Frustration

Sometimes the presence of hope is harder than the pain of no hope at all, and I immediately knew this was going to be one of those moments for me, again.  I could see just a little pinpoint of light, a small instant of possibility.  And then it was gone.

I hit the mat in a disorganized pile, limbs akimbo.

“Again,” he said, “let’s go.” 

I have long prided myself on never being the first to quit.  My mentality has always been to embrace the grind—some just call it stubbornness.  But I wanted to quit now.  I was exhausted.  He was having none of it.

“Again,” he repeated, “get up.  Let’s go.”

The night had started when I found myself stuck in traffic.  I had spent my day doing some work for a friend’s company some way from home.  The end of the work day had come and I had started home, only to discover that it might have been faster to walk.  The freeway was atrocious.  But I realized that the next off-ramp was the exit I took when I wanted to visit one of my coach’s MMA academies.  From time to time, I dropped in at his school and I figured I might as well make this one of those times.  I always had training gear in my truck, and it was better than swearing at the unmoving car in front of me.

I dropped off the freeway and onto the surface roads to make the short trip to his gym.  It was a little bit early, so the place was empty and the doors were locked.  I waited just a few minutes before he came rolling around the corner with a key.  He seemed genuinely pleased to see me and opened the door and let me in as I explained that I had been stuck in traffic in the area and thought it was better to get some mat time in than to sit in my truck.  He agreed.

We sat around and chatted for a while, waiting to see if any other students were going to show up.  Nobody did.  For some reason, everybody else appeared to want to take the evening off.  So it was just him and I.  He decided that we were done waiting and sent me back to the dressing room to change. 

“What do you need to work on?” he asked me after I returned.

It was a trick question, I think.  I already knew what I needed to work on.  He had told me last time we had trained together.  He had given me a list of skills to develop and several accompanying drills to reinforce them.  I didn’t get to train with him consistently (due to the distance), so he made sure I had homework.  And I had been doing my homework, so I knew exactly what I needed to work on.

“Well,” I said, “I think I need to work on my wrestling.”  He nodded approvingly because he already knew what I needed to work on.  He was in frequent contact with my primary coach and kept careful tabs on my progress.

“OK, let’s go,” he waved me onto the mats.

“What are we doing?” I asked as I followed him.

“We’re wrestling,” he said.  “That’s what you need to work on.”

We began wrestling, taking the first several minutes to warm up with cooperative pummeling and footwork, a light-sparring dance of sorts.  We never set a timer and he never gave me specifics.  But he must have figured we were warm, because he stepped back.

“Ok,” he said, “pick it up.  We’re working takedowns.”

I guess I hadn’t all the way flipped the switch from cooperative to uncooperative, because my first double-leg attempt was sloppy, and I paid for it.  He was a phenomenal wrestler, and I was a barely passable one trying to develop an unfamiliar skill.  He sprawled his defense so hard that my face bounced off the mat.  He spun past my shoulders and to my back, standing up to invite me back to my feet.

So that was how this was going to be.  This was not a friendly sparring match with soft flows.  We were wrestling for real.  The tone had been set.

I knew that he was a better wrestler than me.  I guess, in some way, that’s one of the reasons I trusted him as a coach.  But I had never wrestled him directly, only cooperatively.  And today was not one of those cooperative days.  I could tell by his face—we were going to do battle today.

I feinted one direction to set up my single leg—the very set up he had taught me only a few weeks before—and closed the gap.  I was kind of proud of my penetration step, because I got deep to the leg, collecting it up before sliding to my feet.  I was already flipping through my internal files for the way I was going to finish the takedown after my awesome setup.

And then I was airborne.  I could see the ceiling as I twisted, literally head over heels, rotating before I hit the mats.  I didn’t even know what had happened.  I just knew that I had fallen.  He backed up again, inviting me back to my feet so we could start again.

And we went back to work.

I kept chasing that single-leg, mixing in a few body-locks and low ankle-picks, trying to flow from one technique to the next like a competent wrestler.  But I did not feel competent.  Every time I closed the gap he would rip and rotate, sending me back to the floor in a heap.  I started to fatigue as every fall took its toll.  I wasn’t closing the gap as quickly and I wasn’t getting to my target sharply.  And it got worse.

He started cross-facing me with malice, almost as if he were throwing punches.  Then he started using my chin and neck like a chiropractor, ripping me back to the mat time after time.  I forced myself back to my feet, tasting the blood in my mouth.

“I think I’m done,” I said.  I looked up at the clock.  We had been at this for over an hour.  I had justified my visit here.  I would sleep well tonight.   “I really appreciate your time.  I think I need to start working my way home.’

“We’re not done,” he said.  “More.”  The look on his face didn’t leave room for argument.  I was expected to stay.  I was expected to keep working.  Apparently, I was supposed to stay and keep getting tossed around and having my head ripped off.  I wanted to be done.  I was tired and discouraged—my neck and my back hurt.  I hadn’t tasted a moment of success since my arrival and I had reached my limit.  But I wasn’t allowed to leave yet.

