Held Back

One of the most unpleasant experiences of my young life was fourth grade keyboarding class.  Our instructor was a gruff, grumpy old man who marched around the room with his hands behind his back, his bulbous belly hanging over his belt as he ordered us to reach our fingers from “f” to “t,” “k” to “i,” and so forth and so on.  I can still picture his wispy white hair, hairy arms, and colored polo T-shirts as he paced behind us, peering over our shoulders to make sure we were reaching with the right fingers, our eyes and wrists strictly off the keyboards.  It doesn’t take much imagination to hear him droning out the finger placements for home row and barking, “A, space!  S, space!  D, space!  F, space!” like a drill sergeant.  He wasn’t one of the fun teachers.  And he was merciless when it came to saving our assignments to our floppy disks.  Computers were completely new to me back then, and it happened more than once that I accidentally closed my document before the green “save” light stopped flashing below the disk drive.  (Weren't green lights supposed to mean "go" anyway?)  So when I went to open and print it the next time we had class, it would be gone.  There were many assignments I had to retype and he was mean about it every time.  Whenever I went to save something, I was so paranoid that it wasn’t actually saving.  I always left that class feeling sweaty and scared.   

Once, we had to type a paragraph about our best friend.  Normally, that would be an enjoyable assignment, but it wasn’t because my best friend and I were on rocky terms at the time.  She was in a different class than I was that year, and we’d been spending more and more time with new friends on the playground and at lunch.  I still considered her my best friend, but I wasn’t so sure she felt the same way.  I remember approaching her more than once in the hallway and haltingly asking her who her paper was about.  She always said it was me, but I never believed her.  I resented my keyboarding teacher for giving us that assignment.

Sometimes on Fridays, we’d get to have a fun day in keyboarding class and play Oregon Trail.  My favorite parts of the game were hunting and coming up with irreverent inscriptions for my wagon mates’ gravestones—silly, harmless messages like, “I’ll miss you, Honeybuns.”  Most of the time on Fridays, however, we had to use a special typing program to help increase our typing speed and accuracy.  Sometimes a cat would show up on the dark green screen—that’s about the only thing that was really “fun” about it.  There was a game at the end of the program in which we had to type as many words as we could as fast as we could, with correct spelling.  It was a race, and it was much more frustrating than fun, because I always lost.  No matter how hard I pushed it, how feverishly I forced my fingers, “GAME OVER” would always pop up in glowing, bright green letters at the end of my minute instead of the trophy I so desperately desired to see.  It was really discouraging.  Sometimes, I’d even invite the sweater-wearing bookworm at the Apple next to me into my misery, pathetically exclaiming, “I lost again!” like a female Charlie Brown.  I don’t know why I turned to her.  She’d just give me a long, prissy blink, purse her lips, shake her head, and shrug, as if to say, “Sorry I can’t help you, Stupid.”  I think she was trying to look sympathetic, but she wasn’t very good at it. 

I felt like such a loser.

It would’ve been helpful if she could’ve told me that “game over” had never been synonymous with “you lose,” as I’d so readily assumed.  Months later, I came to find out that I’d actually been doing quite well at the game all along.  There were no pronounced “winners” or “losers”— no pixelated trophies, no dancing cats to signify a victory.  There was merely “game over”—a simple announcement that time was up, along with a score.   No one had ever told me I was losing—I’d decided that on my own.

I had a similar experience with rollerblading.  I got my first pair of rollerblades when my family lived on the outskirts of town, also around fourth grade or so.  They were black with teal and neon orange lining.  I did most of my rollerblading on the cement slab in front of our garage, because our long driveway was made of gravel and the county road it connected to had the rocky kind of cement that made for a slow, bumpy ride atop my hard, plastic wheels.  By the time I got my second pair of rollerblades in junior high, our family had moved into town.  My three sisters had also gotten their own by that point.  The first time I remember rollerblading together was in our basement during the winter.  That was a blast, because there was plenty of space in which we could fly around and expend our pent-up energy, metal poles to grab onto when we got too reckless (which was often), and best of all, the floor was made from that smooth kind of cement—the kind that was perfect for rollerblading.  When we blasted music from our portable stereo, it reminded me of a roller rink. All we needed were some flashing colored lights and a few more friends to join in on the fun.  We never had the rollerblading party I dreamed of, but we did start rollerblading with friends once spring rolled around.  Two of my sisters, Danni and Dexi, were the first to venture out—and they did it with boys—boys from the Baptist church youth group.  Though the thought of spending my free time with members of the opposite sex made me extremely nervous, Danni and Dexi always came back raving about how much fun they’d had gliding through the heart of our city, so I finally decided to join them one weekend.

