The Lessons Of The Barkley Marathon

WHAT MORE PEOPLE COULD DO WITH MORE OF!

Kim and I watched a horror movie last night called, The Barkley Marathon. I might be the only one who considers this documentary about a race through Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park a “horror” movie. But consider things from my point of view: Only 40 contestants each year are accepted into this 200km foot race, which includes 5 laps of a National Park with each lap being different. It involves ascending and descending over mountainous terrain. All the while, each contestant is wearing a backpack – as each lap takes between 10 to 15 hours to complete. Runners stop between laps for just a few minutes for napping and calorie refuelling. To put things in perspective, this race is the equivalent of running the Overland Track from Dove Lake to Lake St. Clair and then running back again, and then turning around at Dove Lake and running to Mount Ossa (with the allowance for the fact that Mt. Ossa is only one third of the ascent of Frozen Head State Park)! Only 14 people have ever completed the Barkley Marathon! And as we were watching this horror movie, one of the contestants said something truly stunning to the Documentary maker!

As I watched these contestants jogging up mountains, through forests, along creeks, via drains, and heard them talk about the discomfort (and eventual agony) they have to deal with, I recalled each of my 5-day-plus hikes and the gruelling pain I experienced doing each of them. But then the horror of these contestants’ feats grew as I realised these people were doing the equivalent 18 days of normal-person mountainous-bush-walking in under two and half days! As the contestants progress through the race, they battle cuts, abrasions, bruises, exhaustion, and the breaking of their wills. Curiously, most of the people who compete in this race, and even more curiously, the only people who ever completed the race are those with advanced Graduate College Degrees (Engineers, Chemists, Physicists and the like). I wasn’t surprised to hear this, and probably neither would anyone with a higher degree. The little known reason for this is that higher degrees aren’t so much about intelligence as they are about endurance.

The Documentary gave opportunity for those surviving contestants to share their stories. This was when I was a little stunned by what one of them said. He shared the story of how his father had worked hard all his life and saved for his retirement which was to commence with the trip of a life-time. But then, one year before his father was to embark, he suddenly died. This caused his son to reassess his own priorities. He had previously been a keen jogger. One of his jogging buddies mentioned that he had just run his first marathon. He wondered if he was capable of running a marathon. He gave it a go. After completing several marathons, then ultra-marathons, he heard about the Barkley Marathon (considered one of the world’s most difficult ultra-marathons). As he shared his story, it turned out that the loss of his father was not the only pain he had experienced. He had become accustomed to pain – not just the physical affliction type. Somehow, this gave him the mental strength to be able to endure these gruelling running races. As he was talking, the documentary showed him during this Barkley Marathon – cut up, blistered, dehydrated, running in the dark with a small head-lamp, as he trudged up a hill covered in briars. Then he said it.

“Most people could do with more pain in their lives – seriously!”

He went onto say, “Most people don’t know what they’re capable of. Only pain can reveal it to them!” By testing himself with these ultra-marathons, even with all the pain that they caused, he was discovering who he really was and what he was really made of. To get through the pain he had to endure. By enduring, he was becoming a stronger person.

When I heard him say this, I was initially stunned. I didn’t like hearing it. But he said it in such a thoughtful, matter-of-fact way, that it then made me ponder on it the next day. You see, the past year I have lived with pain. Spinal degeneration and a touch of Trigeminal Neuralgia will do that. Everything I have to do now happens a little slower. I have had to learn to endure. Toward the end, completing the F.W. Boreham Documentary became not so much about documentary film-making as it did endurance. I have now completed 7 out of 10 Biblical Greek exams. I’m a year overdue from completing it. When I do, it will not be a measure of my commitment to Biblical scholarship, as much as it will be about endurance. Preaching through the Book of Jeremiah over the past six or so years has not been easy. It has required doggêd endurance. I can’t run, let alone do an ultra-marathon, and you might share my confession, but we all have to endure something in order to become who we are meant to be.

In the TV sci-fi series, Heroes, Claire does not feel pain. Initially, she thinks this is a wonderful gift. But then she grows to despise it. She no longer feels human. To be human is to experience pain.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
Romans 8:22-23

Life requires endurance. Marriage requires endurance. Parenting requires endurance. Business requires endurance. Pastoring requires endurance. In fact, it seems that the formula for achievement reveals that the greater the objective the greater the endurance required to achieve it!

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
First Corinthians 10:13 

As I think about how we can win our community to Christ and see Christ’s church in Legana grow with the fruit of this quest, I know that this greatest of all quests will require extraordinary endurance. Together, we must endure in prayer, endure in our witness, endure in our observance of the Sunday-Sabbath, endure in our private devotions of Bible reading and prayerful reflection, endure in our sacrificial giving, endure in our prophetic stand for righteousness. And if this formula for achieving great things is correct, we will have to endure through adversity, discomfort and pain. The winner of the Barkley Marathon wins nothing other than the glory, but compared to the cost of our marathon to win lost souls from our community to Christ, the Barkley Marathon is a walk in the park in comparison! 

Ps. Andrew.

