Ugly Victories

It was one of those times when I couldn’t find the words to describe what was happening.  I hate those times because I love words and what they can describe.  Words are something of a strength of mine, but in this case they were a resolute failure.

And I hated it.

There were many ways in which his game was better than mine, but in other ways my game was tighter than his.  He was more athletic and physically inclined—I have a learning disability that makes me clumsy.  The connection between my brain and my body doesn’t always fire correctly.  So, athleticism was not a gift of mine.  But what I did have was a certain determination and a weird understanding given to me by instructors who had taught me to make physical sense of their verbal directions.

He and I had met in the final after each defeating a couple of previous opponents.  He had made it this far, which meant that he was a decent grappler.  I had made it that far, too.  We had each earned the opportunity to face the other for gold.

The referee gave us the signal to fight, and we got to work.  But the match started off weird.  It started off in that way that fighters know happens when both competitors have almost too much respect for each other.  Certainly, both of us wanted to defeat the other, but neither of us wanted to make a mistake and give the other a chance.  So, when we clinched we clinched up in a way that we would have never taught our respective students to emulate.

We pummeled and swam for a minute, then retreated and reset.  I think we both knew that it had been an ugly exchange.  From a couple of feet away a shot a really bad double-leg.  He sprawled and crushed my face into the mat.  I managed to turn the corner and find a single-leg, instead.  He was sprawling hard so I couldn’t establish a grip above his knee.  The best I could do was an ankle and a calf.  It was an ugly takedown attempt, but I didn’t want to let it go.

I collected my feet underneath me and drove, tilting him into side-control.  In that moment I exhaled a mental sigh of relief, figuring that I had earned myself a dominant position and some points.  But I failed to secure the technique and never managed to stop his momentum.  He shrimped out, framed away, and fought back to his feet, forcing a restart to the match.

The next effort came from him.  He faked high, then went to the low ankle-pick.  He found my ankle and spun behind me while seeking the opposite knee with his free hand.  I lunged forward to run away from his attack, but then arched backward, so I could pressure down by sitting on his shoulders, instead.  He was strong and athletic and possibly as stubborn as me.  He kept driving forward, pushing my weight across the mats.  I could feel him climbing his grips for a better purchase on my leg and knew I couldn’t let him advance any deeper.

I launched myself forward again, like a flying squirrel thing.  At the extension of my flight his hand remained hooked on my ankle, causing my momentum to stop abruptly and spilling me to the mat.  I was far enough away that he couldn’t close the gap, so when my chest hit the mat, I bounced up and scrambled to my feet.

It was a hideously ugly exchange.

That’s how the entire match unfolded.  It was a cacophony of bad scrambles, half techniques, and poor ideas.  We each tried to outsmart the other but ended up outsmarting ourselves.  We spun circles like two cats fighting in a garbage can and struggled to hold one another down.  When time elapsed neither of us had scored a single point—not even an advantage.  Our match deserved to be blotted from the annals of Jiu-jitsu history.

The referee gave us a minute break, because those are the rules.  Then he called us back onto the mats.  Next point won the match and it didn’t matter how it happened.  Any score was a victory.  It was sudden death.

We slapped hands and bumped fists, then got to work.  I could see in his eyes that he was exhausted.  So was I.  I had little left in me.

He tried to close some distance, and I checked his forehead with a palm.  In that moment I noticed that I had stood him up off his base just a little bit.  It was as opportune a time as I was going to get, so I took another shot at the double-leg.  It was a bad attempt.  I was so tired and I was so afraid to be scored on that I hesitated.

He responded correctly with a driving hip and hard hands, framing my face away to create space.  My momentum, combined with his defense, wrecked my balance and collapsed me back toward the mats.  As I descended, I could see his feet there, unmoving as if stuck in mud.  From a mostly prone position I reached out and scooped both of his ankles into my arms, gathering them to my chest like a proud mother.  I bumped my weight awkwardly forward.  I didn’t do the technique like that on purpose, that’s not how the technique is done.

But he was exhausted and it worked.  He toppled like a cut tree, falling to the mat without energy to mount a defense.  The referee stopped us and, moments later, my hand was raised in victory.

I stumbled to my corner after shaking hands with the opposing coach.  My own coach—one of my best friends to this day—was waiting there with open arms.  “That was ugly,” I managed to say through ragged breaths.

“No,” he said.  “That was beautiful and possibly your best win ever.  You earned it.  You had to fight for it.  And now it belongs to you.”

