“10 seconds!” 

I heard our coach yell those dreaded words as my teammates and I approached the line yet again. Running suicides in the Florida summer heat should be a scene from Dante’s Inferno. 

I tried to catch my breath as I stepped up to the line, but couldn’t—It felt like I was breathing through a thin paper straw. The familiar wheezing sound that came from my lungs made it sound like I was actually dying. 

My exercise-induced asthma always flared up anytime I would do conditioning; but instead of slowing down or taking a break, I pushed harder. The competitor in me wouldn’t let me quit or abandon my team. Plus, I had to “win” the suicide against my teammates—Even if it meant pushing past my physical limits and wheezing my way to the finish line. As a result, being unable to breathe during conditioning became my norm. 

So as my coach blew the whistle, I took off again—sprinting to the front of the pack until I finished victorious and laid sprawled on the ground. We had 30 seconds before the next go-round. 

My coach approached and gave me a familiar speech, “Jos—stay with Peggy (one of my teammates).” 

“Nah coach, I’m good. I’m fine,” I barely squeaked out as I sucked in air and closed my eyes. 

“I know you’re fine,” He responded with a smile. “But I don’t want you actually killing yourself, so stay with Peggy and don’t push yourself faster than her.” 

Not the typical player-coach conversation—my coach was literally telling me NOT to push harder—but this was my norm. I never paced myself; I had one speed: HARD. All out every time. 

While I had to learn to balance my slightly psychotic competitive mindset so I wouldn’t actually hurt myself, overall, consistently pushing my mind and body past its limits enabled me to achieve greater things than I ever thought possible. If I could get through an hour of conditioning without being able to breathe, then getting through a 4-hour tennis match was a piece of cake!

While I’m now retired and no longer pursuing a professional tennis career, my experiences as an elite athlete equipped me with a mental toughness that has prepared me to endure hardships in all aspects of life. 

Experiencing asthma attacks during conditioning workouts in college gave me confidence that I could physically push myself more than I thought—I mean, I never actually died did I? Similarly, there have been periods in my personal life where I thought the suffering was too great to endure—experiencing the loneliness and isolation of moving 1,000 miles away from family, going through a difficult breakup, or transitioning to a foreign world of life after sports. Yet, in enduring each of these crosses, I gained the confidence and mental toughness for future sufferings. I embraced discomfort, pushed myself past the limits I thought I had, and came through the other side. 

You see, we as human beings are naturally weak sauce—We make excuses constantly! If we listen to our internal voices, we sound pathetic: “I can’t do that” “That’s too hard.” “Ugh it hurts, I should just stop.” If we train ourselves to stop and give up when it gets a little hard, when it starts to hurt, when we feel like we can’t breathe, then we train ourselves to abandon suffering and our personal crosses. 

Suffering hurts. Suffering is hard. Suffering sometimes makes us feel like we can’t breathe. But suffering is also an essential part of the Christian life of faith. Therefore, we must train ourselves to endure, to push through when it sucks because that’s what Jesus did. He showed us how to suffer and suffer well. And because of that, we don’t have to do it alone! 

Romans 5:3-4 says, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” 

The more we experience suffering and endure discomfort in our own life—whether physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological—the more confidence we gain in carrying our crosses with Christ. We learn to suffer well by doing just that: suffering! 

Suffering well is a mindset of spiritual mental toughness that takes practice, just like anything else! Some days, life will be great and things will come easy. But a lot of days, it won’t be easy. A lot of days, we won’t want to go run our suicides or do our daily duties because it doesn’t feel good. But that’s when it counts the most—That’s when we really get better and learn to suffer well. The more we embrace the obstacles and hardships in front of us, the more confidence we have in Christ that He never abandons us on our road to Calvary. 

Friends, we are never alone in our hardships—Christ is right there with us. Alone, I can do nothing; but with Him, limits do not exist. Start developing spiritual mental toughness by practicing pushing yourself through the things you don’t want to do. Maybe that means running an extra half mile when you want to stop, being disciplined in praying 30 minutes daily regardless of how you feel, having a difficult conversation with a friend or loved one, or making the effort to pray a rosary or go to daily mass. 

No matter how you’re feeling today, tomorrow, or the next day, it’s your call as a Christian to step back up to the line and GO! Push yourself farther than you think you can go, and don’t you dare stop until you reach that finish line.