Photo: my girls on Mother’s Day, back when I felt normal

When you’ve got stuff to do — like write a book, perhaps — there’s nothing quite as debilitating as an illness.

But maybe the way to speed up is to slow down.

On Mother’s Day evening, I could tell I was coming down with something. I woke up the next day with a mild fever and a little congestion. It didn’t really bother me all that much, so I just laid low, limited myself to a very easy bike ride in the middle of the day, and produced some podcasts. The next day I felt even better. Assuming I was climbing out of the illness, I actually went on an easy run in the morning and then did a little bike ride in the afternoon. I felt great on both and went to bed thinking I was in the clear.

On Wednesday, I didn’t take any Dayquil, and gradually my fever rose until by evening, I was in pretty rough shape. At some point, I nearly fainted going to the bathroom as it soared into the 103-104 range. OK, I thought — I’m sick.

I spent the next 48 hours in bed, only getting up to go to pee. On Friday, I made it to the doctor, who said I probably needed to just ride it out.

Well, how long is this ride? I feel like I’m pedaling to the moon….

The next day, my wife came down with whatever this is. I was just well enough to take care of the kids — as long as I took Tylenol and Ibuprofen regularly enough to get my fever below 101 — so for the next four days, she sequestered herself in the basement while I managed the rest of the house.

It’s now Thursday. Each day, I wake up with approximately 3% improvement. Last night, I took Tylenol before bed, slept well, and woke up feeling the best I’ve felt. Took my temp: 100.7. I just can’t seem to shake this.

Needless to say, I haven’t really trained at all in 10-12 days. I’m now nervously staring down a race calendar I was once thrilled about: a 135-gravel bike event on June 8, an uphill run/bike double on June 14, an 85-mile gravel event on June 22 and the mid-summer crown jewel, the Vail Hill Climb on July 5. … Plus a road 5-miler in Duluth two weeks later….

Novi delivered my fancy new road race shoes to me in bed the other day. I had just enough energy to peel open the box and get depressed. My Lake Effect contract is in jeopardy. I’ve yet to ride my bike longer than 2 hours this spring, and while my running was thriving and climbing, I feel like this has kicked me back to square one.

There has been a few silver-linings from this entire ordeal, though.

First, I had the chance to read through Steve Magness’ book ‘Win the Inside Game,’ which tangled together a nice man-centered, secular definition of success (actually, come to think of it, I don’t think he ever defined that word explicitly), source of identity, purpose and community. As you can imagine, the margins are littered with my various reactions and rebuttals. There’s also a few splashes of water wrinkling a page here or there, the product of random outbursts as I read and soaked in one of the dozen Epsom salt baths I’ve taken this week.

Look, I like Magness, and he has some good thoughts; there are definitely personal anecdotes from his journey which resonated with my own… but man…. it’s also so bankrupt of truth on a foundational level.

More on that later.

The most important blessing from being sick, however, has been that whatever I’ve lost in physiological fitness I’ve gained exponentially in ‘Dad’ fitness.

Prior to this, the thought of taking care of the kids for even two, much less four or five, whole days — even at 100% health! — would have been on par with the proposition of biking across the country (hold your critical emails, I know I’m pathetic). Like, I could do it, but there’s a high cost. The thought of doing it while trying to recover from the most annoying illness I’ve ever had in my life seemed nearly impossible.

But, here we are. Not only did I discover some underlying deposit of strength to fight off headaches in the name of my children’s play group meeting at Kiddie Korral, I’ve actually really enjoyed the uninterrupted time with Novi and Ella. I’ve felt us grow closer as we read and re-read books, swung and spun at the playground, cooked together, picked up toys, completed puzzles, practiced writing letters and traced dry-erase zig-zags and zebras. Novi even biked with me around the church parking lot — so I guess I have logged a few minutes in the saddle. That Pikes Peak Apex will be a breeze….

