🌱 What Barbells Taught Me About Grace: Finding Strength Through Weakness

My journey toward weight-bearing faith

Apr 15, 2025

"You're going to fail," my trainer and sometimes muse, Josh, said matter-of-factly, adjusting the weight on the barbell. "And that's the point."

I stared at him incredulously. In my early sixties, having spent decades as a naval officer, corporate executive, and priest, I'd built my entire identity around not failing. Failure was the enemy. Failure was weakness. And yet here was my trainer – half my age with twice my wisdom – telling me that failure wasn't just acceptable but necessary.

"Training to failure is how muscles grow," he continued, seemingly unaware of the existential crisis he'd ignited. "You need to reach the point where you can't lift the weight one more time. That's where the transformation happens."

What began as a simple fitness regimen to keep pace with my stud wife in my later years became an unexpected classroom for spiritual formation, teaching me more about grace, growth, and genuine strength than decades of achievement ever did.

The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency

I’ve always been an athlete, and strength-training was always part of my life, but it was instrumental to my life as a runner. My first months of strength training as a longevity practice were an exercise in humility. The weights weren't particularly heavy – embarrassingly light, in fact, compared to those Sajeena could handle – but they were honest in a way my previous achievements hadn't been. There was no faking it, no working around limitations, no delegating the difficult parts. It was just me and gravity in a relationship of complete transparency.

This was a radical departure from my professional life, where I'd cultivated what I now recognize as practical atheism—a way of living that functionally denied my limitations and dependency, even while maintaining religious beliefs. I excelled by creating the illusion of self-sufficiency, never revealing weakness, and always being the person who could handle more work, more responsibility, and more stress.

Looking back, I see how profoundly theological this stance actually was, though I wouldn't have recognized it at the time.

My workaholism wasn't merely a bad habit; it was a theological statement. It declared that success came through relentless self-effort and that weakness was failure rather than the very place where grace operates.

Progressive Resistance

"Progressive overload," Josh explained during another session, "is the foundation of strength. You gradually increase the weight, forcing your muscles to adapt to greater demands."

As a metaphor for spiritual formation, this principle illuminated my understanding of how God works in our lives. Grace isn't opposed to effort, but it operates very differently from our achievement-oriented culture. Grace meets us in our weakness and gradually strengthens us to bear more of life's weight.

The paradox was becoming clear: true strength emerges not from denying weakness but from honestly acknowledging it.

In my professional life, I'd treated challenge as something to conquer through sheer determination. In recovery from workaholism, I've discovered that challenges are not obstacles to overcome but weights intentionally added to develop spiritual strength. The resistance itself is the pathway to growth.

I remember the afternoon I failed on the fifth repetition of a bench press. The weight wasn't excessive, but my chest wouldn't complete another rep. As Josh helped me set the bar back on the rack, I felt a familiar shame rising – the sense that I should have been stronger. Then came the surprising realization: this failure was exactly what was needed for growth to occur.

Proper Form Over Maximum Weight

"Drop the weight and fix your form," Josh instructed, watching me struggle with a barbell deadlift. "The weight means nothing if your form is compromised."

This simple correction revealed a profound truth about spiritual life. I had spent years focused on the "weight"—the visible accomplishments, measurable output, impressive feats—while neglecting the "form"—the character, integrity, and motives behind my actions.

The metrics I'd been measuring were all wrong, valuing appearance over substance, outcomes over process, achievement over formation.

Proper form ensures that the right muscles bear the load and prevents injury in strength training. In spiritual life, proper form ensures that our actions flow from love rather than fear, from integrity rather than image management, and from genuine commitment rather than performance.

This understanding illuminated my recovery journey. The goal wasn't to stop working hard but to transform why and how I worked. It wasn't to accomplish less but to act from a place of security rather than insecurity, from a place of gift rather than obligation.

Adaptation and Recovery

Perhaps the most counterintuitive lesson from strength training has been the importance of rest. Contrary to the "no pain, no gain" mentality I'd embraced for decades, Josh emphasized that growth doesn't happen during the workout but during the recovery period afterward.

"You're not getting stronger when you're lifting," he explained. "You're actually creating microscopic damage to your muscle fibers. It's during rest that your body repairs those fibers, making them stronger than before."

This insight echoed Augustine's understanding that our souls, like our bodies, find their true rest not in idleness but in proper relationship with their Creator.

This principle has transformed my understanding of spiritual formation. Growth doesn't come through constant or frenetic striving but through the rhythm of engagement and rest, work and sabbath, effort and surrender. We need both the weight-bearing moments and the recovery periods where grace does its restorative work.

This insight has been revolutionary for someone who viewed rest as weakness and downtime as wasted time. I've had to learn that sabbath isn't an interruption of productivity but an essential component of genuine fruitfulness. As Tolstoy observed, the yoke that Christ offers is not the absence of burden but the right kind of burden, carried in the right way, with proper intervals of rest.

Grace as Spotter

In weight training, a spotter stands ready to assist when the weight becomes too heavy. The spotter doesn't lift the weight for you but provides just enough assistance to help you complete the movement when your strength fails.

During a particularly challenging bench press session, Josh's hands hovered just beneath the bar. "I'm not touching it," he said as I struggled with the final repetition, "but I'm right here." His presence gave me the confidence to push through what I believed was impossible.

In that moment, I glimpsed a more authentic understanding of grace than all my theological education had provided.

This image has helped me understand grace not as God doing everything for us, nor as God merely watching us struggle, but as God being present with us in our efforts, ready to provide what we lack when our strength fails.

The theological framework of Emmanuel presence – God's refusal to abandon us – takes on new meaning through this lens. Grace is the divine spotter, not eliminating the weight we bear but ensuring we're never crushed beneath it.

Building Spiritual Capacity

One day, I noticed something unexpected: weights that had once seemed impossibly heavy now felt manageable. This wasn't just about stronger muscles but about increased capacity – the ability to bear more without being overwhelmed.

This realization illuminated what spiritual formation actually produces: not perfect performance but expanded capacity for love, truth, suffering, and joy. Through progressive challenges and proper recovery, we develop the strength to fully engage with life's complexities.

What if the purpose of faith isn't to make us more successful but more capable of meaningful engagement with both beauty and brokenness?

The purpose of weight-bearing faith isn't to make life easier but to develop the spiritual muscles needed to carry what we're called to carry—to bear one another's burdens, endure hardship, and hold space for others' pain without being crushed by it.

Questions for Reflection

As I continue this journey of weight-bearing faith, I return to these questions:

Where am I emphasizing maximum weight (visible accomplishments) over proper form (character and integrity)?

What failure points in my life might be necessary for growth?

How might viewing grace as a spotter rather than a substitute change my approach to challenges?

Where must I trust the rhythm of challenge and recovery rather than constant striving?

I'm learning that true strength isn't about never failing but about how we grow through failure, not about independence but about honest dependence, not about constant performance but about integrity in both work and rest.

From My Garden

This is part of my "Rooted & Reaching" series exploring spiritual formation through the metaphors of gardening, health transformation, and recovery from workaholism. This essay continues my reflection on reconsidering what truly matters at age 65, examining how strength development offers insights into authentic spiritual growth.