Doubts and fears are a big part of this journey. Just like rocks and pitfalls are a big part of any long path through unfamiliar territory. It’s OK. They’re supposed to be there. This wouldn’t be a Challenge if you never encountered anything challenging, now would it?
Those doubts and fears have had an enormous impact on me in the past. They got their claws in deep at certain points. As I’ve talked about before, they nearly lead me right up to and over the cliff’s edge of my own death. That happened more than once,… and, to be completely honest and fully transparent about it; it has continued to try to happen, periodically, ever since.
It tried, very seriously, to talk me back out to that edge today.
That voice, that source of all those doubts, the place where all of those fears twist and fester in my heart, it’s all a part of the mountain I’m trying to bring down. It’s all a part of the “enemy” that I face on a daily basis. I hope that you will understand this, that you will feel what I’m feeling and what I need to share. If you’ve been following me on this journey, thus far, I need for you to understand what happened today. I need you to understand what it means.
I consider myself a writer for two reasons, because I am a Lover of words, and more importantly, because I express myself best in the medium of storytelling. At the risk of being corny, that’s how I’m going to proceed today. What I have to express is particularly important and it weighs on me heavily to get this across to you. So, in figurative and metaphorical terms, let me just say that I had an unpleasant but ultimately motivating discussion with my least favorite person this morning. I'm going to relate this encounter as best as I can, in a short, little story that I'll call...
The Lion
In the very early hours, when it was still dark, I happened to wake-up. I laid there for a while. The little telltale throb below my ribs let me know that my back was still very much injured and that, as a result, there would be no walking today.
I reflected on things for quite a while, not really knowing how to feel. That place, the inner balancing-scales where I look at myself and my life, has become a very foreign, even alien thing to me ever since I decided to let go of my negativity and self-hatred and to actually fight for myself. It’s new and like in any *new* place I always feel a little out of sorts there, out of my element, at least for now. I was still too tired to feel really frustrated yet. I hadn’t planned on my back-injury keeping me laid-up for as long as it has, and the fact that I still haven’t been able to exercise in nearly a week has added all kinds of anxieties and questions… unknown futures… to my vision of the path.
The Adversary, whom I’ve mentioned before, was there. It’s always there.
I could feel it looming over me, massive, heavy, and equal-parts morose and gleefully cruel. It’s presence is a constant in my life. I’m used to that, such as it is. But, it’s direct attention,… those times when I know it’s eager to push me around and mess with me, bring a feeling similar to the dilating moments in the midst of a car accident or a bad fall, so I can’t be certain how much time had passed before it began to speak.
“I told you so,” it half moaned, half gloated. “Sure, I made quite a bit more progress than I’d ever managed to make before. I guess I can go on feeling proud of that if it makes me feel better. Just remember that a light-bulb always flashes brightest just before it burns out.”
The Adversary, I should note, always refers to itself as if it is me. It tries to convince me that its words are my thoughts and my opinions. It tries to convince me that it is nothing more than the more rational and realistic side of my own mind.
Hearing it’s words, I closed my eyes and tried not to think that way.
“I knew from the start, though. Didn’t I?” it murmured. “I knew that ultimately, there would be too many obstacles for me to be able to overcome them all. I’m just not suited for this life. How much can anyone really expect from someone abandoned by God to face the world in a twisted, broken body carrying three-times its normal weight. In those circumstances,… surrender isn’t a "defeat." It’s an entitlement. There’s no shame in that.”
I kept my eyes closed and repeated to myself,
“I already decided this. I’m not giving up this time. Nothing will make me give this up. To stop me, you’re going to have to kill me,” and I reflected, “There was a time, when my anxiety, laying here in bed, would be because I didn’t *want* to exercise, for fear of pain. Now, I’m just angry because exercising, *in spite of* the pain would be a bad idea, regardless of how much I want to do it. But, I really do *want* to, don’t I? That means something.”
