Random Playlist #3 - The Gladiator Waltz (Hans Zimmer, More Music from Gladiator)

God has rarely ever spoken to me in a voice that I can audibly hear.  He's used other ways and other people including a method that is remarkably like when my dad used to thump me on the head with his thumb and ring finger when I'd complain about what my mom cooked for dinner.  But, audibly?  Not so much.

I'd already had this soundtrack in rotation on my iPod.  It made great running music for those early Saturday morning five-mile training runs ("Come on, if Maximus can battle lion, tigers, and Nubians, oh my!  Then you can certainly get your tuchus maximus out of bed and hit the asphalt" is kinda how the self-talk went).

A wee bit of background:  I had been training in muay thai/boxing/MMA four years by this point (we were a combo church/gym - our pastor was a former fighter).  Although I had participated in smokers and sparring, I had yet to actually get to step in the cage and that was all I really wanted.  I'd told God all I wanted was one fight - just one - and they kept getting set up and then cancelled or called off for any number of reasons which, as you might imagine, was a little frustrating.

What I had also been dealing with during those four years was a rather intensive lesson from God in self-worth.  In my gym, I was also the oldest female and the only heavyweight female.  Having been big or overweight the majority of my life, I had taken to being sarcastic or self-deprecating about it.  Hey, if I get there first, nobody else can say anything, right?

What I didn’t realize as I continued to work and sweat was that I was earning the respect of the other people in the gym – fighters and non-fighters, men and women. People would use me as an example to new folk coming into the gym. I was told multiple times that nobody worked as hard as I did. I had a cross that would drop a cow. And I missed all of this because I was still so wrapped up in being “fat” and feeling like I continually had to prove myself because I *wasn’t* a size six with bouncy hair and slender thighs.  I was too sure that I must have been made wrong.  Getting the fight became THE thing that would prove my worth to myself and everyone around me.  Never mind what people were saying about me.  Never mind that people were telling me to my face (guy fighters, too, which still knocks me out to this day) "You're my inspiration" or "you're my hero".  I had my self-worth so twisted up that all I heard in my head was "Yeah, you're an okay fighter/person for a fat chick."  


Ah, the stupidity which your mind assures you must be true :P.

In November 2008, I had a(nother) fight scheduled.  When you get news that a match has been made for you, that's when you steadily start ramping up your workouts, working to a point where you are at your maximum peak just before the fight but not working so much that you overtrain and are exhausted.  I was at less than two weeks out from the match before - you guessed it - my opponent cancelled on me.  To say I was disappointed would be putting it mildly.

To his everlasting credit, the Spousal Unit sat me down and reminded me that as a fighter and instructor at the gym, I had a lot of people looking up to me; ergo, I had two choices.  One, I could whine and cry and moan about how unfair it all was and how I got screwed out of yet another fight, and how the fat chick was never going to get her shot or I could go for what was behind the second door, Monty.  I could suck it up in front of those people who were looking up to me and admit that, yeah, it sucked but, hey, that's what happens sometimes and now it was just time to buckle down and prepare for the next opportunity.

And, sweetie, remember that guy named Job?  Remember when God said if you know so much better, why don't you go give it a shot?  Every time you're saying stuff about how your body is this or that, you're saying God didn't know what He was doing when in fact He'd make you the same way all over again.  Why?  Because you're the only one who can do what He wants you do to.  All those people who look up to you don't care about your looks.  It's your character they gravitate to.

Cue the clue-by-four whacking me upside the head as the message finally started to sink in.

So I went out for my training run the Saturday after the fight cancellation.  While I was running, a couple specific songs came on my iPod and I felt like God was giving me a heads up that He wanted my attention for some reason.  This song - The Gladiator Waltz - was one of them.  This version contains Maximus' speech to his men just before they attack the Germanic tribes and, at the end of the speech just before the music starts, he says, "What we do in life echoes in eternity".  The music itself lasts about eight or nine minutes and I kept running on my route all through it.  Right after this song finished, I very clearly heard God say "Continue to appreciate the journey."