But probably the hardest part about being sick, at least for me, is the way it halts my ploductivity. This Doug Wilson-inspired word encompasses all the brick-stacking tasks I’m engaged at each day. It’s the little by little, the note-taking at the stoplight, the book on tape during the commute, the 15 minutes of transcribing my novel, the next workout — all of which are helping get me to where I want to be next year… 10 years from now… and even 30 years from now. In addition to Wilson, my own pastor has also blessed me in this area in some of our cherished one-on-one conversations. We share similar philosophies and a conviction to steward our time, talents, gifts and resources to the best of our abilities for the glory of God and the expansion of His kingdom.

He has even more irons in the fire than I do, which is saying something, so I enjoy bouncing ideas off of him when it comes to time management, cost-benefit analysis, optimizing life, consuming and creating content — while also being a Godly father and husband. Like me, he sees God directing him towards a specific ‘life’s work,’ that thing only he is uniquely equipped and called to complete. While there’s certainly a nuts-and-bolts component to maximizing every moment of the day, this whole stewardship enterprise goes beyond the average Twitter ‘life-hacker’s’ playbook. Faith, obedience — and truth — being the key differences between our approach and theirs.

I think the time I’ve had to read and reflect during this illness has clarified some potential life works. In my work in sports journalism, media and competition, one growing trend I’ve observed is the emergence of mental strength coaches and sports psychologists. Every athlete athlete seems to have one. Need one, even.

In fact, I’m convinced that the illness of the athletic age, if you will, is not improper training, overbearing coaches or parents, unfair legislation, or even doping. It’s the untethered human soul, searching — in all the wrong areas — for what it’s been designed to crave.

While I won’t go deep down the rabbit hole of giving my opinion as to why this is, it’s clear that the harvest is ripe for Christians to come in and give people good, solid answers in the areas of defining success, anchoring identity and finding purpose. Really, this goes well beyond sports, which is why I think my special gift might be communicating across channels — from the 9-year-old to the 99-year-old, from the Olympian to the weekend warrior. Anyway, there’s a book there for sure, and this blog post is insufficient to even outline out all the ideas, but I’m going to try and explain one sliver I’ve been meditating on the last two weeks.

Juxtaposing Magness’ text with Brian Smith’s ‘The Christian Athlete’ — which I also recently read — has made one thing crystal clear: the Biblical worldview just gives better answers to these philosophical questions everyone seems to be asking lately.

I’ll give a very brief blow-by-blow.

At the end of the day, Both Magness and Smith want people to be ‘freed’ up to perform and thrive.

That’s good.

Both call for individuals to detach their sense of self-worth and identity from outcomes — from wins and losses — from what they do on the court.

That sounds good, too.

Now, for the differences.

Smith says our true identity is found in Christ. As a result, it is not contingent upon anything we do because it’s based simply on Christ’s work of redemption on the cross. So, it can’t be altered by wins, money, physical or emotional security, followers or failures. It’s not contingent upon our career, status or family background. The cross not only gives eternal security, but also real contentment — the thing both Smith and Magness can’t help but admit is the ultimate desire for all people in all areas.

Smith cites Paul in Philippians 4:10-13. The last verse is ironically over-used (mostly improperly) by athletes:

“I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”

The secret to being content in all circumstances isn’t to ‘activate your contentment pathways,’ (one of my favorite Magness lines). It’s that no matter if we win or lose in sports or in life, we already have everything we need in Christ.

Magness — on the other hand — wanders around for about 100 pages in his tried-and-true formula of 1) introducing an attention-grabbing emotional story, 2) transitioning said story’s theme into a citation of the Almighty Study, and then 3) making a claim. He repeats this writing strategy over and over and over and over again until you actually start to think that a study on mice in the UK in 2018 actually might hold the answer for why you’re here and how to win at ‘Survival of the Fittest.’ Eventually (this is, ironically, a section of the book which is supposed to provide ‘clarity’ on identity, though it does absolutely the opposite), he essentially argues that people should ‘diversify’ their sources of identity.

