Wrestling had been a huge part of my life. It taught me how to push through obstacles, made me physically and mentally strong, and it taught me how to work towards a goal. For five years I gave the sport everything I had. I trained for hours a day, year round, made my body go all out on little water and less food, dropped more weight in so little time that it wasn't healthy, but to me all of it was worth it because I was chasing a goal and everything I did moved me closer to that goal. I also saw how easily that goal could be taken away, and I began to develop an attitude of why even try because you'll get so close to achieving what you've worked for.
This wound impacted me in more ways than I initially realized. I've told people that my life stopped going the way I thought it would when I was 17 years old, and this wound was the catalyst of that change. Wrestling was everything, and I was good at it. When I lost my varsity spot, and as a result my shot at the State Tournament in 2004, I didn't know what to do.
I didn't want to go back out on the mat for a coach I no longer trusted. I put myself through hell that year, dropping weight I didn't have to lose, starving myself and going all out at practice and even more before school and after practice. For the first time in my life I quit something; I faced a set back, really the first one I had ever encountered in my life, and I didn't know what to do. There were feelings of anger, betrayal, disappointment, and I gave up on something that I loved because of an obstacle.
Before I began to experience God's healing of this wound my response would be shutting down and withdrawing when I felt betrayed or attacked, discouragement and frustration when things got hard and didn't seem to work out, or wanting to quit when I hit an obstacle to seemed too impossible to begin to tackle. All of my mental toughness was shaken after one event, due to the depression I had gone through leading up to this event, I didn't have a solid relationship with my parents anymore, I didn't have a youth pastor to talk to, wrestling had taken up so much of my life that I wasn't particularly close to any teachers or many kids at school, and none of my teammates or coaches understood my perspective of the event, or they didn't care. I was alone, trying to navigate the most difficult thing I had faced, and I began to be completely self-reliant, not willing to trust people, let them get too close, or need anyone.
Writing this out is still a little hard, mostly because I'm intentionally working to not sound like a victim, but part of healing is acknowledging the pain, and I'm working to find balance in sharing this while not vilifying anyone. This wound shaped so much of how I see the world and relate to it. I'm constantly working to check my attitude and reaction to set backs, and because of the healing God has done in my life, I'm able to be aware of when I begin to slip into indifferent, withdrawn, self-pity.
This one was big, and there were aspects of the healing that I really didn't want to undergo, but God knew what had to be done...
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
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