And I fully regretted it.  I spent the entire time at the back of the pack, busting my butt and struggling to keep up.  Everyone had to keep slowing down for me, which was really embarrassing.  Even on the smooth roads I straggled.  As we crossed through neighborhood after neighborhood, everyone else whirred right along, joking and laughing and trying out tricks as I panted and pouted and pushed myself just to keep going. 

After I got back that night, I decided rollerblading just wasn’t for me.  In fact, I hated it.  But then one day, a friend of mine visited and asked to go rollerblading.  Not wanting to be rude, I agreed, lending her my own pair and fetching my younger sister’s for myself.  I knew for sure I’d get blisters since Dexi’s were a size smaller than mine, but I figured it would be better for me to suffer than my guest.     

But it turned out I wasn’t the one who suffered.  Sure, my toes were scrunched and I could feel Dexi’s rollerblades chafing the soft sides of my feet, but none of that mattered because I was gliding.  I could go fast without even breaking a sweat and this time, it was my friend who was bringing up the rear, winded and whiny as all get-out, cursing my crappy skates.  And that’s when it dawned on me.  I’d never been a worthless rollerblader—I’d just had worthless rollerblades.  It had taken my blading a mile in someone else’s shoes for me to figure it out, but I’d figured it out.

It was a very eye-opening afternoon.

My own stories remind me of other stories I’ve read through the years—fiction and fables featuring unfortunate folk who can never seem to catch a break, even when most would agree it’s befitting them.  They spend days, months, and sometimes even years seemingly stationary in parts of their lives in spite of all their efforts.  They get stuck spinning their wheels as their peers skate on past, disappearing like dots in the distance.  The slow-progressing ones become accustomed to this routine—come to accept their fruitless persistence as a way of life, behaving like the duck who appears calm and quiet on the surface, but kicks like crazy underneath.  They hope that in doing so, all of their silent sweating and patient endurance will pay off—that they’ll eventually get some kind of kickback for all of their kicking.  And then one fateful day, it happens.   Their long-awaited break finally catches up with them—even nearly bypasses them—because they’ve been too busy keeping their nose to the grindstone to look up and notice that things have actually changed for the better.

It happened that way with the ugly duckling, who turned out to be no duckling at all—and definitely

not ugly—but a stunningly beautiful swan.  He was so stunning, in fact, that he even startled himself when he finally glimpsed his brilliant white reflection in the gleaming waters surrounding him.  And it happened that way for the main character in one of my most beloved books from childhood.  The boy was clumsy and overweight—teased by the athletic boys in school.  And so he decided to do something about it—to dedicate his entire summer vacation to eating healthy and working out so he could start sixth grade off on the right foot.  On the last day of his summer vacation, after a lot of dreaming and discipline, he wound up in the hospital needing stiches.  Before being seen, he had to have his weight taken by a nurse.  It was a defining moment for the boy—almost like the final weigh-in in a weight-loss competition.  But when he stepped on the scale, he found himself feeling vexed instead of victorious because the numbers hadn’t changed at all from the end of May.  It seemed that all of his hard work had been for naught.  I felt really sorry for the boy until his dad explained that although he’d lost fat, he’d also gained muscle and grown several inches taller throughout the summer, which affected his current weight.  The boy was accustomed to avoiding mirrors since he’d never liked what he saw, which explained how his transformation had managed to escape his attention.

