Sometimes it seems like living with my teammates is like a marriage.
I know, I know.
Sounds strange and even kind of weird.
But hear me out.
After going through rounds of team building activities with different people at training camp last October, the coaches decided to put us 7 (now 6) strangers together.
We were pumped when we found out we were together!
And we thought we were one shhhhnazzy team……..
We were also in what many former racers call the “honey moon stage.”
Everything was just fine and dandy from training camp all the way up to launch in January, and perhaps even for the first few weeks on the race.
Like marriage, though, we discovered little things about one another after living together 24/7.
Strange habits.
Odd quirks.
And even brief glimpses into each others life that we had no clue about.
But also like marriage, we’ve had our not so wonderful moments.
There have been times when we haven’t loved each other very well.
We’ve said hurtful things.
We’ve made assumptions and hasty judgments.
We’ve made passive aggressive comments through sarcasm.
We’ve brushed aside conflict for fear of losing what sense of harmony and togetherness we felt, even if that meant being inauthentic with one another.
And like a marriage, I’m learning more and more that I have to pray for love and grace towards my teammates. Because, frankly, there are times when I don’t want to love them.
There are times when I’m tempted to question the point of even trying to go deeper with them when it’s obvious we all sometimes just click better with other people on the squad.
Why not just work on those relationships?
Because unlike a marriage, we did not choose each other.
Yet, the Lord keeps reminding me that He chose US to be together….and I have to honor that decision.
No matter how frustrated I sometimes get.
So when I’m having a stubborn pity party, I have to pray this prayer:
Lord, when I want to feel loved by my teammates, help me to first give it.
Lord, when I want encouragement and life speaking words from my teammates, help me to first speak those things to them.
Lord, when I want others to be honest with me, help me to first be honest with them.
Lord, when I want to be included, help me to first include others.
Lord, when I want their friendship, help me to first pursue them.
And more than anything, Lord, remind me to do these things not with the hope or expectation of them being reciprocated. Remind me that I do these things simply because I love You…and simply because I love them, too.
Sometimes this is a daily struggle where I feel like I haven’t succeeded at all.
Other days, not so much.
Since I first started to ponder this whole idea of my team being like a marriage, I’ve always been reminded of something C.S. Lewis said about love and marriage in one of my favorite books – Mere Christianity:
“Love in this second sense — love as distinct from ‘being in love’ — is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”
Granted Lewis was talking about marriage between a man and woman, I have no doubt in my mind that this principle can and should be applied to other relationships in life. Like a marriage, I cannot divorce my teammates when I want to be done or be on a different team. It is in these moments when I have to turn to God and ask for the same love, grace, and patience that He bestows to me and extend it towards them, whether I feel like it or not. And the Lord knows, I’m sure they have to say that same prayer towards me, too!
So for all you married folk reading this blog, I realize there is so much to marriage I don’t know about and won’t know about until I am married. Until then, I’m going to continue to pray for the love and grace that will enable me to keep the unspoken promise I made to my teammates when I first started this journey with them.
