At age 18, she won a silver medal in the 200 meters in the 2004 Athens Summer Games. Four years later, another silver in the 200 in Beijing. Earlier this week, Allyson Felix won gold in London, finally earning the 200m gold medal she’s been pursuing for well over a decade. It’s easy to forget that she is a 3-time gold medalist in the event at the Track and Field World Championships, but right or wrong, track athletes understand that Olympic gold is what defines a career.
I can only imagine how many times in the past 10 years Allyson Felix pushed herself through a brutally difficult workout when she didn’t feel like doing it. I’m guessing there are days in the fall of 2009 when it’s really hard to run and then run some more when the next Olympics is still nearly three years away. Allyson Felix is a great example of an athlete who persevered over a long period of time in an effort to achieve something life-changing. But she’s hardly the only example. High caliber athletes understand that the work they put in when the public isn’t watching is the only way to achieve something life-changing when the masses are paying attention. Good coaches understand that too. Those who are willing to challenge and push themselves and others when they’re out of the spotlight will usually achieve the most in it. It’s not easy for most people to find that kind of motivation inside themselves, but those who do will reap the reward.
Life is like that too. This summer it seems like everything I hear, read and think about is beating into my head this idea that life is supposed to be difficult and challenging. I’ve come to realize that I’ve spent most of my life trying to either avoid or endure trials, in the hope that they’ll soon end and that I can live life easily and comfortably. I used to feel like if life felt hard I must be doing something wrong. Now I’m becoming more and more convinced that the opposite is true. If life seems too easy, maybe I’m doing something wrong. (Or at least I should understand that ease and comfort are temporary blessings that I ought not take for granted.) Not that I’m going out of my way to look for trouble, but if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, difficult situations are most often the rule rather than the exception.
There was a guy who knew what he was talking about here. His name was Paul and he spent the second half of his life traveling the world, serving selflessly, and if anyone had a right to expect God’s blessing in the form of ‘smooth sailing’, it was probably him. But that’s not what we see when we read about his life. He talks about being under “great pressure, far beyond his ability to endure, so that he despaired of life” (2 Corinthians 1:8). Serious stuff for sure. But then just a few chapters later, Paul describes the challenges he’s faced as “light and momentary troubles” that are “achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 4:17). He doesn’t whine, but he’s honest about the fact that his life isn’t easy. And yet he’s able to put his challenges into perspective, calling them “light and momentary”. Wow.
I’ve been so impressed by the toughness of Allyson Felix and so many other Olympic athletes, who have subjected themselves to incredibly intense training regimens, with the ability to consider them merely “light and momentary troubles” in the pursuit of something far greater. How much greater is the eternal glory that the difficulties in all of our lives, whatever they are, are achieving for us? Paul wrote, “Therefore we do not lose heart” (2 Cor. 4:16).
Whatever challenges you face, please never lose heart.