By that, I understood that I had to let go of (1) the need to fight as a way of somehow proving myself and (2) getting rid of the "fat chick" mentality.  I had already proved myself - just been too blind to see it - and, really, how often do you get to be somebody's hero?  I also had to drop the idea that I was "made wrong" because I wasn't.  I was made the way I was supposed to be because there is a purpose in how I was made.  I have a purpose now with the body I have and the skills I have and not when I reach some mythical idea of perfection that I've created.  That doesn't mean I can't or shouldn't diet but I can't allow my weight to take over and become what defines me.  I can strive to reach a goal but I can't let it consume me to the point where it affects my self-worth to the point where I "live or die" by whether or not I reach it.

What I was doing in the gym through training and teaching and spending time with the women there had a greater and far-reaching effect than just me showing them how to throw a kick or a proper left hook.  I was there to minister as well and, sad to say, there were times I got so wrapped up in my issues that I probably missed some opportunities.  Once I received my clue-by-four, my perspective widened and, looking back, I can see where my opportunities to minister grew as well.  I realized the choices I make and how I live them out not only affect the people around me, they may also impact people I may never even be aware of.

In March 2009, I finally got my fight.  I knew it was the one God had for me now that my perspective was where it should be.  (I won - woohoo!).  Since then, I can't say I haven't still had some bad days where my hair does anything but bounce or behave, and days where I'd like to donate my body fat to medical science (no, really, you can keep it!); however, on those days, I try to remind myself that God took the time to speak to me about continuing to appreciate the journey.

I also figured that since God used one of my primary sources (music) to get my attention, I would give myself a permanent reminder so I had Maximus' speech tattooed on me in Latin:

May I always do my best to live by it.

Random Playlist #2 - What I Want (Daughtry, eponymous)

Picking an entrance song for a fight show can be surprisingly difficult.  You're trying to encapsulate something that speaks to who you are, all the hard work you've done and what you plan to accomplish in six minutes inside the cage (e.g., beat the other person senseless) all in some catchy, hard-rockin' tune that tells your opponent "Fear me!".  That's a lot of pressure to put on a three-and-a-half minute song :).

I discarded some of the more obvious potential choices like Christina Aguilera's "Fighter" fairly quickly.  Although it may show up in a future Random Playlist entry, it wasn't what I was looking for in an entrance song - too literal; especially when you're walking towards a cage wearing a boxing helmet and ten-ounce gloves.  I like Pink but the songs I looked at, while they had the right amount of attitude, were almost too much just attitude.  Don't get me wrong, there is a certain amount of swagger required for this sport but you need to be able to back it up and a song that seems to be based entirely on bravado and waving around half the peace sign was not the message I wanted to send.

(Queen's Fat Bottom Girls was also a contender simply to spread some love for the big girls in the sport but that ultimately went by the wayside as well.)

When it came down to brass tacks, I started thinking about what MMA had done for me and the crux of it was it had really brought me back to God and deepened my relationship with him.  About the time I figured that out, I found Daughtry's song.  Whether or not he wrote it as a Christian or Christ-themed song is immaterial because the lyrics are pretty dead on in portraying someone (me, in this case) re-finding and then refining their identity in Christ.  So, yeah, it fulfilled all my requirements: it spoke to who I was, the work I'd done, and what I planned to accomplish in the next six minutes and the lifetime after that.

(And yeah, it was pretty cool hearing it blare over the speakers as the flash pots went off while I made my trek to the cage, too *g*).

Random Playlist #1 - Gethsemane (Jesus Christ Superstar, 1992 Australian Cast Version)

In honor of Chip the iPod's retirement and the arrival of Frank the iPod (he's pink!), I've been sorting through my songs to create new playlists.  While I've been wending my way through titles and genres, it's almost been like taking a trip back through time as certain songs reassert themselves and reignite memories of why they were important to me or what about them connected them to me on some emotional or gut level.  Because of that, I thought I would occasionally jot down thoughts or impressions on some of them.  And if someone could tell me where I managed to pick up 6,000+ songs, I'd be eternally grateful...

