This past weekend I heard a marvelous- and hard- teaching at Vineyard Community Church Richmond on suffering. My pastor (P)Joe has been doing a series called “Olympic Life” and it’s about finding strength, power, and perseverance in Romans 8. It’s been a fantastic series and has really encouraged me to live a little louder, a little stronger, and a little bolder. This Sunday he spoke on the suffering and agony we go through before we get the brass ring. He opened with this statement:
We often see the winners on the podium. What we don’t see
is the suffering, the agony, of those who didn’t end up there.
He said, “We don’t often think of or understand the suffering that comes with a hupernikao life (Greek; meaning “more than conqueror”). It is entirely impossible to live a more-than-conquerors life without it happening.
PJoe went on to give illustrations from previous Olympics where athletes had experienced terrible accidents, had broken or torn different parts of their bodies, and yet still went on to compete. They knew that to push through the pain meant something. I was personally reminded of Kerri Strug, every little girl’s hero in the mid-90′s. In the 1996 Olympics, competing for gold, she sprained her ankle and badly damaged a tendon on her first of two vaults. When told that her team needed her to do the last vault, she sucked it up and went full-out despite the pain she was in, landing her dismount perfectly, and finally hopping onto her uninjured foot. I remember watching (from our tiny television set) her coach carrying her from the mat, and then later onto the podium for the gold medal. She knew what it meant to push through. She knew what was needed to get to that next level, and she decided it was worth the momentary agony to get there.
I was also powerfully reminded of my own days competing for Team USA- not in the Olympics, but in the WKA World Championships. PJoe had started to talk about what it meant to train like an Olympian, to agree to live with pain every day, to live with exhaustion every day, to intentionally put yourself in positions where you could get injured. He discussed what it was like to consciously sign up for the inevitability that you will get hurt, that you’ll go to a doctor or surgeon, get cut up and sewn back together, push through therapy, and then get back on your feet as soon as possible, because what you were working toward was worth so much more than this moment that hurts like nothing before. He talked about even when we go to the gym- the act of lifting weights literally tears our muscles, and when they grow back, they’re a little stronger than before. That‘s why Olympians keep going out over and over, even if/when/after they are injured: because through pain and suffering come growth, strength and healing.
I found myself nearly in tears as I reminisced on my time training in martial arts. I competed for a place on the National Team on the morning of my Junior Prom. I competed later that year- the beginning of my senior year of high school- in my first World Championships. I came home with jet lag, about a hundred bruises, and four bronze medals. I competed in two more Worlds- one in Switzerland and the other in Canada, and brought home three more bronze medals, two silvers… and my GOLD. I won the Gold Medal in 2004, 9 years after beginning my training with Lantrip’s East West Karate. The amount of muscle and bone bruises, pulled and torn muscles, hip joint displacement and pain, ripped toe nails, sprained everything, bleeding feet, bloody noses, deep blisters that I walked through to get to that place are innumerable.
I can remember training with a school just outside of Washington DC for a month one summer before the Worlds, and thinking to myself I don’t remember the last time I woke up without pain. But the thing is I never second-guessed my being there. I never considered what life would be like if I didn’t train the way I did, or the amount I did. Every single second I spent working in or out of a studio was completely worth it. It was nothing for me to sign up for that kind of pain because I knew what the prize was, and my eyes were locked on it.
Is that what my life with Jesus looks like? Do I have my eyes locked so singularly on the prize of being with Him that the pain or agony or suffering I feel in this moment does not for a second make me second-guess my devotion to Him? Or do I get sidetracked or even sidelined with how it feels when I hurt a little. Was my devotion to some tiny piece of metal more deeply rooted than my devotion to the Son of God?
I, like PJoe, am not trying to downplay the real suffering that goes on in life. Relationships are broken, parents or children are lost, jobs are ripped away, health is stolen… These are examples of the real agony that we go through in this life. And it’s okay to feel hurt, brokenness, and anguish. I feel those things, too. But my hope is that these things we go through are fleeting moments that only serve to grow and strengthen me. If, through Paul’s writing, God does indeed say “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” then I am all in. Through trial and turmoil, through storm and famine, I will- I must– keep my eyes on the ultimate prize, and lean into the inexhaustible power of Christ. The bruises, the sweat, the blood that it takes is- and I apologize for the cliche way this may come out- is worth it.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth
comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Romans 8:18
here i am competing in italy for my first worlds; look at all the paparazzi!
this was my final national championship before i retired. i earned a “10” and won my final national title
world champion
Worth it.
