What are you Training for?
Natalie Stembel // UGA Student & Worship Intern
Hi. My name is Noot. The government calls me Natalie; I seldom answer. I love the color green. It reminds me of life and peace and the green pastures we’re welcomed into with our Heavenly Father by our side. I like to workout and to feel the accomplishment of pushing the limits of my strength. I’m a visual person. I experience the Lord in mighty ways when I get to interact with His creation. If you read nothing else that I write, read this:
I was created in the image of my Father. I was born into a world that, although made in His image, has been warped by the curse of sin. Sin is a part of me. Only by the grace and kindness of He who called us into His eternity, my story doesn’t have to end there. These things are true of every human. Thankfully, oh so thankfully, my story continues. Although sin is a part of me, and will be as long as the Lord keeps me on this earth for His purpose, it no longer steals, kills, and destroys. In Galatians, it says we have been crucified with Christ. It says, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” What wonderful news! Although sin is a part of me, Christ is now too. He lives within me. He lives within me! In 2 Corinthians, after talking about what it means to be with Jesus and be known by Him in intimacy like this, it says when we are in Christ the old has ‘passed away’. It says to behold, that the new has come. In Hebrew, the word behold means “to fix the eyes upon; to see with attention; to observe with care.” In Hebrew, to behold means to ‘observe with care’ that our new life in Christ has come. To see with attention, to fix our eyes upon, He who saved us and called us to a holy calling, abolishing life and death and bringing immortality to light through the gospel.
Okay. That was a lot all at once. Let’s recap: The Lord created me. I have seen the Lord through the abundance of His presence in His world. And I live in a world that, while created perfectly, now experiences the consequences that come only from living in sin.
One product of when man originally disobeyed God in Genesis 3 (known as The Fall) is the growing crisis of mental health. Let me be very clear: Reading Genesis 1, we see that the Lord created earth, everything in it, and the human mind. And it was very good! Satan, referred to kindly as the father of lies in John 8, did not start calling shots until Genesis 3. This is when we see the Fall of Man, an account written by Moses, of the first time man disobeyed God. This opened the door for sin to enter the world that the Lord had made. As someone who knows what it means to pray and feel the lament of Psalm 77, “my soul refuses to be comforted,” I’m familiar with Satan as the Father of Lies.
It hasn’t been a battle void of all peace. It ebbs and flows. I’ve found that a weighted vest helps my mental state. It grounds me. The prison my mind has chained me to often makes it feel that my mind is stuck but my body is floating away. Drifting. For me, the term ‘live in the moment’ means more than the fall decor section at Hobby Lobby. It means changing my environment to remind me of where I am. Often, that looks like wearing a weighted vest. I use it to run, hike, and walk. The energy required to workout increases exponentially with a weighted vest, and both exercise and the weight calms my brain and slows the panic that so often takes captive my ability to think logically. When I’m not exercising, I use a sandbag or two from the vest and lay them on my chest or in my lap, which grounds me with the added benefit of not making me sweat profusely. Recently, I’ve discovered a metronome app. My brain notices sound textures and gets easily overwhelmed by them. I listen to the metronome at 40 bpm and it gives my brain a sound that is consistent and predictable when my world is spinning. If I’m listening to music, I will often also have the metronome playing. If we’re having a conversation and I’m wearing headphones, I’m listening to the metronome. It does not distract me; it’s what makes it possible to listen.
As it turns out, wearing a weighted vest on campus with headphones and a look of laser focus causes people to turn heads. I often get asked, “What are you training for?”
I laugh every time I’m asked this, but not because the question is unreasonable. I laugh because that question reminds me: “while some use a vest to train for something, I need it to survive.” It has become one of the clearest examples of the Lord’s nearness.
I am training for something. Looking back, I’ve lived in survival mode for as long as I can remember. I’ve never been great at thinking about the future. It’s hard to devote energy to thinking 5 or 10 or 50 years down the road when it takes all the energy I have to function.
On Saturday, I managed to drop a couch on my foot while 3 people were sitting on it. (Please refrain from questions on ‘how’ because I have no answers to give.) That night, I slept in a hammock. I drove home 2 ½ hours the next day and walked almost 1.8 miles. Sunday night I was alone for the first time since Friday. Although I tried to fall asleep, the pain and wrong sensations in my foot reminded me of the psalmist who said, “You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak.” That night was filled with Miss Congeniality 2, Cool Ranch Doritos, checking the hours of the health center, calling the emergency room to see if they thought I needed to come in, and rest. And ice. And compression. And elevation.
