Getting through tough spots in the road is hard enough, but not understanding the nature or importance of the problem you face makes it so much worse. A good coach will clarify what the challenge you face is and help you see that you need it if you are ever to grow. Muscles need resistance to break down and re-build - it's how growth happens.

People who really love us will challenge us to change. Challenge comes to us dressed as pain, but it's a gift. Early on in a child's life, it's a mom's job to protect us from pain. But smart moms will have a vision for their child's maturation and will allow them to experience increasing amounts of pain in order to help them grow.

Good coaches, like good moms, see the bigger picture of how growth happens and will help you embrace challenge. Too many psychologists miss the coaching opportunities that challenge brings when they allow their fee-paying clients to wallow in a posture of victimization. "Ain't it awful," is the wrong response.

Better to face into the challenge and grow.

A lot of World Racers we coach struggle to deal with the challenge of their own teammates. They find reasons not to trust and miss the opportunity to grow by withdrawing or hiding behind their fear of rejection. And if I as a coach don't probe that issue, they may remain stuck - unable to progress. They may go for years trapped in patterns of superficiality.

Usually there's an even deeper factor behind the issue I'm probing. For example, perhaps their fear is rooted in the rejection they felt from their father. They can't risk going deeper with their teammates because it touches that unhealed wound.

But life change only happens as the status quo is challenged. And this is an especially important principle to embrace when the status quo has been built around a lie. If you believe a lie like, "I am stronger when I keep the hard parts of my life secret than I would be if others knew my junk," then you need someone to call you out.

We must be ready to face the areas where others have hurt us or we'll continue the broken behavior that has resulted. We will never be effective ministers until we've dealt with our own junk. We can go and have a good time, but we need to experience healing before we can help heal.

Life is too short to miss the parts of it that contain pain. It may seem like an impossible challenge, but God promises that no test or challenge will come our way that isn't common to the experience that others have. And he further promises that he'll give us what we need to make it through the challenge.* It's the kind of promise that we need to hang onto when pain seems overwhelming.

*"No test or temptation that
comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face.
All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll
never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help
you come through it." (1 Cor. 10:13)