Injury

The hardest injuries to overcome are repetitive stress injuries and reoccurring injuries. Repetitive stress injuries occur from doing the same activity or motion over and over and over again. Reoccurring injuries stem from previous injuries They have names like tennis elbow and stem from too much of a good thing. I remember one of my earliest repetitive stress injuries, the inside of my elbows, which was not only a difficult place to mend, but almost impossible not to flair up while wrestling. The tendons in my elbows were separating from the ligaments, (think shin splints only in your elbows). Not only was this painful, but because of my wrestling schedule, it was a constant problem, and it followed me into my first tournament.

I wanted to win so badly I didn't care what it might cost me. My first opponent I finished pretty quick and my elbows didn't bother me. My second opponent took more effort, and my elbows were starting to flair up. Going into my third and final match for a title spot, I knew my elbows were going to be a problem. We were so evenly matched that by the third round I was exhausted and my elbows were on fire, but I needed one point to win. All I had to do was stand up and escape his grasp, hard to do when flexing your arm muscles hurts. I stood up and got slammed down. I stood up and got slammed down again. My coach was yelling, "Stand up! Stand up!" it was about all I could hear. I tried to stand up; I got slammed down again. The sixth time I got slammed back down, the referee awarded me a point because the slamming had become too violent. I won my first tournament because I refused to give up, despite the pain in my elbows. If I'd had any common sense, I probably wouldn't have won, but as a young freshman, winning was all that mattered. I cried out of joy and pain.

As a senior, I learned that some injuries were more serious than others. Having lost my junior season to a shattered hand, I was determined to win back the time I had lost. Winning mattered, but survival was more important. Fast forward to the day before the regional tournament. I got slammed into the mat at just the right angle to hurt my lower back. I knew that if anyone went after that injury, it was game over. Fortunately, no one did, and I fought my way into the state tournament. But state, which happened a week later, was a different beast. My back hadn't fully recovered, and I had the same mindset walking in, winning was important, but survival was key. What good is a state title without a lower back? I won my first match, no problems; I lost my second, no problems; and then I encounter the perfect storm: the Russian bear hug. It was literally the only move in my opponents repertoire: grab, squeeze and throw. It worked because he outweighed me by at least 10 pounds of muscle. So he grabbed, squeezed, threw and I escaped, but I knew my back couldn't take much more. I didn't push my limits and walked away with a healthy back. I cried out of disappointment and frustration.

My lower back has been a reoccurring injury because of a fallen left arch, that and maybe being slammed into the ground too much :). A lot of the exercises I do are effected by my lower back, and protecting it while strengthening it has been my primary focus ever since high school. When my lower back starts hurting I have to assess what I've been doing, how I've been doing it and if I've been letting my body rest and recuperate. It still flairs up from time to time, which makes me rethink and reconsider my actions: am I doing too many exercises, am I lifting too much weight, am I exercising too long, too hard, etc. I also know that doing nothing causes more pain, than doing something; my lower back feels healthiest when I exercise regularly. I walk a fine line between growth and pain, disappointment and frustration. When I get overly zealous for too long pain is around the corner, and the best thing I can do when I'm in pain is to back off and lighten up my exercise.

I believe these same principles apply to our spiritual lives.

My spiritual life has had similar re-occurring injuries. I'm very passionate about truth, and I can't stand lying. I've know a handful of men in different cities who have said one thing and done another, particularly in the area of physical purity. Sex. And relational boundaries. One of the most damaging experiences of my life was when a man I looked up to, and was hoping to intern under, left the ministry due to an inappropriate relationship. I had fought to get in the door, to try and make something happen, as most college students do, only to discover the truth. I pursued my ministerial studies, but decided going 'home' was no longer an option (I was attending college in a distant state).

I've never questioned that decision, survival was more important than winning. Fast forward to the end of college and the end of summer, and yet again I'm trying to get in a door that just won't open. I feel like I'm not taken seriously as a candidate, and then they ask me to come in on the day my parents need my help to move (I was living in an adjacent state). What was more important? A job? The idea of pursuing a position within a religious organization? Or taking care of my parents? Survival was more important than winning.

I found myself in the Midwest. No job, little money and trying to figure out what my next move was going to be. Having no where else to turn, I prayed and I fasted. I prayed and I fasted until I headed south to Texas and landed a job at the YMCA: working a dollar above minimum wage; living with my aunt, uncle and two wonderful cousins.

I had been to their church once while in college, and had really liked it, but when I tried it being a local, something smelled wrong. It didn't fit. I didn't want to be a part of it. At all. I said some harsh things, and I commuted to help a start-up church an hour away; in the 2nd hottest summer on record, without AC. I found a small community of loving, but broken people, and it was worth the drive. Every time.

