I’m not much of an exerciser.
I go through phases of inspiration. I used to love me some Tae-Bo back in the day. I started to train for a mini-triathlon years ago, then my training partner got pregnant and I sure as heck wasn’t going to do it by myself. (You don’t have to wonder whose idea THAT was. Hint: It wasn’t mine.)
I did P90X back when it was the thing, but it ended up being about P45X. I used to walk every morning for about 30 minutes until my daughter hit kindergarten and it actually mattered that she got to school on time. I’ve been known to let Denise Austin or Jillian Michaels yell at me from time to time via DVD.
But as I’m getting older, I realize that regular exercise is really important to my health. I realize it, but I’ve yet to really act on it. Every couple weeks I’ll go run/walk or swim or something, vowing to keep going. But life happens.
I understand if I want my life to KEEP happening, I’ve got to find a way to exercise with some regularity. I’m working on it, okay?
All that to say, when physical activity is thrust upon me, I can do it. But I’ll feel it for days.
We were out at the lake with friends one weekend. The kids were all doing various water sports and I decided to see if I could still kneeboard, even though I hadn’t done it in 20 years. Turns out I could still do it. Better than I thought, even. It was such an ego trip.
But the next two days, I could barely move. And wanna hear something weird? I actually kinda liked it. The pain, I mean.
I know, I know. It’s weird and broken and messed up. So let me tell you what I tell the pot that I’m married to when he calls the kettle black with brokenness: You have NO idea. (Hee, hee.)
Anyway, before you call the guys in the white coats, let me explain.
When my body hurts, I feel cool. Like I actually DID something, for a change. That maybe I’m a little bit stronger now. Like maybe I’m capable of more than I thought. And maybe that’s what I should be doing. You know, just SOMETHING. Anything more than nothing.
We spend a lot of our lives trying to avoid pain. And God designed it that way. You know, to keep us alive. If you touch something hot, you instinctively jerk your hand away. That’s how it works. And that’s a good thing. If we felt no pain, we wouldn’t live very long because we would have no way of knowing when we were in danger.
At the same time, I think a lot of us have made pain into this Goliath that means certain death.
We don’t get our hopes up about certain things, because if it doesn’t work out, we’ll be disappointed. We don’t tell the truth because we might offend someone and then they won’t like us anymore. We don’t love hard because if the recipient doesn’t reciprocate, we feel rejected and embarrassed.
Each of those emotions is painful. But none are reason enough to keep us from living the life we were called to live.
I want to say this with utmost tenderness and gentleness: Pain doesn’t kill you. If pain could kill you, suicide wouldn’t exist. In most cases, suicide happens as a last desperate resort to just make the pain stop. Those situations are sacred and must be handled with the highest level of compassion and love.
As someone who lives with ongoing medical depression and anxiety, I will never downplay the mental anguish of crushing emotional pain. You will never hear me judge a victim of suicide, nor their family and friends. I don’t know enough technically to add anything new to the conversation. But I know enough personally to understand that pain is real.
That said, pain itself doesn’t kill you. It can make you want to die, but it won’t do it for you. And in that strange way, pain always points back to life.
As I mentioned before, pain means you DID something. You risked something. You tried something. You worked hard. You gave it all you had. You put it all out there, regardless of outcome. You weren’t hiding in fear. You weren’t insulating in self-protection. You were living life hard, full and well. The proof is in the pain.
OR
There’s another way pain points to life. The fact that you’re feeling pain at all means you’re still alive. You’re still here. You survived something. Or maybe you’re still in the process of surviving something.
It hurts like hell and you would give anything for it to stop. But you haven’t numbed yourself with drugs, alcohol, sex or any number of other distractions the world is all too happy to offer. You’re in it, fighting through it, dealing with it, and hopefully pursuing (but not rushing) healing.
And I also know enough personally to understand that the healing of Christ is every bit as real as the pain of life.
So if I remember correctly from my exercise science class a thousand years ago, when you exercise, you actually damage the muscle just enough to create tiny tears in the tissue. That’s where pain comes from.
But God created our bodies to heal themselves (a fact that is still mind boggling to me). So as the muscles begin to put themselves back together, they come back even stronger than they were to begin with. That’s where strength comes from.
I don’t trust strength without pain. I have never looked at someone who has lived a fairly charmed life where everything has come easy and thought, “He’s one of the strongest people I know.”
No way. The strongest people I know are survivors. They have survived loss, tragedy, betrayal, disappointment upon disappointment, rejection, being misunderstood. That’s the strength that I admire. And that’s the strength that can be shared.
I was listening to a speaker tell a story one time that really resonated with me. He was walking down the sidewalk and noticed a tiny plant was growing through a small crack in the cement. It was a very young plant, really just a shoot with two light green leaves. He marveled at its tenacity and said something like this:
That plant was covered with cement a while ago, as good as dead. But as soon as the smallest ray of sunshine slipped through the smallest opening, it began to grow. And the plant didn’t grow because it was big. It didn’t grow because it was tough. It didn’t grow because it was fearless. It grew because it was ALIVE.
So I’m going to enjoy the soreness that comes from really living. And to be honest, when it passes, I’ll probably be tempted to say, “Whew. Glad that’s gone. I’m never doing THAT again. Or ANYTHING for that matter. Don’t want to hurt anymore.”
But hopefully I’ll remember that on this side of that pain, I’m stronger than I was before. Those rebuilt muscles are capable of more than they were before they got their unexpected workout. And as annoyed as they get with me for making them do stuff on occasion, they know it’s what they were made for.
Life. Movement. Forward motion. Tearing down. Rebuilding even stronger.
If you’re here and you’re in pain, congratulations. Your first victory is that you actually did something, felt something, believed something, tried something, risked something. It may hurt now, but the effort counted for eternity. God didn’t miss it. It counted. Somebody needs to read that again: IT COUNTED.
Your second victory is surviving whatever happened, being alive enough to FEEL the pain we try so hard to avoid. Don’t be afraid of it. Run to God with it, hand it over, let Him heal it and use it. It wasn’t just for you, you know. The world needs your stories.
Not your Facebook/Instagram/Twitter stories with filters, flattering angles and happy spins on everything. The stories you tell late at night when you’re face to face with a friend over a drink. The stories you tell through old tears to someone in new tears. The stories you play like an ace in a poker game just when it starts to feel like the other side is winning. The stories you live when you’re not hiding, bluffing or numbing.
The world needs you. Showing up. Fully present. Strong, sore, laughing, crying. Telling the truth about your experiences. Telling the truth about God’s love, grace, healing, the abundant life He offers.
And chasing His abundant life is the most rewarding workout there is.