Monday was filled with x-rays, waiting rooms, crying while waiting in pitch black patient rooms because the light hurts your eyes, and the overwhelming reminders of how Jesus calls me a person for His own possession (1 Peter 2:9) . When I foolishly drove myself to urgent care, I saw the Lord’s gentleness in a friend reminding me I could leave and go somewhere else after I waited 90 minutes and still wasn’t seen. As I foolishly drove myself to the health center, I saw the Lord’s creativity when He gave me the idea to call a friend who could tell me funny stories, giving me a fighting chance of stopping the tears enough to make out the lines on the highway, precariously balancing my right foot over the gear shift as my left foot controlled the pedals. The fact that I made it to the health center alive shows me that when Paul said in Philippians 4 that the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus, He meant it literally. When David said surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23), I thought, goodness and mercy are not words that would describe my life at all. If this is possible, it at least must not begin until after my earthly body dies. The Lord reminds me that not only is it possible, but it is available to me. Goodness and mercy are words that can describe my life!
I am now at what I affectionately refer to as ‘my home house.’ I still have no answers on what exactly I did to my foot. The pain is increasing exponentially. The love of The Father is not. He loves me infinitely and always has. Although I am currently more aware of His love because I have ample time for sitting and pondering, this has no effect on the magnitude of His love.
Next time someone asks me what I’m training for, I will have a better idea of what I can tell them. I will explain that the Lord has been intricately knitting together each moment in love, allowing the pain to serve a purpose in His kingdom. I will tell them the good news. Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a perfect life so that He could take on the wrath of God for sinners, of whom I am foremost. He died the death I deserved, taking on shame and humility and foot pain that doesn’t ever cease. I will invite them into the loving kindness that He so graciously invited me into.
While looking for a verse to end this with, the Lord so carefully chose two from Romans to remind me of.
I thought the verse I was looking for was in Romans 16. When I opened that chapter I saw the same verse that I used to get myself through every moment in South Asia this summer, and though my current state is much more debilitating, it’s also a rather humorous verse to meditate on in this time.
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you (Romans 16:20).
When we would wake up in South Asia to children we had never seen before sitting on our bed, I would tell myself that the God of peace will soon crush Satan under my feet. Some of the guys I went overseas with had the brilliant idea to get bottles of water for the team before we boarded our final flight. We graciously accepted, oblivious to the quickly approaching deadline to board. Three of the nine had already boarded, and Alexis and I were waiting for the guys who went for water with their luggage, passports, and boarding passes. When the flight attendant approached, I kindly reminded him that 4 of my friends were buying the rest of us water and we were holding their passports and nothing he said could make me get on that plane without them. It was at this moment that the God of peace reminded me that the God of peace will soon crush Satan under my feet.
Today, though, I am extra thankful that the God of peace will soon crush Satan under my feet because I know that my foot will be crushing nothing but an ice pack.
After I realized the verse I was looking for was not in Romans 16, or 20 (which doesn’t exist), or 18, or 15, He led me to chapter 10. As I was writing this I questioned many times whether or not I should add something, delete something, start new, choose a new topic…
Then I read verse 15,
How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!
Oh man. Thank you Jesus! How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!!! He used this verse to remind me that none of my words mean anything, but that my feet are beautiful because I preach the good news.
Natalie is a third year Cognitive Science major with a minor in American Sign Language. She has been coming to Watty since her freshman year, and has been a Worship intern since sophomore year. On Tuesdays, she spends her evenings convincing the Barnes’ Tribe that Cheez-it Grooves are indeed a type of cheese (and the best type). She also had the privilege of spending the summer in South Asia with Watkinsville. She is passionate about the church body and sees the Lord moving immensely through the ways He prepares His disciples to carry out Matthew 28:18-20!
HAVE A COOL IDEA FOR A BLOG POST?
Email college@watkinsville.org with your idea and we’ll talk about posting it here!
Check out our most recent posts below!
Brentsen Wyatt // UGA Student & Worship Intern