Winning the Gold Medal as a Christian Writer

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up. (Hebrews 12: 1-3, NLT)

The Rio 2016 Olympics are on right now, distracting me from my dual August deadlines. Like most Canadians, I can ignore the Summer Games more easily than the Winter Games, so I'm limiting myself to the highlights. I can't help but think of some similarities writers — especially Christian writers — have with these athletes, though.

1. Passion breeds discipline. Face it, it takes a long time to become one of the fastest swimmers in the world. It also takes time to learn writing techniques and write a complete novel. It can be depressing to think about how far from perfect that first novel will be. Without passion for the sport of writing, we'd give up our training in a week or two, but hang in there. Anything worth achieving is worth working for.

2. Visualize. Whether visualizing a gold medal sliding over your head to the strains of "Oh, Canada!" or visualizing a paperback with your name on it, there is something powerful about invoking our imagination. While I'm not preaching a 'name it and claim it' doctrine, we are far more likely to achieve goals we can articulate and visualize than those that are some vague dream of success, whatever that entails.

3. Find a coach or mentor. As athletes spend many hours practicing in solitude, so do writers, but without a coach, it's difficult to know where you need work and what you can do to improve. For writers, this coaching might come from a variety of sources, like a critique group or an online writers' community. An athlete hires one coach, then follows that one person's advice in all areas. As writers, it's useful to choose one primary mentor who's successfully played the game before us rather than taking advice from dozens of wannabes.

4. Take care of yourself, body and soul. Just because we're not competing as gymnasts or cyclists doesn't mean we should be couch potatoes. We need to honor the body that God gave us, fueling it appropriately and taking it out for exercise. In the same way, we need to develop our spiritual muscles. How can we write Truth that will touch readers if we aren't in touch with God ourselves? We need to feed on His word and exercise our spiritual muscles

5. Remember who you're playing for. Athletes from around the world are wearing specially designed uniforms this week, making it obvious what country they represent. The flags of their homelands fly high, and the national anthems are ready to be played at a moment's notice. As writers who are believers, remember that the world is watching you, too. You wear the cloak of Christianity, and there are standards to uphold!

 6. Celebrate! While gold medals are the highest standard in the Olympics, you'll find many non-medaling athletes celebrating, too. Many are simply thrilled to perform for their country. Others are striving for their personal best. Others are overcoming hardship of some kind, and finishing the race at all is a huge achievement. Whatever the results for you as a writer, remember that you are blessed by God. Celebrate wherever you find yourself as you follow your calling to write for Him.

There are many other facets of the writing career that parallel professional sports, but these six stood out to me as I contemplated this blog post. What other lessons do you feel we can learn from Olympic athletes?

Valerie Comer's life on a small farm in western Canada provides the seed for stories of contemporary inspirational romance. Like many of her characters, Valerie and her family grow much of their own food and are active in the local food movement as well as their church. She only hopes her creations enjoy their happily ever afters as much as she does hers, shared with her husband, adult kids, and adorable granddaughters.

Valerie is a USA Today bestselling author and a two-time Word Award winner. She has been called “a stellar storyteller” as she injects experience laced with humor into her green clean romances. Visit her at ValerieComer.com.

Toughness, Strength and Grace (P. A. Black)

Mental toughness and emotional strength.

How do we rate in either of these qualities? And how do we define and measure them? I’m sure psychologists could provide descriptions and evaluations.
Although a layman in such matters, I’ve recognized mental toughness in others when seeing it in action and have marvelled as emotional strength made its presence felt.

The Sochi Winter Olympics are now history, and our Canadian competitors did us proud, treating us to golden moments, silver linings and bronze delights—all cause for celebration. Sure, some athletes’ dreams completely dissolved, while others’ hopes melted into the consolation of lesser success.

Freakish tumbles and falls and lower than expected scores no doubt hammered the psyche and gnawed away at the confidence of certain of those athletes who had worked long and hard to get where they were. Who could blame them for feeling dejected and wallowing in the emotional blues!

But that’s not what I heard in some interviews with our Olympians. Their responses to their disappointments nudged me to adopt this topic. Perhaps you picked up on similar points as I, in following the media coverage. I’ll mention only a couple of situations, rather than recounting a raft of difficulties and disappointments. Positive perspectives often shone through.

Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, our ice dance silver medalists, hoped to cap their ice-dancing career by winning gold. That didn’t happen. However, they expressed satisfaction that they had given their absolute best. Commentators remarked that they’d laid down a gold medal performance in their final skate. The couple warmly congratulated their American friends and rivals, Meryl Davies and Charlie White, who won gold. That’s the spirit­­­—mental toughness and emotional strength at work.

Whereas public and social media recorded gripes that the Virtue-Moir team and Canada were robbed through biased judging or alleged collusion between Russian and American judges, Scott and Tessa demonstrated a mature attitude and a balanced perspective.

Despite issues of possible divided loyalties on part of their coach, their mental toughness, in part, enabled them to give that stellar performance, and emotional strength enabled them to accept the judges’ scoring. Whether or not the couple now have doubts about the judging and coaching wouldn’t change the fact of the strength and grace they showed at the time.

These qualities are akin to the spiritual quality of grace. A genuinely gracious response to disappointment, especially if there’s reason to suspect someone has worked against us or inadequately for us, shows not weakness but strength.

History was made when Canada’s Jennifer Jones team was the first in Olympic ladies

Courtesy of CBC

curling to complete a round-robin tournament undefeated. At that point the semi-finals and finals were still to be played, and the matter of mental toughness came up in conversation between Jones and CBC’s Jian Gomeshi. Compared to Canadian spectators the Russians are extremely loud and vocal, yet Jones said that she and her team had trained themselves to shut out the shouting and concentrate on their game.

The exclamation mark was put to the Jones team’s mental toughness and ability to concentrate on the matter in hand, as their historic undefeated status at Sochi climaxed in their gold medal win.  

Shutting out a cacophony of conflicting and competing voices to concentrate on a matter in hand is a tough task for me. But isn’t that what life requires of us? We should know and understand what’s going on around us, and yet maintain our focus on what’s required of us.

Mental toughness, emotional strength and living in grace and demonstrating it also require us to understand ourselves – being cognizant of what’s going on inside us. Developing those skills and qualities will greatly help us in becoming faithful followers of Jesus Christ, who supremely demonstrated those qualities.

We are urged, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). 

His—the supreme gold medal ‘performance’!

~~+~~

Peter A. Black is a freelance writer in Southwestern Ontario, and is author of “Parables from the Pond” – a children's / family book (mildly educational, inspirational in orientation, character reinforcing). Finalist – Word Alive Press. ISBN: 1897373-21-X.His inspirational column, P-Pep! appears weekly in The Guide-Advocate. His articles have appeared in 50 Plus Contact and testimony, and several newspapers in Ontario. Peter’s current book project comprises a collection of 52 column articles.

Raise Your Gaze
~~+~~