allow you to go through it, just remember that God broke my back in high school in order to send me on the World Race two years later. God uses our suffering to reveal His sovereignty and to glorify His Kingdom.
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” -Romans 8:18
