Conquering the Fear of Instability

"Wounds that can't be seen are more painful than those that can be seen and cured by a doctor. I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. I learned that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. I felt fear myself more times than I can remember, but I hid it behind a mask of boldness. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid but he who conquers fear. Where people of goodwill get together and transcend their differences for the common good, peaceful and just solutions can be found, even for those problems that seem most intractable." - Nelson Mandela

Most of the time, life isn't about what you overcome physically...but what you can overcome mentally. I had a great day at the gym today with Adam. But it wasn't because I did anything spectacular on the bench or on any of the other exercises I did. What I did do was come just a little bit closer to overcoming the war in my brain about the limitations I have without the use of my legs.

Today, in the middle of my workout, Adam had down for me to do Incline Dumbbell press. Dumbbells and I don't get along well...Flat Bench Dumbbell press already pushes my limits of comfort, but put me on Incline, and I have a SEVERE attitude problem. With not having any force in my hips or butt to keep me grounded, plus the fact that my legs are swaying back and forth because they don't reach the ground, when I have unlevel weights in my hand (even though they're even), it's extremely hard to make my arms push up into the air. My arms and hands are the only parts of my body that control the rest of me. It goes along with Newton's Third Law of Motion, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." I am without my equal and opposite reaction.

Adam handed me 35 lb. dumbbells today. And I was on an angle (incline), and my legs don't touch and the seat is extremely small and barely fits my butt. I'm not positive what it is about the incline that I hate more than the flat bench, but I'm sure it has to do with the angle that I'm sitting without being anchored. I thought for sure I was going to cry. But I fought it off.....and I did it. I completed two sets of 10 Dumbbell Incline Presses with 35 lb. dumbbells. And I didn't drop them.

I have the above quote from Nelson Mandela hanging in my room...below the following Scripture: 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 - Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan's angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me, My grace is enough; it's all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness. Once I heard that, I was glad to elt it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's stength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size - abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.

If anyone can come up with an invention of some type of visor or something that would hold these in front of my face, while I'm lifting, that would be fantastic! The biggest struggle I have is remembering these when I leave my house. I read them every day. But, in the moment, when the fear is so real that something's going to happen, or that I'm going to fail and not be able to do the exercise, it's hard to drown out what's happening, to remember the truth. Sometimes the truth isn't actually what's going on around you...but it's the most difficult thing to remember that and pull the truth back into the situation.

The truth is, Adam would never let anything happen to me. The truth is he's right there if I start to drop them. The truth is I CAN do it even though I'm not as secure as everyone else. And the truth is, I have nothing to be embarassed about if I can't do it.

The gift is that I have Adam there with me to enable me to do things that I couldn't do on my own. The biggest gift of all is that he puts up with the attitude, instead of not making me do things. The gift is that he believes in me, and through that, he shows me, each time I'm with him, that I CAN do it. He helps me remember that I can conquer the fear, and that my limitations are not as bad as I think they are. He encourages me and coaches me through it, when I want to quit...and in the future, sometime when he's not there, I'll be able to close my eyes and hear him and REMEMBER that I CAN do it, because they weren't just words that I read on pages...he proved to me that I can, and his encouragement was what pushed me through to show myself that I can.

Please keep up the prayers for the money to come in. I really miss training full time. It's just not the same. Thanks everyone!