In other words, while we all know it’s unstable and unsustainable to try and derive worth from your successes on the track, because obviously at some point, you

1. won’t win,
2. someone better will show up,
3. you’ll run slower than last week,
4. you’ll get hurt and be sidelined for a year,
5. or you’ll inexplicably fail to reach what everyone else said was your true potential

maybe you can still be the nicest guy in your neighborhood, the most caring youth coach in the soccer league, or the friend in your friend group who always offers to bring drinks to watch the big game. Even if you blow the big presentation or get fired or demoted from the A Team to the D Team, you can still feel “good” about your “identity” and “worth” because, after all, you’re the guy with all the funny jokes, you’re know how to always be so positive, you cook the best pre-workout muffins, you were the salesman of the week that one time, you voted for some climate change initiative, you feed your dog organic bits of real beef, and ..

(CUE DRAMATIC MUSIC)

….. you know what really matters: family.

You’re a pretty nice, OK, ‘moral’ parent, generally speaking.

For Magness, the real secret behind finding a stable identity is to just throw out the idea of finding a stable identity! (I wish he could have told me this in the intro…….) Instead, simply ‘diversify’ your sources so that when one crumbles, you’ve got a couple others to lean back on. Sounds like a great plan, right?

I was blown away when I read this, mostly because the payoff was so weak compared to the sheer size of the build up. Upon deeper introspection, however, I realized this segment of the book hit home for another reason entirely: I had applied it myself. For most of my life.

In fact, you could say I was the Pauline version of a Magness discipline!

“Writing cursive on the eighth day, circumcised with the prodigious burden of athletic, artistic and academic potential (OK, I’m maybe being a little dramatic), no one ‘diversified’ their identities like I!”

I floated my worth from whatever enterprise was working the best at the time – from trumpet to running to grades to basketball. All I really cared about was having my ‘thing.’ I had to feel special, and my worth was rooted in how serious I took a certain passion. When it seemed like Julliard wasn’t in the cards, I reshifted the goalposts to all-state. Then to just playing in any college. Then to just being a band director. Then to just being a pretty good musician who was also a, well, just pretty good athlete. That was unique, I guess.

To be honest, my strategy has actually worked pretty well. I realize now that’s because I don’t actually disagree with Magness’ diversify approach as a mechanism. It’s problematic when it is used for pouring the concrete. (This plundering from the Egyptians mindset is why I believe, and I know I’ve already mentioned this, I need to write that book!!). I sort of learned this the hard way when I had one of my ‘mid-life’ crises — as a 21-year-old.

During one particular week during my sophomore year of college, I simultaneously lost two octaves to my trumpet range for no diagnosable reason, received my first non-perfect grade ever, ruining a run of straight-As dating back to day 1 of kindergarten, and embarrassingly dropped out of my first race — the culmination of weeks of failed workouts wherein I felt slower and more tired every single day. The one thing I had going for me was that I was in a great relationship with my now wife, and I knew, even then, she was the one. I could have — and probably did — place some of my sense of ‘I’m still doing OK’ on that fact.

Magness would have been proud.

The problem was, of course, that as great as Christie is, she’s not capable of shouldering that burden. And she’s not supposed to.

One day, as I was repeating whole notes on the five pitches my horn could still produce, I realized how futile my thinking had been. I couldn’t root my identity in any pursuit or even all the pursuits tied together. If I wanted to play that game, life would be really, really exhausting. And, I would have to deny a reality facing me square at every turn: I wasn’t good enough. But I knew Christ was. I tried to remember that.

Another low point occurred five years later. Christie and I were living in a tent in Leadville as we waited for our rental lease to be available. I’d lost my third or fourth job in a row — none of which were my dream gigs to begin with — and was frantically applying for many more, most of which I knew I also wouldn’t like.

‘All I want to do is write. I could write a book,’ I thought. I guess God knew I didn’t have much to say at that point.

A normal person — heck, even an enlightened person up to date on all of Magness’ tactics – would have had to admit I was in a position of almost complete worthlessness. During this period, I was unable to run due to injury, which, albeit being a minor sidenote, is as much of a self-worth killer in and of itself than anything. Not only was I tripping my rollerskis over neighborhood cracks every morning, I was reminded every moment that I had no house and no job. And no prospects of finding a fulfilling line of work in the slightest.

