Fearless

Most of my cross country or track seasons, there is a theme. And it never fails, the theme I set for the kids ends up being a mechanism for growth in my own life.  I never intend for that to be the case, I don’t try to create it for myself nor do I expect or even look for the theme manifesting in my own life… yet it always does. In fact, at this point I think I may be a little more careful of what theme I pick (though to be fair, most years, it’s not so much me picking it as it is God revealing it.  And I guess I will try to continue to be obedient in that.)  But after this year I’m a little wary…  This track season’s theme was ‘fearless.’  And while I was calling my runners to be fearless in their training and racing; I myself was being thrust into facing a much more real and personal fear:  a fear of inadequacy.

So the timeless fear-overcoming strategies involve encountering the fear in the most intense ways (i.e. fear heights – you should bungie jump; fear spiders – you should hold a tarantula) and that is essentially what happened to me.  In the past I’ve never really found myself in a situation where I couldn’t at least be competent (if not good) at whatever I was needing to do, be it school, sports, my job, or even being a good sister/daughter/wife.  And to be honest I’ve never really pursued something that I didn’t have some confidence in my abilities for.  But here recently I’ve been what I can only best describe as “flailing.”  I hadn’t drowned, but it sure felt like I was waving my arms about and not helping matters in anyway. Sinking felt like it could happen at any moment….  Due to circumstances outside of my control, I was put in a teaching situation I didn’t feel equipped for.  I found myself clueless as to how to manage some of my CFO duties at my gym.  Things came up in my family and personal life that I was completely unprepared for.  And all of those were preventing me from coaching at the level my extremely talented runners deserved.  I was working 15-16 hour days; I even pulled a few all nighters, something I’d never done before in my entire life.  My friends thought I was mad at them; my mom often wondered if I was alive since she wasn’t hearing from me like usual.  Yet the more I tried within my own strength to juggle all my responsibilities and to perform well, the more obvious it became how inadequate I was.  However, I’m still here.  And in the same way that a spider-fearer holds a spider and doesn’t die, or a height-fearer bungie jumps and doesn’t die… I was completely submerged in my inadequacies and yet I’m still here.  And that’s really what overcoming fear is: being in the very midst of the fear and realizing you’re ok, realizing there was never anything to fear in the first place. 

The truth is we’re all inadequate. And the truth is we’re still all ok.  That’s what the cross represents.  You have no reason to fear, not to fear spiders or heights, and not to fear inadequacies, failure, perceptions, or anything else, not even death…  because Jesus overcame death.  So if you feel like you’re flailing, or even sinking… trust me; you’re ok.  He’s got you.