Good morning…
“Hi Sue,” she wrote after yesterday’s widely viewed post. “What I really love about today’s post is that this unknown Alabama resident was mentally/physically wrestling with anxiety while you were at the wrestling duels! My son wrestles too and I was in Macon that weekend as well.”
She explained: “Think about how hard these athletes work for two minutes at a time as they wrestle each other and how this is exactly what we do all day when we choose not to turn our worries over to God. Those boys are exhausted when they finish each match. And we feel exhausted, too, when we fight daily battles without asking God to fight them for us!”
She concluded: “I am not really an imagery person, but today’s post really spoke to me about wrestling privately with our problems without surrendering our whole self to the God who has the power to heal every hurt and redeem every person :).”
My soul smiled as I read her email since in our basement, at that very same moment, beds, couches, and air mattresses were filled with exhausted, full-bellied wrestlers still asleep after their hard fought battles this weekend at the state individual tournament, once again hosted at the Macon Coliseum. My husband and I agreed to host the team party for the wrestlers after we traveled home following the finals. The seniors had assigned party items for the ten wrestlers who went to Macon. Twenty fast food burgers and fries. Twenty spicy chicken sandwiches. Four extra-large pizzas. Two dozen donuts. One cookie cake. An assortment of ribs, wings, and homemade cookies. A whole huge cooler of Cokes and Gatorades, lemonade and bottled waters. Our basement became stocked full of all the items these weight-losing wrestlers had resisted all season. Our basement was strewn with sleeping bodies when her email came in. It made me smile.
State 2020 has been long anticipated by our family, dreams harnessed from years and years of high hopes. State 2020 was to be the pinnacle of our son’s wrestling career. As senior co-captain, he had hoped to top the podium as state champion this year, after finishing 5th as a sophomore and 3rd as a junior. He had been envisioning this moment since he began wrestling at age five. Instead, State 2020 provided a different sort of wrestling match.
Unfortunately, four weeks ago, our son badly injured his shoulder in practice. With rehab and riding bike to keep his weight down instead of live wrestling, our son made it through the two tournaments leading up to state, qualifying him in the 126 lb. weight class (the weight he worked hard to get down to from his normal weight of 150 lbs.). His dreams were on track, but his shoulder was torn. In tearful recognition, the Tuesday before his final tournament, with the support of his coaches he battled to the decision to withdraw from State 2020. “I will not be state champion in my injured state,” he came home to explain. “I have already been on the podium twice, and, if I rip up my shoulder more, I will let down my lacrosse team.” As the starting face-off guy, our son contributes mightily to his spring team as well, so with his next set of teammates in mind, he gave his coveted spot at state to the alternate from another school.
Beyond our control, State 2020 became a different sort of wrestling match. For our son. For my husband. For me, as his mom. We each wrestled personally with, “How do we finish this season strong, even when our own dreams have been defeated?”
Again and again over our lifetime, our own dreams are defeated and a deeper level of wrestling pushes us into overtime with God. Here’s where my friend’s wise words come back to guide me now: “If you argue with what ‘is,’ you lose. But only 100% of the time.” We are each given opportune match after opportune match, wrestling with God on the sweaty mat of “what is.” May our surrender happen more naturally as we become seniors. I pray that we each learn to more quickly to let go of our own anxious fight to win our own daily battles, as we wait and we watch the LORD fighting for us.
The Eternal will fight on your behalf while you watch in silence (Exodus 14:14, VOICE).
…Sue…
