“I don’t know what it's like to focus on my own race”, said my client after our conversation of how her circumstances were preventing her from reading her Bible, praying and feeling connected to God. As we spoke it became clear that she was fighting the battle the carnal way vs the spiritual way.

“Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” Galatians 3:3

My client (who I will call Chrissy in order to respect her privacy) is a faithful Christian. She has been attending the same congregation for years. Recently, various things have happened that have been heartbroken for her to watch. She saw that members were becoming divided because they fetl unseen, labeled and misunderstood.  She tried to do something about it, however she became weary. Over time her relationship with God had taken a hit. Hearing her pain, and understanding where she was coming from, I began to try to point her towards God. 

As a coach, I enter my sessions trusting God will guide me, give me discernment on how to coach my client to move forward. For me, there is not enough training I can do to be a good coach that will help me help my clients who come to me with certain struggles. I truly believe that it is the Spirit of God that gives me wisdom and discernment in every session. It is he who gives me discernment to know which tools to apply in every given situation. That’s exactly what happened in my session with Chrissy and I am grateful she gave me permission to share about it.

To begin after hearing her, I displayed Proverbs 13:2 (our sessions are via Zoom) and asked Chrissy to focus on what this scripture is saying.

I know in my own life, when I put my hope in other things or people, it hurts my relationship with God, maybe this is what’s happening to Chrissy, so I decided to start there. As she read the scripture he was able to see what it was communicating, but it didn’t quite help her heart move forward. I have found that when we have been struggling with something and find ourselves hopeless about it, there are many ways to respond. I can, at times, be critical, apathetic, self-righteous, depressed, controlling and the list goes on.  Chrissy had become tired. As we tried to process and apply this verse to her situation, she was unable to truly let it sink in. Sometimes our feelings are so intense that it can be hard to grasp concepts that can help be unstuck.

As we talked she said, “I don’t know Olivia, I am tired. I feel like I was only supposed to run a certain distance and know I am running in circles.” She was onto something. I truly believe that my clients are experts in themselves. They know how they feel and how they think, it’s my job to ask questions to help them move forward so they can reach their goal.

I proceeded to find a picture of a woman running a race. I said to Chrissy, this woman is getting ready to start this race. What do you see here? “She is in position” she replied. Yes, we understand she trains beforehand. But what we will be focusing on is not the beforehand training but what she must do as she positions herself to start the race. She has to center herself, ground herself. If she simply began to run, most likely she would stumble along the way. Grounding herself is a necessary part to give her the best chance of successfully running the race.

I usually jokingly say to my clients when I am about to share something difficult. Remember, you are paying me to coach you! Chrissy, it seems you forgot to run your race by first grounding and centering yourself, quickly and without hesitation she replied, “This is the thing, I was not taught to be on this track alone.  My Christian peers were supposed to be running with me. Now I feel like I am trying to help them because they are all over the place. I can’t get going because I am stuck helping them.” This insight was gold and allowed us to see what was the obstacle that was preventing her from praying, reading her Bible and connecting to God as her heart desired.

“Oh my gosh Chrissy, that’s it, the key here is to get you to ground yourself so you can race again.”  I was confident that Chrissy knows how to do that, she had just  forgotten. I encouraged her that most likely she would not be a faithful Christian if she did not ground herself spirutually as she entered spiritual battles. The fact she is still standing means she has chosen to put her hope in God, she ground herself to run her race, she had just forgotten.

As we continued to talk, I shared how her insight was so powerful. We talked about how it is so easy to stop and focus on the other teammates in the race, but the fact is, when they stumble we can’t help them and encourage them if we haven’t grounded ourselves. We can’t help them if we forget that we to have a race to win. Ultimately there is a race to win. To win the group race, each person must run his own race and do his part.

“From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Ephesians 4:16

After my session I contemplated on how I can forget that I need to run my own race. My part should not be dependent on looking to my left or right to see if everyone else is running theirs. I have never seen a runner in a race looking sideways or backwards to see how the other runners are doing. They are focused on their race. Also it is impressive to me how relay teams just trust that their teammate is going to pass the baton when they put their hand out to get it. They have to learn to trust that the other members are running their race. Similar to runners, I must remember, rather than running alone or with a team, I need to run my race, stay in my lane, do my part and stay focused on winning. Regardless of the result I will be confident I did what I needed to win the race. 

This session with Chrissy was good and I was left asking myself, am I running the race marked out for me? Am I grounded before I start running? The fact is I am not in some areas of my life. I am grateful to be aware where I have been slacking. Like Chrissy I am excited to re-focus on winning my spiritual race. 

Chrissy left me a message shortly after our session and said, “Thank you for the spiritual focus, I look forward to digging into Hebrews about the race marked out for me, I am excited to have a different focus.” If Chrissy does that, if she grounds herself spiritually before she starts racing, God will provide the discernment and wisdom she needs to move forward; after all, He put her on that track. He believes she can run that race!

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  Hebrews 12:1

Thank you for reading!