The Struggle Makes You Strong

I have been a slouch my entire life. I always hunched over because I am chronically too tall for shirts to fit me well, length-wise. This has been true for over thirty years, being nearly 5’10.

Fast forward to today: I don’t slouch anymore. My posture is excellent.

How did I get here? Simple- or perhaps not so simple, depending on your world view.

I started doing pull-ups.

More specifically, I tried to do a single pull-up for about three months before I was successful, and then I kept going.

Y’all, no one ever teaches you that you have to actually exercise the muscles in your back so that you can carry yourself upright. There are old people walking around everywhere who are shaped like question marks, all because they never got advised to work out their back muscles. Doctors will always tell you to “exercise” but we always think “go running.” And while running alone is excellent advice, women are under the impression that lifting heavy things is “men’s work.”

Women, I promise you, you have to lift things if you don’t want to fall and die at age 60 because your legs can’t hold you up anymore. This is not optional. You can’t just hope your health magically improves. You have to put the work in, and often, putting the work in means seeing ZERO results for MONTHS while you just keep at it.

When I started trying to do a single pull-up, my husband was right there next to me, encouraging me and holding my feet to stabilize me, giving me a few pounds of support upwards while I strained and grunted and generally made childbirth noises. It took at least a month of trying a few times per week with my husband gently supporting my legs for my spindly, atrophied arms to pull my face level with the bar, and then I collapsed in joy, ecstatic, because “I can do a pull-up!”

Another month of my husband supporting my legs and me straining some more, and I could do TWO pull-ups! I was amazed!

And then he challenged me to go to the other pull-up bar and do one without any support… and I failed. I added support weights beneath my knees and proceeded to do supported pull-ups for another month after that, convincing myself that doing five or six pull-ups with forty pounds of upward support beneath my knees was “doing pull-ups.”

Spoiler alert- that is not a pull-up.

That is a weak excuse for exercise while pretending you’re making progress, something that I unfortunately had to face, and when I did face it, it was an ugly blow-out argument between myself and my husband that really made me take a look at how much effort I was putting in while convincing myself I was “trying hard.”

That argument lasted an entire month, because I refused to believe that I was phoning it in.

One day, I broke down in tears at my desk at work, because let me tell you, exercise has always been my achilles heel. I can starve myself to death in a house full of food, but ask me to do three extra reps when my muscles are screaming NO MORE? Apparently that’s something my brain had trouble getting past. I come from a family of musical scholars. There are no professional weightlifter/bodybuilders in my family, we’re basically hobbits who like music, games, and cake.

Yes, I am an exceptionally tall hobbit. Yes, the descriptor is accurate.

I mean, sure, there are some former athletes on my father’s side (my amazing Dad was a professional fencer for decades) but apart from my brilliant younger sister (whose day job is beating people into the ground with Pilates classes) exercise mostly just ain’t our thing. I used that as an excuse for a while, but I had to really take a look at myself and ask, if my sister can do it, why can’t I?

I started making excuses. I’ve been through too much. I’ve already made so many positive changes. I would rather read a book than exercise. I would rather just “maintain” because I’m not overweight. I want to keep my “baby belly”. Anything and everything came through my head as a reason why I just didn’t have to try hard in this particular area, and that’s when I realized I had reached the bargaining stage of grief over my abysmal gym attendance.

I learned something from my husband. Apparently, those last three reps in your set, the ones your muscles don’t want to do? Those are where all your gains are. ANYONE can do the first 9 in a 12 rep set. What separates the winners from the losers is, do you do those last three when your muscles are tired? Most of your gains are made in the last 3 reps.

Mind over matter, kids. I had to make a choice.

After literally weeks of arguing with my Adonis-level muscular husband about why my pathetic level of effort/exercise was perfectly fine and thinking he was just being a jerk for telling me I am capable of putting in more effort for more results, I had to admit he was right, and it led to a hysterical crying fit in his arms, because I realized what the problem was.

I am quite literally just tired of being strong.

Tired of it.

Exhausted.

I’ve been “strong” my whole adult life. I had to be STRONG when my husband died. I had to be STRONG when I was pregnant and scared. I had to be STRONG and sell my body to make money to keep a roof over my child’s head. I had to be STRONG when I wanted to just kill myself. I had to be STRONG when I gave my child up for her benefit. I had to be STRONG when I had to rebuild my life. I had to be STRONG when my brain broke and I spent 18 months wanting to die. I had to be STRONG when I had to learn a new job field while essentially schizophrenic, and I was the primary breadwinner. I had to be STRONG when I gave up carbs and sugar forever, and gosh darn it all, can’t I just keep one area of my life where I can just be a soft pile of mush???