The Adversary didn’t seem convinced. To be honest, I wasn't sure if I was, either. It offered its own perspective on my observation.
“The gazelle lunges and convulses to get away from the jaws of the lion that’s brought it down. It does so even though the act brings terrible pain. But, it isn’t a statement of hope on the gazelle’s part. It isn’t defiance. It’s just a primal reaction in the face of inevitable death. The prey knows it’s about to be eaten, so it panics. It might even land a lucky kick or two across the lion’s flank as it struggles. But, the lion’s barely going to notice and the gazelle’s going to die just the same. I shouldn’t mistake my panicked death-rattles for valiant heroics.”
It was at that moment, that I realized something. Even as I sit here now, going over it again in my mind, there’s an energy that’s alive and moving within me. Something is different for me now. In fact, *everything* is different now.
Maybe it happened because the analogy just didn’t land right in my brain. Or maybe it landed a little *too* right. For whatever reason, I realized that it was incorrect. I saw behind the curtain, if only for a second,… and that was all it took.
I asked,…
“So, why aren’t I dead yet?” and I went on,… “The lion’s proverbial ‘jaws’ have been in me for years now. What’s it waiting for?”
And at that, it was over.
The doubts and fears just weren’t hovering right before my face anymore.
No, the Adversary wasn’t “gone.” It was just,… no longer willing, perhaps no longer able to be so close to me. It’s still here. It always is. But, now it’s where it usually is,… pacing back and forth, just out of reach, glowering at me,… waiting for me to slip.
But, that’s the thing.
That’s what I’ve realized.
It’s only got two moves; 1 - To wait for me to slip, and 2 - To taunt me. To try to convince me to slip. It NEEDS me to slip, in order for it to win. As long as I’m willing to stand my ground, it is absolutely incapable of taking my ground from me. It can’t beat me. Therefore, it needs me to surrender.
Let that sink in. Absorb that for a minute.
See, it’s never actually beaten me before. It’s never killed me. I’ve suffered setbacks, but they were all just instances of me giving up. They were just examples of me surrendering. Laying down. This is what I want to share with you.
The gazelle analogy is irrelevant and inapplicable. Your fears, your doubts, your pain, your obstacles,… your Adversary,… is not a predator. It’s a scavenger. It doesn’t care *what* it finds laying dead in the fields, so long as something lays down and dies so that it can eat. It can’t bring you down. It can only reap the benefits of you giving up… bringing yourself down. It’s not a lion. It’s a jackal.
YOU are the lion.
Your Adversary, that mangy little bottom-feeding jackal might growl and bark at you from time to time. It will snort and huff, and bare its teeth. But, the minute you look right back into its eyes and show it YOUR jaws, it scampers off into the corner and goes back to its waiting, goes back to its own fears.
Now, you might be wondering why the jackal would taunt the lion.
Well, there are a lot of reasons. For one, we live in a world where lions tend not to realize what they are. Jackals know this. We’ve been convinced, by a lot of sources that we are nothing more than numbers,… just part of a herd. That we can’t really accomplish anything. Success, in anything, is only for the lucky or the exceptionally gifted, or those rare few who are both. That’s jackal-speak for “Stop trying.”
But, more than that, the jackal knows something. It knows something that you, as a lion, may not have figured out yet; That whether he eats you, or you eat him… is one-hundred percent, *your* decision. It’s in the jackal’s best interest to make lots of intimidating and scary-sounding noises and to puff up its chest so that it doesn’t look like prey. The last thing it wants is for you to realize that you could snap its spine in one bite if you wanted to.
Unfortunately, for my jackal, my Adversary… I realized that very thing this morning.
I’m not fighting against it. If that battle were to happen, it would be over in seconds. That’s why the Adversary will always make sure that it doesn’t happen.
I’m fighting in spite of it.
It’s not an opponent. It’s a heckler.
It’s just noise.
All you have to do, is tune it out.
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