The Farmer's carry of Summer 2020

 Over the summer, COVID shut the gyms down in Arizona so I ended up doing many, so many, garage work outs. One of the workouts had farmer’s carries. All you need for this is a pair of dumbbells or something super heavy to carry like a brief case at both sides of your body. I watched a very buff man on YouTube give a tutorial about how to do it with good form and good technique, then got to work. How hard can holding a dumbbell in each hand be? Really? How hard is that? I hold my toddlers hand all that time and that is a feat in of itself.

I got my arms rocked by that farmer’s carry that day. It was a Sunday, 1pm in the afternoon in May and I set out to carry these weights 50 meters down the sidewalk in front of my house. The exercise is incredibly “grippy”; how ironic. It burns your forearms, upper back, shoulders, and legs. There are different types of grips you can use for it and I learned in about forty-five seconds over the summer, I better use a different grip because what I chose was not helping me and the longer the workout got, the more force my fingers had to create to keep hold of the dumbbells. My forearms gave out first, my palms were killing me, and I dropped my way to aggressive 35 lbs dumbbells on the sidewalk. The next thing I hear is this child yelling from his screen door, “WHAT IS SHE DOING? IS SHE OK? DO WE GO HELP?” and their front door quickly slamming shut. Awesome, my neighbors think the lady down the street is nuts. I picked up my dumbbells and got back into my garage as quick as I could with an enormous amount of embarrassment on my face. I got into my garage and prayed for no more farmer’s carries. My mistake was that I gripped the dumbbells so tightly by the way I wrapped my thumbs around the weights that my forearms started to cramp up. It was pretty painful and pretty awful. I felt it for at least two days after.

The grip I selected to carry the dumbbell did not do me any good, it was counterproductive. I have since been using a hook grip which has saved my forearms. This summer fiasco got me thinking. It is not about how tight you grip something but the way you carry it, using the most effective method.

Life has this pattern of ebbing and flowing, pulling back and pushing forward. Along with the ebb and flow, we go through seasons of life. Seasons tend to bring things to the surface that maybe we have pressed down, ignored, or did not see even if our eyes were wide open. The issues that get brought to the surface break us to the point where we realize that the way we used to view aspects of life, our thought processes, or even the “code” we live by no longer works or helps us where we currently are at emotionally, situationally, or spiritually. We become conscious to all of this usually because of some painful, hard, possibly life altering circumstance and we can no longer go back to the our old ways because they do not work. We are then pushed towards changing. There lies the under tone of life; regression and rebirth, that builds us up and launches us, creating room for growth and expansion.

Seasons can break us. But we get to choose to let them break us in a good way that brings a more authentic, more you-er version of you that you were so uniquely created to be. I am going to be honest, to my own detriment I have found that with some of the seasons I have gone through that push me toward changing the way I think, act, or even stand for, I have tended to dig my heels in and grip even tighter to my patterns of comfort. Because that is easier right? It is incredibly easy to grip on to old, familiar, learned ways of thinking, operating, and doing life. Here’s the part that gets me every single time; the more I grip on to the old patterns, the more miserable I become, the more bitter I get, the more separated from community I become, the more lies about myself I believe, and the more I get in my own way of growth. This year I have been pushed into chaotic situations. In the lonely, awful, depressing, dark, painful middle of it all, I discovered I needed to do some deep soul-searching prayer and meditation in order to find a new way of experiencing life. I had to let go of my patterns of thinking, behavior, and parts of life that were crumbling around me; I had nothing left to stand on. The chaos pushed me into learning, seeking out, and building an entire new way of acting, thinking, and being.

 The theme for me this year has been “open hands”. I hold people, situations, my job, my family, my thoughts, my emotions, you name it with a looser and flexible grip. Sounds crazy right? By doing this I have given up trying to micromanage, evaluate, nitpick, over analyze, judge, and control every aspect of my life and who I am. It has allowed me to live with more self-freedom and gratitude. I give forgiveness, love, and grace differently than how I used to. I have a lot more grace for myself where before I had this running dialogue with my inner critic; we were tight buddies. I have had different chaotic situations break this me year, I think we all have, but I have a different way of dealing with the chaos with a deeper understanding entrenched in who I have been created to be.

 With a new loosened grip, I can more easily walk-through life better able to use my hands to give, receive, and reach out in love, grace, and kindness. I even react a little calmer to situations, people, and day-to-day life. I can approach a situation with less stress and anxiety, which puts me in a position ready to learn, listen, love, and be propelled forward into a more authenticity.                        

The invitation has always been there to live like this. I just forget to accept it and live by it at times; maybe I foolishly thought I could manage it my own way and it would all turn out just fine. By the way, I have by no means perfected any of this at all. It still takes mental effort and a lot of conscious thought to break my old thought patterns, understanding, and past behaviors to personally get to this point of 2020. I have to say though, it has been worth it. I have a deeper sense and insight of forgiveness, grace, love, and compassion. The best part is we are all invited to this! The invitation has been there the entire time. All we have to do is respond by being ready to be propelled forward and to love more genuinely and fully.

Shalom,

 

Rachelle