If you read my Facebook posts recently, you know that last night Rachel and I went to the gym, where she kept up with me and ran 3 miles, did over 100 pushups and over 200 crunches. I can't begin to describe how proud I am of her, and as I was thinking over that hour or so, this thought kept surfacing, "Neither she nor I would have done all that had it not been for me encouraging her."
For her, she needed to hear the encouragement to keep on going. I kept telling her that she was doing awesome, that it was only a little bit further, that she could do it. I banged the floor and demanded another pushup. As I ran beside her, I whispered to her that I was proud of her. For over an hour I kept the tempo of encouragement up and she did it all: 3.1 miles, 110 pushups, 220 crunches.
For me, I needed to keep on going in order to be able to encourage her. I wanted her to do it all, and I knew she wanted to do it all. I also knew that I had to lead by example and if I quit she wasn't going to push me on. There was one point where she was out of breath and wanted so badly to stop running. I was in exactly the same boat - I could hardly talk I was so out of breath, but I had to keep going so I could encourage her to keep going. Instead of doing our reps of pushups at the same time, I had to race through mine so I could kneel next to her and talk her through her reps.
What I realized is that if you want to be an 'encourager,' you will have to demand more out of yourself. My words would have had little power if I was sitting beside the track drinking lemonade and telling Rachel to keep on running. I had to push myself harder than I was pushing Rachel so that I would be able to push Rachel. And at the end of the day, we both crossed that finish line!
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