Teammate Holli Lewis and I went for a twenty minute run this morning, something I haven’t done much of in quite a while.
Allow me to give a brief history of my athletic endeavors. While growing up I played basketball, baseball, and swam on a summer swim league. The basketball and swimming continued through high school, with the addition of one year of rugby and my first attempts at ultimate frisbee. In college I played competitive ultimate for four years pretty much year round.
I used to attend basketball camps on the weekends when I was in middle school, and the drive to those with mom or dad was usually terrible for me. I was nervous and felt it in my stomach, just because of the running. I hated the running. Suicides, sprints, laps around the gym, must I go on?
My freshman year of high school I had a brief fainting spell in a practice one night as we were doing sprints. Our team wasn’t completing them in time, and I sure wasn’t helping. One of our coaches, Coach Jackson, affectionately known as “Dr. Death,” was in attendance that night as well, adding to the pressure. It wasn’t fun. It hurt and I really disliked getting on that baseline to line up for sprints, suicides, or any combination of running activities.
In college, for ultimate, we practiced three nights a week, one of those usually involved a track workout, the others involved some sort of team run or stairs. For a long time I really, really disliked the running. I hated the track and the distance runs, and pretty much just tried to get by during those times. Do just enough to get through, and maybe hit it hard at the end or something. I can remember being totally frustrated at times during my junior year because I’d often be at the end during running, one of the last to finish. This sucked, and it hurt.
At some point my mentality changed, I don’t remember why or how really. I started pushing myself during practices, in things as simple as throwing around and defensive drills. I started pushing myself a little harder at track workouts, feeling real crappy at the end, but better. Sometimes we’d run the stairs in the lower half of the football stadium and then we’d throw the next heaviest guy on our backs and run up a few flights. You can’t really coast through it when you’re carrying someone on your back (especially if that someone weighs near 200 lbs.), you have to push it, and when the rest of your team is pumping you up and screaming at you, you want to push it. I found my attitude shift from that of “getting by,” to really trying to put all I had into it, and getting the most out of it that I could. Drills weren’t a chore anymore, but an opportunity to push myself and get better, more of a challenge really. I didn’t always look at them that way before.
I don’t want my attitude to be one of just getting by. I don’t want to just survive. I want to meet the challenge and overcome. I want to walk with God. I want to thrive.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
-Jesus, in John 10:10
“So whether you eat or dink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
1 Corinthians 11
Sometimes I think we forget why we do the things we do. Why am I talking to this homeless guy and inviting him to coffee? For the glory of God and so that Jesus can be praised. So that his life can be changed by God who saves. Why am I in the Ukraine? For the glory of God! Not for the glory of Nate or for simply surviving the last couple months of this race. This race doesn’t end in a couple months, it continues my whole life. God, let me live my whole life for you, help me to push it, help me to challenge myself and accept challenges from you, enjoying you and bringing you glory, and being one of your ambassadors on this earth.