I routinely forget to find the beauty in the world surrounding me.  I constantly struggle to see the beauty in me.  I can’t comprehend what God could possibly see in me that’s worthy of loving.  I frequently find myself screaming at God and asking why He made me the way He made me.   

(Psalms 139:14)  I will praise You because I have been remarkably and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, and I know this very well.

I break things.  It’s what I do.  I have broken nothing more than I have broken myself.  I often wonder what I might look like today if I had taken every step in accordance with God’s will, listened for his voice at every juncture, or never strayed to the left or to the right.  But wondering about these things is an exercise in futility.  It’s too late.  I’ve already broken myself beyond God’s original design.  I’ve done it on purpose and with malice toward the telos God placed in me at birth.  I’ve allowed subtly and slow rot to chip away at the edges of my grand design until the very core of my self was changed.  I can’t stop interfering.  I can’t keep myself from destroying God’s beautiful creation, especially when that beautiful creation is me.

There are vestiges of the unique purpose of God’s creation in me that I can actually recognize.  I still see the foundation of what they were once intended to be.  But me in this world, the sin and decay that is my everyday existence, has perverted those beautiful things and turned them into dark shadows of the beauty they were supposed to be.  I have taken God’s design and tried to remake it my own image.  I have tried to subvert it to my own desires—and my own desires are ugly.

There is a deep design at my core that strives to be of service to others.  It’s a beautiful thing.  I want to be helpful and heroic.  I want to be the steadfast and reliable person who is worthy of admiration.  But then I get my fingers on this beautiful design and begin to crank it toward myself and my own idea of what it should look like.  My desire to be of service transforms into arrogance and conceit as I focus myself toward the approval of nearly everyone who isn’t God.

God made me to be a fighter.  I love fighting.  I seek a cause worthy of my fight.  I ally with the weak and with the desperate so that they finally have someone on their side.  I love to fight.  God made me to fight.  But I can’t stop fighting against God.  I resist His will and I resist His plan, even when I don’t mean to.  I don’t know how to stop fighting against God.  I do it without thinking and, quite frequently, without a reason.  I’ve corrupted God’s design in such a way that I have turned it into opposition against the Creator who gave it to me.

My heart breaks every day.  I see hurt and I see pain.  I want to fix everything.  I want to heal the world.  But there is so much of it to heal, and I’m just me.  I find myself outside of God and in myself, vomiting compassion like a sickness as it oxidizes my soul.  So, my compassion wanes, and in its place, there is nothing but dark scar tissue.  My compassion has calloused and my heart has hardened.  My beautiful gift has become nothing but liability.

That is just some of the beauty in me that I have sought to destroy.  I have wandered so far from the person God intended me to be.  I have stumbled and I have faltered, bloodying myself along the way.  I don’t know that my eternal self is recognizable as me.  All I see is the wreckage of my mistakes.

But I don’t see like God.  God sees more. God sees better. 

But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or his stature, because I have rejected him. Man does not see what the LORD sees, for man sees what is visible, but the LORD sees the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7) 

God still sees his perfect design in me.  He’s not even intimidated by my failures and stupidity.  Those are barely an obstacle to Him.

God knows there is brokenness in me.  There is brokenness in all of His creation.  He’s made a plan to redeem it.  He’s made a plan to redeem me, too.  When he looks at me He sees nothing but the beauty He created.  I see the ugly.  He sees the beautiful.

For the LORD will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places, and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and melodious song. (Isaiah 51:3) 

But God doesn’t just see the beauty in me.  He absolutely celebrates me.  He takes joy and delight in me.

Yahweh your God is among you, a warrior who saves. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will bring you quietness with His love. He will delight in you with shouts of joy." (Zephaniah 3:17) 

I don’t get it, and that’s why I’m not God.  Despite all my shortcomings and the ugliness that I see in myself, God sees nothing but victory.  He sees beauty.  Sure, I’m barely functioning sometimes, and I’m definitely not executing.  But God is seeing something far deeper and far more eternal—He is seeing me through His eyes.  In His eyes I am beautiful.  Someday, maybe I’ll find a way to see me the way God does.  It would change everything about me.

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of our God's vengeance; to comfort all who mourn, to provide for those who mourn in Zion; to give them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, festive oil instead of mourning, and splendid clothes instead of despair. And they will be called righteous trees, planted by the LORD to glorify Him. (Isaiah 61:1-3)