Cheering On and Building Up

I completed a sprint triathlon a week ago.  I’m a runner, not a biker or a swimmer...for real.  I’d barely been on a bike for the last ten years, but with some encouragement from a friend, I pulled out my old bike that I bought back when my husband and I were first married, and after riding it around the neighborhood a few times, I felt like a pro.

Until I saw my friend’s for real bike which looked something like this:

And mine looked something like this:

My bike was too small, and I knew nothing about the gears so I kept them on the lowest setting, peddling twice as fast as my friend just to keep up.  And with every upward cycle, my knees basically hit my arms.

I looked awesome.  For real.  

And I hadn’t done any swimming since high school.  And by swimming in high school, I’m referring to the laps that I swam during our 50 minute girl’s P.E. class.  And by laps, I’m referring to the few strokes that I managed to get through only while the teacher was looking.  Because when she wasn’t looking, I hung on the side of the pool.

Naturally.

While I stood in line for the race, I listened to the various stories of the folks around me:

“This is a training race for the full triathlon I’m doing this fall…”  

“In my first triathlon, I managed a time of…”

“And then in my third one…”  

Whatever.

The woman standing in front of me suggested that I go before her.  She thought I’d swim faster because, “you have longer legs.”  

I assured her that wouldn’t be the case, and then I laughed explaining that the last time I swam was in high school.

“Honey, if you swam in high school, then you definitely need to go before me.”  

And so I clarified and explained that I swam laps.  In P.E. class. For a total of two semesters all of high school.

And she just turned around and stayed put.  It was about then I decided my idea was dumb.  The race was dumb… and so was my bike.  My bike was dumb.

When we got up to the water, I put my dumb goggles on, followed by the dumb swim cap, and was half-heartedly ready to jump in until the girl behind me said, “Hey, have fun!  I have a feeling you’re going to do great.”  I don’t know who she was or why she said it, but that little bit of encouragement changed everything for me while starting off the race.  I passed her twice at different stages and both times she waved and smiled.

There is something so significant about encouragement.  There’s something that changes emotionally when you know someone is cheering you on, rooting for you to succeed and encouraging you to have fun along the way.  And I shouldn’t be surprised – the Scripture calls us to do it for a reason:

” Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing”  

I Thessalonians 5:11

Therefore….whether we live in Christ or die in Christ….encourage one another because we have hope.  We who believe in the saving Grace of Jesus have the promise of eternity and the hope of the glory that awaits us.  Therefore…build one another up while we journey through this beautiful and sometimes difficult life we’ve been given.

There’s no doubt that it’s tempting to do exactly the opposite from time to time.  My nine-year old was quizzing me for a test I’m taking for a master’s class in a few weeks.  She slammed the papers down after about twenty minutes of quizzing me and said, “Mom, basically you don’t know anything about any of this.”  

And so I asked her to do long division in her head.  Because I’m a mature parent like that.

But the reality is, I do the same thing all too often.  I’ve listened to my younger sister live out the joys and the struggles of having four young children all close in age, and from 1,500 miles away my disposition is to try and “fix” the challenges.  But when I visited with her recently and found myself in the middle of her beautiful chaos, all I wanted to do was cheer her on and let her know how great she’s doing (and remind her that coffee is a good, good friend).  And really, more often than not, that’s probably what she needs from 1,500 miles away.

Unfortunately, our initial tendency is to want to challenge someone’s tiredness and stress because somehow we believe that will help reveal that it really could be worse.  The truth is, starting a sentence with “You think YOU’RE busy…” just doesn’t help anyone. Or, as a mother with older kids said to me when I expressed fatigue a few weeks after my oldest was born,  “Honey, you don’t KNOW what tired really is.”  

Whatever.  (I may have actually said that).

And she was probably right; now that I have teenagers, I’ve experienced a whole new level of exhaustion, but in those moments of fragile emotions as a new momma, I felt discouraged and frustrated by her response, and  I still remember her words fifteen years later.

Selfishness seeps easily into our conversations and can threaten to hurt any relationship; the irony is that the consumption of our own lives, neglecting to be aware of how we can encourage someone else, really does nothing but make life feel secluded and lonely.

Instead, build one another up.  Send a note of praise to that person who has gone the extra mile, listen with empathy to the friend who is overwhelmed, encourage and pray with the fellow church member who confides that they’re struggling.  It can be scary to enter into someone’s difficulty with real fears of how to respond – What do I say about this diagnosis?   What do I have to offer since we’re in two different stages of life?  Thankfully we’re not called to “build one another up with perfectly eloquent words.”  Because I would fail just about every time.  While in line during the race, I turned to acknowledge the woman who said she “felt like I was gonna do great,”  and I said, “Totally!”  

Totally?

We’re not called to eloquence, thankfully, but to encouragement.  Period.  The Lord will show us the best way we can do that for each other if we simply ask Him.  You never know how your reassuring words, even something as simple as, “You’re going to do great,” may be used by the Lord to help a friend get to their finish line.