Giving Ourselves Permission to Grow

I’ve never considered myself athletic. Sports and disciplined workout regimes were for athletic, coordinated people; I was not one of those people. I’ve enjoyed jogging for most of my life, but that didn’t make me think of myself as someone athletic or strong. Anyone could put one foot in front of the other. I ran because I wasn’t athletic enough to do any other sport!

I felt just as intimated by things like strength training and yoga. The few times I tried either, I quickly found an excuse to never do them again. It was awkward and uncomfortable. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I didn’t fit in with those around me who knew what to do with ease. Best just to stick with running.

But recently I made a commitment rather unlike me: I started weekly strength training with a personal trainer. I’m in my second trimester of pregnancy, which might seem like a strange time to begin. But as my pregnancy progressed, my lower back had begun to ache constantly. My runs had become extremely uncomfortable. I had a feeling that unless I intentionally focused on gaining strength to help adjust to my changing body, I would soon stop exercising altogether.

And I didn’t want to do that. I would soon be facing the most physically difficult experience of my life, and I wanted to enter that experience with a good relationship to my body—physically and mentally. I wanted to be and feel strong and healthy. So I found a trainer with expertise in strength-training exercises that are safe and helpful during pregnancy, and I got started.

And something completely unexpected has been happening: I like it. Under the guidance of a skilled, enthusiastic trainer, I’ve started to feel confident in the routines. I feel stronger. My back pain has nearly completely gone away, and I’m enjoying my runs again. After our baby arrives and after I recover from delivery. I’m planning on working with this trainer again to rebuild strength, and I’m genuinely looking forward to it.

It’s the kind of experience that makes you reflect on how drastically the way we label ourselves can limit how we experience life. I didn’t think of myself as coordinated or athletic, so I stayed away from strength training for most of my life, even though I knew it would be healthy for me. Now that I’m having a good experience, it’s almost hard to remember the misgivings that used to weigh so heavily.

How many areas of our life do we give up on because we’re sure we’re not “that kind” of person?

It makes me appreciate how much the apostle Paul’s descriptions of transformation in Christ are focused on transforming identities—how we understand and define ourselves. It’s as if he knew that lasting change would be impossible as long believers in Jesus kept defining themselves by who they used to be—definitions that couldn’t begin to capture the possibilities of what their new lives in Christ could look like.

Paul worked with believers struggling with every sort of sin and temptation you can imagine, but he didn’t address them as mess-ups or define them by what was wrong with them. He addressed them as saints, dearly beloved, God’s children (Romans 1:7). He continually reminded them that they weren’t who they used to be (1 Corinthians 6:11). Through Christ’s Spirit, the creator of the universe was at work in their lives, making them the first masterpieces of God’s renewed creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). They belonged to Christ, and this changed everything (Romans 8:1, 9–17).

How might our walk with Christ change if we let go of some of the ways we used to define ourselves? If we open ourselves to the kind of growth that could happen when we let God define who we are in His kingdom?

This doesn’t mean that we’ll suddenly become superheroes, or that we should try to take advantage of God’s power to become whoever we want to be. It means, instead, that when we stop clinging to those old identities that we thought defined us, we can let God write the story of what His redemption looks like in our lives, growing closer to Christ as He teaches us how to love.

–Written by Monica La Rose. Used by permission from the author.