The amount of snot I left on my husband’s shirt that day can not be overstated. I drenched him in nose goo. And he held me until the river of boogers subsided, because he is that good of a man.

It sounds stupid, but yes, I cried my eyes out over being tired of being strong.

Seventeen years of being iron-willed in nearly every area of your life will do that to you.

And then once I stopped leaking everywhere, I made a decision. I decided that all of my inner strength meant nothing if I didn’t put the work into making the outside strong enough to hold all that inner steel I developed.

And then I ACTUALLY started doing pull-ups. Unsupported ones, with no weight boosting me up.

I started with one, then two at a time. Then two sets of two. Then sets of four, three, and two.

This week, I did six pull-ups in a row. Unsupported. Just my ol’ arms, pulling me upwards, and I fought for that sixth one.

And just yesterday, I did thirty-five pushups in a row without stopping. Deep ones, too, the kind that make your thighs brush the carpet.

This kind of physical strength will never happen without blood, sweat, and tears.

“You will stay the same until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing.”

The road to hell FEELS like Heaven. Netflix, chocolate, sodas, fast food, drugs, etc all give you dopamine hits but make you a slave to your own flesh.

The road to heaven FEELS like hell. I wake up with sore muscles several days per week. I strain my muscles to the breaking point regularly. I do “just one more” when I think my arms will fall off. I say no to treats that tempt me on my work’s kitchen counter. I haven’t had a soda in years. I ran half a mile at the gym the other day as a warmup even when I didn’t want to. I take ice-cold showers several times per week, and I’m working up to longer durations of said cold showers. Tomorrow I’ll be at the gym before 6:30 am to get my pull-ups and squats in before work. I CONQUER MY FLESH DAILY.

We as humans don’t do things we don’t like, even if it’s good for us, if it’s hard. The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak. There is a reason that Jesus said “Pick up your cross and follow me DAILY.” Following Jesus doesn’t mean being a timid, obedient weakling. It means working your muscles to exhaustion voluntarily and becoming muscularly shredded because you trust that you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. True Christianity is not for the weak-willed. You have to completely deny your weak flesh its pleasures and do what makes you strong, without making excuses. The Creator of Heaven and Earth chose to be born on Earth and die so that you would trust that He can lead you out of darkness and misery… so trust Him. Trust that He believes in you, and His power lives in you. That means put down the candy and soda. That means do the pull-ups. That means go running instead of turn on Netflix. That means be honest with yourself about why you’re miserable and committing to changing it. Not just for a couple weeks before you lapse back into old habits. That means actually changing. A butterfly doesn’t stop changing into one halfway through the process and then decide to go back to being a caterpillar. Nope. Make the change, and commit to it.

I believe this is what Jesus has asked us to do- He came to teach us how to grow our wings. If we don’t, we are too weak to fight the evil that slips into our bodies one chocolate bar or soda or “I’ll do it later” at a time- and that is how evil truly works. It is slow, methodical, insidious, almost invisible, and kills us in a thousand small papercuts. One or two papercuts won’t kill us, but a thousand absolutely will. Now ask yourself how many fast food burgers you’ve eaten, how many sodas you’ve drank, how many chocolate bars you’ve had, and how many days you’ve put off exercising. Is it hundreds? Thousands?

You can’t change until you’re honest with yourself. Be willing to admit ugly truths to yourself, like I had to. I had to admit I was lazy with exercise, and I could do better.

Pick just one area in your life to start. Maybe it’s giving up an addiction. Maybe it’s procrastinating ANY exercise, maybe it’s chocolate, maybe it’s taking a cheap shortcut like Ozempic that will literally destroy your heart and your bones. Maybe it’s excuses about why you’re sick or weak that’s somehow beyond your control. Be honest.

And then, make a change

Say no to that bad thing or yes to that good thing for 21 days, and you make or break the habit. Just 21 days can turn your entire life around. Small victories lead to bigger victories, and soon you find yourself standing upright without a slouch anymore, like some crazy blogger you might know.

I believe in you. So does Jesus.

Make yourself strong enough to fight evil, or you become an unwitting participant of evil against your will. That is the hardest truth anyone could ever tell you, but it’s probably the most important thing you’ll ever hear. The battlefield is in your mind. Soft bodies equal soft minds. Soft minds can be manipulated, distracted, brainwashed, and bent by evil forces. Soft bodies look for other humans to tell them what to do, rather than trusting the spark of God that’s within them.

And on that note, I am transitioning into the carnivore diet. I am going to embark on a quest to shed nearly everything from my diet except animal-based products, because I want to shed the sweet tooth for good and gain enough muscle to judo-throw my husband on demand.

A lofty but attainable goal.