Fast forward to the end of my first summer. The smell I didn't like was coming from the lead pastor who was involved in an inappropriate relationship. He was out. I was looking for more local work, and felt convicted about separating my two communities; no one would know if I was miss-stepping on the other side of the metroplex. I wanted to bring my two communities together, but I wanted to go anywhere but my aunt and uncle's church. I had recently moved out and wasn't excited about the idea of going "where I was supposed to go". Having set my eyes on a different but local church, I tried it. It didn't smell bad, but it didn't fit either. I walked out frustrated, wondering why it didn't fit. I didn't want to become a church shopper. I wondered if there were any other churches who had a service happening within the next few minutes. The only one I could think of was my aunt and uncle's church. So I be-grudgingly gave it a second chance. And I liked it. I apologized to them for my harsh words.

It wasn't perfect. (Is there such a thing?) but it was good for the moment. I got plugged in, tried an internship, and completed a school year's worth of time. Sort of. I gave up Sunday attendance to help the YMCA open its doors to a Hindu-based philosophy group. I'm still figuring out how to accurately describe it. For six months I disconnected from the Christian sub-culture. I stopped listening to music. I stopped listening to sermons. I read my Bible every day and once a week I met with a small group of men for breakfast. The book we were reading was entitled, "Radical: taking back your faith from the American Dream" I guess it wasn't too much of a surprise that I started seeing Christianity differently than I had seen it before. I started to see the sub-culture: the things we do that are not part of the gospel, and the more I saw them the more I disliked them.

After six months of sub-title reading and loving on a different community I was tired. I liked standing out in that crowd, but I also liked standing in. It was wonderful to be invited to participate, to share home cooked Indian food, to play sand-volleyball. But I knew something was missing; I wanted to go back to church. I arranged to serve the Hindu based group bi-weekly, and went back to church. It was weird. It felt foreign. It didn't make sense. And suddenly I knew how everyone who had never been in a church felt when they walked in the doors for the first time. Like an alien. Yet, I heard the truth. The unmistakable sound of the truth, even though it had a hazy shroud of culture around it. And the truth warmed my heart and told me that feeling like an outsider was okay. That the gospel was preached not to an inside crowd, but to an outside crowd.

Fast forward a few months. I had moved to a new city, started a new job and was looking for a new church. Everything was still within driving range (about an hour) but I wanted to be a part of the community I had surrounded myself with. I tried the church across the street. It was odd, but due to my recent experiences with feeling odd in church, I resolved to give it a good chance. And then it got too odd. Repetitive odd. Repetitive painful. As I started examining the sub-culture, it got even odder. I couldn't see or hear the gospel by what they were doing. I got angry. They were misaligning the truth. And I was giving in because I wanted to fit in.

I quit going.

I intentionally skipped the following week.

In the intermediate time I managed to give voice to my frustrations. Not everyone understood. Some thought I was a church breaker, a heretic or an atheist philosopher. That I was trying to lead people astray by saying that Sunday attendance isn't all its cracked up to be, that its not the pinnacle of the Christian life, that there are more important things, like living our values and seeking truth, than just staying in one place because its comfortable, normal and easy.

I went back to a church the next week. I Google searched the words 'Irving' and 'Church'. Guess I shouldn't be surprised that I ended up going to Irving Bible Church! What I thought was a small church of two-hundred or so turned out to be several thousand, and one of the largest churches in the metroplex. Go figure. But I gave it a chance. And I liked it. I also rode my bike to it on my first Sunday and discovered that churches really don't have bicycle parking, nor is it normal to carry a helmet with you into a service :)

But I liked it and I felt welcome AND I heard the truth. And as I have been to this church on a regular basis and have become a small group leader its starting to feel like home. Which is something I've really missed ever since I left my previous home in Washington. There's something really nice about being in a stable community and seeking after God. Its the foundation of Church. But its not THE foundation of the Church: Jesus is. And Jesus spent a lot of time on the road journeying from place to place. He encounters a lot of people on the road, and some of the best stories we keep telling are about the transformations that happen along the way. Not the planned stories that came from stable communities, but the unplanned ones that happened during communal upheavals.

I believe in stable communities. They are great places to grow and grow deep. But I also believe in the strength that comes from being tossed around by the wind, of finding our way, even though we're not entirely sure where we are going. The direction we end up going isn't as important as the compass we use to guide our lives: Jesus.

This is why I believe that taking time off from church attendance can be healthy and beneficial. That sometimes we don't have to force our faith, that we don't have to manage it, even though we cling to it. That we can find ourselves sharpened by experiences that should dull us, and find planned sharpenings oddly dulling. Faith isn't a dead object for us to shape; it's a living breathing entity. It's a part of us, just like our elbows and our lower backs. There are times we can push them to their limits and there is a time we should refrain and protect them. But above all we must keep using them. Just because they have been hurt once and have the possibility for reoccurring and repetitive injuries, doesn't mean we can give up on their usage. We shouldn't have to sacrifice our bodies, we should be sacrificing our lives. Which require pulling back, rest, recuperating and living to fight another day.