Pushing Past the Wall

If you met me in the 90's it would have been easy to describe me. Most people would have said, "Aaron plays basketball". Yes, there were other ways people described me as well, but, most people knew me in the context of being in the gym or going to the gym. This was my life as well as the life of all of my closest friends. Basketball is what shaped me, pushed me, and showed me that I could overcome what seemed impossible.

Recently while talking with a friend over coffee I began to see this time of my life in a new light. It was during this time of my life that much of how you would describe Aaron was being shaped. It was during this time of my life that I learned what it meant to push through "the wall". In the context of sports, athletes understand what it means to push through the wall. The wall is the barrier. It is that part of your subconscious that is shouting at your body that you cannot take another step, if you do you will probably die. You can't make it up that hill, you cannot run another wind sprint, you can't handle this.

While thinking about this I remembered what my coach used to say to us while we were thinking we were going to die. Calmly, Coach would as we ran by say, "your not going to die, just breathe." Those words reverberated in our heads as we would pass by. It became a mantra as we would run up and down stairs, back and forth across the court, and as we would leave everything on the floor night after night, game after game. We broke down the wall each time we stepped onto the floor. We pushed ourselves as hard as we could every practice, and with each time we pushed ourselves the wall became smaller and smaller. What seemed impossible the day before became possible today.

The wall was not physical, the wall lived in our minds. The wall wanted to stop us from achieving what we were capable of, and destined for. Blinding us with the desire to quit or walk away because the work was too hard or made us feel too uncomfortable. But, it was through the hard work of not giving up, of continuing to show up for the battle, the run, the game, that the wall became the teacher. I read a quote recently by Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Priest, that stated,

"when the student is ready, the teacher will arrive."

The question is weather or not we are aware of the teacher and which form the teacher has taken to teach us what we need to know. Pain was our teacher, and as Rhor so beautifully put it,

" we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us."

In our fear of the pain we place the blame for our hurt on others (coach/parents/spouses ect.), and miss out on what it is teaching us and the opportunity it is giving us to learn something about life on a deep level.

This reminds me of what the Apostle Paul said in Hebrews 12:1,

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us."

During this season of life I remember Coach pointing out that in our school (kindergarten-12th grade) everyone was watching what we were doing. Everyone was seeing us hit the wall, and how we would chose to deal with that moment of pain. Would we give up and stand there in frustration or run back and make up for it on defense? Would we make the extra pass or keep the ball in our hands so that we could be the hero. Would we give our best effort every moment we were on the floor or would we crumble and give up in the heat of the moment, relegating ourselves to failure?

A friend pointed out recently that watching a person compete on the athletic field gives great insight and exposes what is happening in your heart. During a game or a practice I never wanted to be seen as a person who was going to give up or throw in the towel. This made sense to me on the court, I had a sense of pride about pushing into the pain even more whenever I felt like giving up. When you see someone do that in a game it makes sense. Some of my favorite memories of playing were when I wanted to give up, when it hurt to bad and I would ask for a sub and Coach would look me in the eyes and tell me no, keep playing. To this day this scenario is by far what gives me the most joy to see in a game. An individual pushing through the mental wall, hoping for the easy way out, for someone else to take their place, but in that moment, in a physical expression of what is happening inside having to push through.