Portends, iPads, Spines, & Sovereignty

The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 
First Corinthians 15:46

The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians 'first comes the natural then the spiritual'. This is the essence of a portend. This brief explanation is of course unnecessary for those familiar with Lord of The Rings. The word, 'Portend' was used several times in The Hobbit and each time it was used it added an eerie unease about what was about to happen. I recently experienced a portend and it involved my trusty iPad.

I was packing up my things from my office to head home and uncustomarily I had my iPad under my arm with some Board document folders for a meeting I was off to later that night. (I generally insert my iPad into a special compartment in my backpack. But not this time.) As I reached to turn off the lights in my office the iPad slipped from under my arm and landed on the carpet of my office. "No harm" I thought as I checked it fearing the worse. It turned on and seemed fine and importantly there was no damage to the screen. But then over the coming days my iPad began turning itself off randomly and performing woefully slowly. This was my portend.

I'm not the only pastor who finds it emotionally difficult to take holidays. But I mustered up the where-with-all to request the month of November off. As I approached the first day off my leave I began to notice that two weeks before it kicked in I was stiffening up and my pesky back spasms were flaring up, my sore knees were sorer and my occasional leg cramps were intensifying both in intensity and frequency. "Having a bit of a bad run" I thought to myself. Almost exactly a year earlier I succumbed glandular fever again and about a year before that I experienced another bout of shingles. And around the middle of this year the paroxysmal hemicraniums started. I began signing off my weekly pastoral emails to my church as, "From your frail and flawed Pastor". No one really knew why and I didn't really elaborate that much either.

The day my leave commenced I had to do one more thing to ensure that I could take my leave with all the necessary boxes ticked. As I left that mentoring breakfast meeting I hobbled to my car in pain and feeling intense back spasms. These had started over 5 years ago and my doctor had told me not to worry about them as it was probably just a torn Gluteus Medius muscle. But every few months after that initial diagnosis it seemed I was once again tearing my now pesky Gluteus Medius muscle. I drove to my office to collect some final things from there so I could switch off and commence my leave. As I hobbled into my office I received an acute jabbing pain near my right kidney region and collapsed to the floor. Nothing I could do relieved the pain or even made it comfortable. I lay on the floor in agony for about half an hour both grateful that it was a Saturday and the offices were closed (because then no one could see me or hear me screaming in pain) but at the same time concerned that I couldn't move. "I must have really torn it bad this time" I thought. I rang Kim and she came, brought some Voltaren for me and somehow managed to get me into the back of my car after half an hour or so.

For the next week I was involuntarily bed-ridden. Muscles generally take 3-4 days to come good. After 4 days I was still in intense pain and began to wonder whether this was just soft-tissue damage. On Day 6 my 9 year-old daughter rang the doctor and booked me in. He did some tests and said that my troubles were indeed not coming from damaged Gluteus Medius muscles. More than likely, he said, it was my spine. He arranged for me to have a CAT scan straight away. In the meantime he prescribed Movalis and Tramal SR. If I ever meet the industrial chemists who invented these two gifts to mankind I will shake their hands and buy them a decaf skinny latte to show my eternal appreciation to them.

I rang to get the result of my CAT scan a few days later. It's always a bit of a concern when the nurse says I can't discuss this over the phone, you need to meet with your GP. She made an appointment for me to see him immediately. "I'm sorry to tell you, I only have bad news for you" was one of his initial comments. He then shared some of the main points from two page CAT scan report. None of it was good. "You have the back of a 90 year-old former professional rugby player who has been in a traumatic motor-vehicle accident" he said. "At some point, you have broken your back and your back has made several attempts to repair itself, and in the process it has made things worse." And starting with double scoliosis, Baarstrup's Syndrome, extensive facet joint damage, several herniated discs, nerve entanglement, a compressed neural cortex, he began to go through the list of some of the things which the CAT Scan had detected. He then finished with, "And it's only going to get worse."

Since they only scanned half of my spine, I now have to have an MRI to determine how badly the rest of it might be damaged. This information will be analysed by a specialist neurologist in a few weeks to see if there's any point to attempting treatment or whether I am just given a management plan.

Like my iPad, my damage was not immediately evident. Like my iPad, I now occasionally 'shut down'. Very much like my iPad, everything I now do is much slower. And possibly like my iPad, there may be little to nothing that can be done to rectify my situation. Yet I rest securely in the sovereignty of God. When I came out from the doctor's surgery, I sat in my car stunned for several minutes. I've always considered myself relatively fit and able - and with a strong back! When I read Andre Agassi's book, "Open", I discovered that he too had developed a seriously worn back from playing tennis. The game which I love, and was committed to playing professionally, may have also prematurely worn out my back.

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Romans 8:28

While all this caught me off-guard, none of it has surprised God. He is sovereign and beautifully so. I don't just preach Romans 8:28, I believe it and worship God with my life because of it! But my challenges are pathetic and utterly inconsequential compared with those of some of my brothers and sisters - especially in those parts of the world where being a follower of Christ comes at an incredibly high price. I conclude elaboration on my recent portend with a beautiful YouTube clip from an Egyptian church in Minya to illustrate my conclusion.

Ps. Andrew