Sometimes We Fight Alone

I am an athlete. I have played on a lot of sporting teams in my life. I have competed in a lot of games and tournaments. I have coached numerous talents and ages. I have never felt alone on a team. That’s kind of the point of teams. Teams are groups of people working together to accomplish a goal. Each person knows their position as a part of the team. Each person knows what they’re supposed to do as a part of the team. Each person is trying as hard as they can because the rest of the team depends on them to do their job as a part of the team. You train together, you fight together, you hurt together, you build together. And my favorites… you win together and you lose together. The celebration of the win and the agony of defeat is shared. If given the choice, I would always choose to be on a team. I LOVE being a part of a team.

There have been seasons in life that being a part of an athletic team wasn’t an option for me. In those seasons I learned to fight alone. I learned to motivate myself. I learned to hold myself accountable. I learned how to create and achieve goals on my own. I learned to glean where I could from watching others and then apply what I could through trial and error. When I hurt, I hurt alone. When I built, I built alone. When I won, I won alone. When I lost… and those days really sucked… I lost alone. Perseverance was a hard and necessary battle. Discipline was not just a physical challenge but a mental game I needed to win day in and day out. What I learned in those seasons of life have been vital to every area of my life since. I learned (and continue to learn) what I was capable of when forced to go it alone.

These lessons have transferred into every area of life, especially the God dream. There have been numerous times I’ve had to navigate things alone and had to learn how to come out on top. Remind myself what the God dream is and ‘get my crap together’. That perseverance in the journey always leads to a win. And when it comes to fulfilling the God dream, losing is never an option.

There will be days, weeks, seasons where we’ll have a team of people on the journey with us who motivate, fight, and work with us toward the God dream we’re called to. But there will also be days, weeks, and even seasons where we may have none of that and have to go it alone with God. Sometimes it’ll be hard and it won’t make sense. Sometimes we’ll want to quit. Friend, we must remind ourselves that all of this might be necessary to achieve the God dream.

Keep going. Dig deeper. You’ve got this.

 

(Bonus:  What I learned in seasons of alone made me a better teammate in the seasons I have been a part of a team. Helping someone else achieve their goals is a win for you too 😉   Selah.)