Devil in a Red Dress

Training isn't always easy. In fact, most days it's extremely difficult. Most beginners PR every day, and every day is a new experience filled with joy and rainbows. Anyone who has been a weightlifter for any serious amount of time knows that you don't PR every day, and most days are a serious struggle. I feel like every morning, while I am lying in bed, I wonder how the heck I am every going to lift a weight. "I'm tired, I'm sore, I feel like crap, I feel like a 600 pound gorilla beat me up in my sleep last night." These are the thoughts running trough my head. "Maybe today is a good day for a rest day..." is the tempting phrase that runs through my head.

One of the weightlifters I respect and admire the most, Jon North, refers to this phenomenon as The Devil in a Red Dress. She is the beautiful devil that tempts you to quit, to take it easy, to take a day off. She is the warm bed, the promise of pain free muscles, the hope of un-achy joints. But she is empty promises. She is deceptive. She is misleading. If you trust her, you will not take two steps forward, but two steps back. This is a reality and an experience every serious weightlifter will undergo. When you train hard, your body pays a price, and often times we think that means we are doing something wrong. "I must be overtraining. My programming must be too hard. I must be doing too much volume, or too much or intensity, or both. I must be doing something wrong." Lies! When your body hurts the most, you must beat it into submission without refrain. You must trust your coach. You must trust the program. And you must persevere.

There have been many times that I have considered quitting, or just doing weightlifting recreationally. My doubts and insecurities are not just limited to the platform though- I often feel that same way sitting in the pew on Sunday mornings. For the Christian, not every day is a mountaintop experience. For me, it seems from time to time I experience seasons of spiritual dryness. In these seasons, I feel that no matter what I am doing, I haven't done enough to earn God's love, and as a result I am not feeling his presence. My time in the word is dry, my prayers seem to just bounce off the ceiling, and I don't feel any joy in worship. "I must be doing something wrong." St. John of the Cross, a Roman Catholic Saint of the 16th century, wrote a poem entitled The Dark Night of the Soul in which he identifies the causes, and the benefits of such time:

"Souls begin to enter this dark night when God, gradually drawing them out of the state of beginners (those who practice meditation on the spiritual road), begins to place them in the state of proficients (those who are already contemplatives), so that by passing through tis state they might reach that of the perfect, which is the divine union of the soul with God."

"He leaves them in such dryness that they not only fail to receive satisfaction and pleasure from their spiritual exercises and works, as they formerly did, but also find these exercises distasteful and bitter."

"This glad night and purgation causes many benefits even though to the soul it seemingly deprives it of them."

"The first and chief benefit this dry and dark night of contemplation causes is the knowledge of self and one's own misery. Besides the fact that all the favors of God imparts to the should are ordinarily wrapped in this knowledge, the aridities and and voids of the faculties in relation to the abundance previously experienced and the difficulty encountered in this practice of virtue make the soul recognize its own lowliness and misery, which was not apparent in the time of its prosperity." 

"As a result the soul recognizes the truth about its misery, of which it was formerly ignorant. When it was waling in festivity, gratification, consolation, and support in God, it was more content, believing that it was serving God in some way... Now that the soul is clothed in these other garments of labor, dryness, and desolation, and its former lights have been darkened, it possesses more authentic lights in this most excellent and necessary virtue of self-knowledge. It considers itself to be nothing and finds no satisfaction in self because it is aware that of itself it neither does nor can do anything."

Struggles are evidence of our sanctification, our passing from "beginners" to "proficients". Dryness is God's way of making us seek Him more deeply, and thus being rewarded with a more intimate and life giving relationship with him. The Devil in a red dress wants us to believe that we aren't good enough, that we will never be enough to please God, and that He is withholding His presence from us forever. But thanks be to God that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). We must trust God when He says he "will take great delight in us and rejoice over us with singing" (Zephaniah 3:17).

Hold fast brothers, persevere, and trust in His love. Blessings