Nine Months...

...we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. Romans 5:3-4

Consider this number as you read this blog post: 3:59.4

I gave myself six months on my own in a new place to "make it" -- meaning, find a job. I'd been looking and applying to jobs out of state so I could move from Michigan since January. When I moved to Maryland on March 16th, I had enough savings and compensation to last me roughly through September 1st. After that, I didn't know what I was going to do. Today, I finally received a job offer. The feeling I had at hearing the words "Welcome Aboard" was not elation at my good fortune, nervousness to start a job I hope I'm good at, or even anxiousness to just jump in and go. I was overwhelmed with relief. Calm, happy, and relieved.

I wrote in a post back in June that God is never in a hurry, but he's always on time. How true that is. I've been seeking His blessing to give me a path and way to support myself in this new place, and as great as it would have been for Him to just hand me a job right from the start, He had other plans for me, plans to train me and develop my character.

I know there are people out there still struggling to find work. I feel your pain. It took me nine grueling months of depression and anxiety and failure upon failure after interviews for several positions to finally get an offer of employment. Nine months? Humans give birth to other tiny humans in nine months. It's a long time.

When I think of the word suffering, the images that come to mind are ones of torture and physical pain, like medieval punishments with men being laid bare on a bed of spikes, their bones being pulled out of their sockets while tendons are ripped from the stretching that occurred on the "rack." But physical pain, for as teeth-grinding and stomach-churning as it can be, usually dissipates after a threshold is reached. You zone out, you pass out, you might even check-out through death -- but that physical pain just doesn't last. Today we even have enough medications and therapies that can mask or alleviate the physical pain associated with sickness and injury to the point it's manageable, if not altogether stoppable.

When Paul wrote his letter to the Roman church and explained that suffering is something to take pride in, something to rejoice in, he didn't mean that there should be applause when a Christian is being persecuted or put under physical torture for his/her faith. He meant that the physical suffering the Christians were enduring was creating a mental and spiritual toughness that just cannot be acquired through a privileged and easy existence.

Think of the men and women who sign up to join the U.S. Armed Forces. They go through eight weeks of basic training where their bodies are put through the rigors of physical exercise at boot camp to the point where they are pushed beyond what they believe their limits are. There are two reasons for such physical training:

1. To break down the recruits in the beginning so they can be built back up as stronger and more disciplined soldiers at the end.
2. To prove to them that mental toughness counts for a lot more than physical strength or ability.

May 6, 1954. Roger Bannister is a runner who's been training for this race for nearly seven years since his time on the track and field team at Oxford University in England. His goal? Break the unbreakable 4:00 minute mile barrier. Until now, no one's ever done it. It's called a barrier for a reason, because it seems impossible. And Bannister's tried and failed numerous times before.

3:59.4 minutes is where the watch stops, however, when Roger Bannister crosses the finish line and enters the history books.

When he was waiting for the gun to go off, what do you think he was thinking about? All of the times he has failed to reach his goal of crossing the finish line under 4:00? All the people who have been telling him while he's trained for the past seven years that it's impossible to run a mile in under 4:00? Probably. Trainers and experts were probably replaying in his mind along with pictures of each time he lunged across the line only to miss finishing under 240 by just one or two extra seconds. But he didn't treat any of it like weights around his ankles. With each step, he used those trainings, those failures, those speeches, as fuel to burn his doubts and carry his stride.

The physical suffering he experienced while training was compounded by the mental anguish of not accomplishing his goal in race after race where he failed to run a mile in under 4:00. But he learned to stay steady and keep running his race by training his mind to push past the mental barriers of constant failure because he knew, he believed, that magical 3:59.4 was in reach.

The human mind is powerful. What we think, we become. You can think of yourself as ugly, and hide. You can think of yourself as weak, and shrink. You can think of yourself as a failure, and fail. Many times our thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies. We've all heard the saying, "If you think you can't, you're right."

Roger Bannister went a long time failing and suffering under doubt, but he persevered and showed up at the track to keep running every day. His character was being molded and refined. It was because of his resolve, character developed over time and trials, that he had hope when he set foot on the track on May 6, 1954 and broke that 4:00 barrier.

"Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."