Part II: The Wound

There are two things that draw me closer to God in this world than just about anything: the mountains and running. The combination of both is irresistible. When I’ve been alone on a trail and all I can hear is my own breathing and heartbeat, I have experienced the Lord speaking to me in a voice that is nearly audible — and which always cuts right to the core of where I am and where I need to be in relation to Him.

A few weeks ago I was wearing myself out on one of the many mountainous paths I’m fortunate enough to have directly behind my apartment (absolutely a “God thing”). It had been a while since I felt like I could push myself and pick up the pace because an unknown condition with my spleen had sapped every ounce of energy for the previous few months.

On the home stretch, about a half-mile from the apartment, I was churning up a long incline, feeling alive and healthy again. Then — POP! It was my calf muscle, that I had injured so many times before that I instinctively started hopping on my good leg before I could put the hurt leg on the ground again. As I limped home, I knew this was a mild strain, but one that would be with me for a while and would completely waylay my plans and my progress. For more than two weeks I had to baby this wound while the rest of the world ran circles around me.

Breaking training
Injuries are such teachable moments — ones which God has taken full advantage of with me. They have the immediate ability to show us just how weak we are, just how inflexible (unmoldable) we are, and our response to them is the absolute barometer of how long we’ll remain on the sideline, how well we’ll compete once we rehab, or if we’ll ever compete again.

It was the opening day of football camp my freshman year in college. Away from home for the first time in my life and already homesick (after just two days), I just wanted to pour myself into doing what I had gone there to do: kick a football. All summer I had put myself through hell, running, lifting, kicking so many balls a day that my leg felt like vermicelli. I wanted to be prepared to prove myself on the collegiate level.

That morning we were scheduled to run through special teams and I was warming up with kickoffs. On my second kick I felt a little twinge in my right leg. Rather than endure the indignity of seeing a trainer after one kick to complain about a pain (kickers had an undeserved reputation as being pansies who weren’t football players at all, but really soccer players in disguise), I lined up for my next kick. About halfway down to meet the ball, my leg felt like it exploded and went flying off my body. I crumbled to the ground in a pain I’d never felt before, and set the reputation of kickers back 100 years in the process with my howling.

I had a partial rupture of the groin muscle in my kicking leg that put me on crutches for several days — limping for weeks — and seemingly ended my football career before it began. I was 600 miles away from home in a strange new place with no friends and unable to do what I had gone there to do. It was brokenness like I had never known before, and my first experience with forging ahead when there is nothing left but Him.

Thinking back on the fitness tests we had taken in the day prior to camp, I realized that my downfall had been my aversion to stretching. My ability to sit and reach my toes placed me on the bell curve somewhere between 300-pound linemen and several out-of-shape linebackers. Not good for a kicker. I had relied solely on my strength and accuracy, and completely neglected a whole other realm of training that was necessary for me to compete.

Because the school had made an investment in me, I had to honor it by following a strict rehab protocol that would get me back on the field as quickly as possible. Barring that, I would’ve never done it. Seven days a week I was required to report twice a day for “treatment,” which involved everything from scolding-hot hydrocollator packs to electric muscle stimulation, or as it’s known in mental health vernacular, shock therapy.

In time, the muscle got stronger and more flexible. The wound was healing. But what I thought was the toughest part of the process was actually in front of me.

The mental scars left by such trauma are the hardest thing to overcome — ask any batter who’s been hit in the jaw with a wild pitch or a diver who has slammed their head on the 10-meter platform. At some point, you have to test the pain and face the fear. You shrink back from really putting any pressure on it because in your mind you relive the gut-wrenching pop you felt when it happened, and you’re convinced that you can never push yourself that way again.

This is what Experiencing God authors Blackaby and King coined a “crisis of belief.” A choice must be made.

The alternative, of course, is remaining weak, lame and immobilized. Worse yet, the longer you delay the gradual progression of healing in the muscle, the more rigid it becomes, nullifying the gains you’ve made in flexibility in the process and leaving scar tissue that predisposes the muscle to a string of future injuries.

Though I would often prefer it some other way, the Lord always takes me on the path that requires me to stretch my faith, kick the ball, run the race. Thankfully I have a Father who is not only my ultimate Healer ["He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds." Psalm 147:3], but who will lead me across the finish line personally, if necessary, holding me at each step.



The mountain is a reliable and unflattering gauge. My mountains have measured my heart as surely as they’ve revealed my physical condition. But, they also bring healing …