For a married man, that’s pretty much rock bottom.

I’ve been through a few more midlife crises (maybe I’m using that term too lightly) since — that’s because the distance from theological assent and heart change is vast, and God knows it’s extra vast in me – and I’m far from perfect. But I know that’s exactly the number 1 reason Magness’ approach will not work.

Ultimately, he places everything on you.

You define success. You define ‘what matters.’ Thus, not only is everything completely arbitrary (and therefore lands with about as much satisfaction as when you declare “Next score wins!” even though you’re trailing 96-0), but you have to shoulder the weight of figuring it all out. You have to decipher the complexities of the world’s demands, integrate society’s trends with the latest scientific research and navigate outside pressures and expectations with internal ones. You have to learn when to ‘let go,’ and figure out how to accept ‘the messiness’ and ‘live in the tension’ and also when to keep up with the Joneses – or not… it sometimes matters, but also, maybe it doesn’t…. except WHEN IT DOES. You need to pull yourself up and strive when it counts but also do the dance correctly and ‘activate’ your contentment pathways (did I already bring this line up!? Gosh…it’s sooooo rich) from time to time.

The last sentence of Magness’ book is very, very telling. It’s two words long:

Choose wisely.

Yeah, no joke.

No wonder self-help coaches are raking in the dough!!!! If I ever decided to go down this path, I would need to have my sports psyche on speed dial!!!!

Here’s my TLDR advice: read Smith’s book.

Put another way, here’s an alternative to Magness’ 271 pages of gobbly-gook (and I say that in the nicest possible way): what if there actually was a way to have your identity, value and sense of self-worth be perfectly stable, no matter what?

There’s a lot I need to expound upon here — again, giving these answers in a readable form, in a way that is applicable to the elite athlete and the person who works out three times a week, might be my life’s work — but since I don’t have time to write that book yet, here’s a couple of quick-hitting thoughts:

The Bible teaches:

• Your worth is based on the fact that you are created in the image of God.
• Your value comes from the fact that this all-powerful God knit you together in your mother’s womb. He thinks you’re one of one.
• Your mission is simple: Glorify God in all you do. Work as if you’re working for the LORD — be like the one who took five talents and made them into 10 — in other words, be the best steward you can be. This is success.
• What about life though? How do you navigate the proverbial ‘ups and downs?’ Well, this God, who sees you as one of one, promises to preordain everything that will come to pass in your life, for your benefit and His glory. Because of this — and only because of this — what your care about matters (from the most insignificant curiosity, to that random water color painting you made last week out of the blue, to your unpopular podcast you can’t seem to get off the ground, to your obsession with qualifying for wave 3 of the Birkie). Because of this – and only because of this – you can have peace in the failures and the successes, the injuries and the breakthroughs, the triumphs and the tragedies. No matter what happens, there’s a reason for it because God’s hand is behind it and he’s drawing you to Himself.
• Finally, your ultimate identity is found in being a child of God. You didn’t do anything to earn this, and there’s nothing you could do to have it stripped away. It’s based on Christ’s work on the cross. Whether you’re a coach today and an insurance salesman tomorrow, a runner one month and a bad pickleball player the next, a winner in the eyes of the media or the biggest draft bust in history – none of that impacts who you are because it simply can’t.

Alright, I better stop for now. First, one more thing.

Reader, friend, athlete: you don’t have to build your house on the sand. … or build multiple beach front properties — and then study weather patterns, build disaster mitigations and buy more sandbags — just in case one of them gets swept away to sea.

Build your house on the Rock.

There’s a lot of deep talkers within this topic, and I’m sure I’ll address some of them in an upcoming podcast.

Maybe this week.

Maybe when (if?) my fever finally goes away.

Maybe next year….OR….

….maybe when my kids are all done with playgrounds. Maybe when they’ve graduated from college and are married themselves I can sit down and try and remember it all. Or pull out those sticky notes from the stoplights.

Maybe then I can finally write that book. At least I’ll finally have something worth saying.