In my mind I could help but ask, “WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING HERE?”

How many times have I asked that exact question of God?  “God,” what the hell are we doing here?”

I’d like to pretend that I’m the sort who is good at trusting God’s process, but I’m just not.  I’d love to be able to look to God and ask in the most authentically curious way, “God, what is it you have in mind here?  I would really like to learn what you’re teaching me.”

But I’m not.  I’m the sort who yells at God, anger in my voice, “GOD, WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING HERE?”

I know that God is stretching me and growing me.  He’s molding me and making me and driving me further to my true purpose and the place where I am truly fulfilled in Him.  I know it—I know it in my mind.  I know it in my intellect.  After all, that’s what God told me, so I am obligated to believe it.

Do not despise the LORD's instruction, my son, and do not loathe His discipline; for the LORD disciplines the one He loves, just as a father, the son he delights in. (Proverbs 3:11-12)

I know it in my brain, I’m pretty sure.  But I don’t think I know it in my heart.  All that growth and stretching comes along with discomfort and, even, pain.  Maybe the pain would be easier if I knew the goal we were striving for.  That might give me a timeline.  It might give me a mark to aim for.  If I could check off all of the requirements I could consider it achieved, then the pain would cease and I would be grown.  The process would be done and I would have arrived.

But sometimes it feels like God is in the business of frustration.  He doesn’t tell me what we’re doing and, sometimes, he doesn’t even tell me why.  He’s got a plan and I don’t know what it is.  I just know that it hurts right now and I don’t want it to hurt any more.

"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways." This is the LORD's declaration. "For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

And still I ask God, “WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING HERE?”

“Again,” he said, “let’s go.” 

I dragged myself back to my feet once more, dripping in sweat and feeling every muscle in the worst way.  He shot his own quick takedown, just to make sure I knew he was serious, and forced me to defend.  I could feel it in the exchange.  I was expected to keep my intentionality high.  I was expected to give my best.

I drove on the single-leg once again—it was the technique I had come the closest to success with.  Once again. I found the painful cross-face waiting for me and I was crushed back to the mat.  Once more I forced myself to my feet.

“Stop leaving your head out there,” he said.  “You’re giving me too much space.  Get your head to my chest and take that space away.”

They were the first instructional words he’d said to me since we started.  And those few words had immediately diagnosed everything that had been getting me wrecked for the past hour.  I had no head pressure.  I wasn’t getting tight enough.  I knew better, but I had not been executing better.  He had made me pay for it, but not out of malice or pride.  He made me pay for it because he wanted me to do—to be—better.

“For I know the plans I have for you"—this is the LORD's declaration—"plans for your welfare, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

I learn best the hard way, I guess.  I hate that about myself.  The most effective teaching moments—on and off the mats—have come in the times when I am empty.  They come when my resistance is depleted.  When I have no more to fight back with, that’s when I can finally learn.  I learn because my ego, my self-perceptions, and my bad habits have been crushed into powder.  Now everything about me is out of the way and my teacher can shine.  I hate it about myself.  I hate it about myself because the journey to learning requires tremendous discomfort.

I don’t learn very much in comfort.  I need to be pushed and pressed.  That doesn’t mean I like it, because I usually don’t.  But I must remember, I must know and own it in my heart, that God is working to make me the best version of me that is possible.  He is often—usually—working directly against my own efforts.  Because I am always going to wander toward comfort where there is no pain.  I am going to try to keep doing things the way I like to do them, even if I’m doing them wrong.

But God’s not satisfied with mediocrity for me.  He’s working to make me better than I am, despite my resistance.

As many as I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be committed and repent. (Revelation 3:19)

He could have easily murdered me at any time.  He was that much better than me.  But his goal that day wasn’t for him to be better than me.  The goal was for me to be better than me.

He started feeding me the lead leg, leaving it exposed just enough that I knew it was vulnerable.  He respected me enough to not make it too obvious, but he wanted me to recognize the moment.  I started recognizing that moment, and I started getting my head tighter and closing the space effectively.  Truly, I was exhausted, but my technique was suddenly improving.  Not only was I learning a better single-leg, but I was learning perseverance.  I was learning not to quit—not on myself or on my coaches—just because I was tired.

It was almost as if he’d had a plan.

In that moment my inner dialogue shifted.  In my fatigue it found a new narrative.

No longer was I silently screaming, “WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING HERE?”

Now I had found something different.  “Help me understand what we’re doing here.”

“HELP ME UNDERSTAND.”

And so I look to God as best I can.  I’m incredibly flawed.  I’m stubborn.  I turn my walk with God into an everyday battle to oppose His will.  But, as I was reminded by a friend recently—God knows everything about me and He still loves me.

And there is the journey, the journey to find the place where, even amid my pain and discomfort, I can look to God and cry out, rather than, “WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING HERE?”

But, instead, “Help me understand.”

Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives to all generously and without criticizing, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5)