Perhaps another reason such stories stick with me is because I can relate even beyond the anecdotes about keyboarding class and rollerblading.  I was held back the year after Kindergarten, and after that experience, I’ve felt held back from a lot of life in general.   In spite of my efforts—of spending many an evening in tears and trembles so I could graduate second in my high school class and summa cum laude in college, of trying to spend my free time tackling tasks that produce effects extending beyond personal enjoyment, and of finally finding a balance between perfectionism and productivity, I’ve continued to feel slow, stifled, and stymied from ever catching up. 

One more fable that helps to sustain me is the one about the tortoise and the hare.  The tortoise’s plodding pace reminds me that in the long run, life isn’t a sprint—it really is a long run. 

But it isn’t always fun.  I’ve wondered if the title of the story should be changed to “The Tortured and the Hare,” because sometimes, plugging away unvaryingly really can feel like torture.  I know this from experience.  I did a lot of long-distance running in high school as a member of the cross-country team and as a resident two-miler in track.  Sometimes I even had to do both the one and two-mile in the same meet.  I never liked track as much as cross-country because I despised running in circles.  The monotony drove me crazy.

The two-mile was eight loops long.  Half-length tracks were even worse, because the lap-count doubled.  Those sixteen-circle doozies took place indoors, where I was sure to suffer from cotton mouth because of the dry air.  I hated cotton mouth.  It wasn’t as bad as having a side ache, but it came close.  It gave me sticky spit that always clung to my legs and my jersey instead of finding its way to the ground.  And as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t lean down and wipe it off, because doing so would’ve messed up my pace.  Gross, I know.

The Bible has a lot to say about pushing through when you’re feeling strained.  Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”  And the people outlined in Hebrews 11 make me feel ashamed to complain, because even when they reached their deaths and still hadn’t received the things God had promised, they continued to trust that He would bring His work to completion, even if it had to happen beyond their earthly existence.

Having grown up studying these passages, as well as others about keeping a focus on the invisible rather than the visible, and officially adopting “good things come to those who wait” as my personal mantra, you’d think I could handle the absence of verifiable progress. 

I try.

But sometimes it’s still hard.

As a former competitive runner, verses with racing imagery have always held a lot of personal significance for me—verses like, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24).  One thing I never realized while I was still competing, however, was that, in its historical context, “to win” didn’t always mean being the first to finish.  A friend of mine once explained to me that, in the torch races of ancient Greece, each runner was given a torch at the beginning of the race, and being the winner meant being the first person to cross the finish line with a torch that was still ignited.  That little bit of enlightenment enhanced such verses’ meanings for me a hundredfold, stirring up the flame I had burning inside my own heart.  It made verses like “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (1 Timothy 4:7) even more inspiring to me than they already were.  And less intimidating, actually, because it meant that, in order to win, I just had to trust in Jesus. 

It encourages me to remember that this journey, and what happens here, are just as important—even more so, in fact— than the place in which I finish.  It takes away the pressure of feeling “held back.”   

I suspect that sometimes, the Lord actually holds us back on purpose.  It reminds me of the way athletes often train.  My good friend, Lisa, used to be on the high school swim team, and I remember giggling when she shared with me how the boys would practice with nylons on to create drag—otherwise known as resistance, but in this case, I think “drag” is the winning term—to get a better workout and produce a better end result come swim meet time.  I think the Lord does that with us—He allows resistance to train us, so that when it’s finally stripped away, we perform faster and more effectively than we ever could have otherwise.  He does it to make us better.     

Looking back, I can see this in my early encounters with keyboarding and rollerblading.  After all the work I put into winning a winnerless game, my frantic fingers tap-dancing all over the keyboard with clicking keystrokes, I became a fast typist—one of the fastest in my class.  And although there’s no way I could’ve known it at the time, it’s a skill I now use every day.  And in the case of rollerblading, all of the extra effort I expended trying to keep up in my crummy skates made me twice as fast once I got better ones.  In such situations, my only regret is that I was so quick to believe the worst about myself.  It makes me wonder now what other kinds of misconceptions I might be believing in the present.  And although it may sound like a discouraging thought, it’s actually really encouraging.

Here’s to being held back, to make the flame burn brighter.

 

All Bible references were taken from the New International Version of the Bible.