I tend to have a love/hate relationship with Andrew Lloyd Webber.  I like some of his earlier stuff but he tends to get a little "moon in June" for me with a lot of his later works and Cats just makes me want to call the pound.  JCS, though, is a composition that, done right, I can go back and listen to time and time again.  The Australian cast is one of those, largely on the strengths of John Farnham singing the role of Jesus.  It's also one of the first portrayals of Jesus that got me to see him as a real person as opposed to some cardboard cutout on a felt board in Sunday School or some literary figure talked about from a pulpit.

Too many versions of JCS have the actor playing Jesus singing the lyrics in a style that can best be described as...well, milquetoast-ish.  Jesus just moves along, pats Mary Magdalene on the head, tut-tuts at Judas (oh, that scamp!), whines a bit in the Garden of Gethsemane and then meekly heads offstage. It's like the aural version of Max Von Sydow playing Jesus in that movie where he speaks...almost as...slowly...as...James T...Kirk...and...never blinks.   In a way, many productions of JCS become more about Judas than Jesus - especially if you have an actor playing Judas who can sing well (most assuredly not looking at you, London cast!  Judas should not sound like Donald Duck with a lisp).  Farnham's Jesus, on the other hand, is present in a way many are not. He sings with passion.  His Jesus has emotion and drive.  He knows what he needs to do, where he needs to go and how little time he has left to get there.

I think the thing I really love about Farnham's singing of Gethsemane is that he captures the human side of Jesus.  A lot of treatments of Jesus during this crucial time tend to gloss over the turmoil he was in because we know the end result:  he submitted to the Father and went to the cross.  Yet Mark 14 (NLT) characterizes Jesus as beginning to be "filled with horror and deep distress."  The entire song takes place within verses 35-36 (NLT):  "He went on a little farther and fell face down on the ground.  He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by.  'Abba, Father,' he said, 'everything is possible for you.  Please take this cup of suffering away from me.  Yet I want your will, not mine.'"  These words sound so...simple in a way, almost bloodless, when they are just read as part of the chapter.  It's part of a story we all know very well and sometimes familiarity breeds detachment. 

For me, however, the song lyrics really show how Jesus might have pled with God for another way to go, to not have to walk the path that had been set for him.  Since he was fully human as well as fully God, would he not have been afraid as well especially since he knew what was coming?  Emotionally spent?  Just plain physically exhausted?  Even maybe a little angry?  He'd spent thirty-three years on Earth with preaching God's message the thrust of the final three.  Yet his disciples - the ones hand-picked by the Son of God - still had their thick as brick moments; never mind the majority of the general population who would shortly be jeering him on a cross and demanding the release of Barabbas instead of an innocent man.  Even the disciples he'd asked to come with him into the garden fell asleep instead of keeping him company and would shortly run away and deny Him.

Like the rest of us, Jesus had free will.  He did not have to do what God was asking of him and He was certainly not powerless by any means.  If Jesus had chosen to exercise his free will, that would have been it.  God's plan would have been over.  There would be no church, no salvation through God's son.  The whole of Christianity as we know it would simply not be.

And I think that's the other thing that really hits me about this song: the ultimate capitulation to God's will when He didn't have to.  It was a choice Jesus had to make the same way we have to make that choice when God asks us to do something.  In a way, the Gethsemane scene strikes me as an unanswered prayer of Jesus to God (perhaps His only unanswered prayer?) in that the cup was not taken away.  In it, Jesus sings in his prayer to God about all his feelings; his anger, his fear, his frustration; even asking why he should go through with this and die.  He initially expresses the "agreement" that he will die as almost a dare:  "Just watch me die". 

The first part of the song is all the "human" reasoning and questioning, the demanding to know "why" we should do what God wants us to.  We're human and we want to know the outcome of our choices.  The bridge where the music swells and the guitars do their screaming is reminiscent of the swirling emotions and thoughts that crash in on each other as you pray and try to hear God's voice amidst all the confusion of a difficult or painful decision.  Then, there is that brief moment of silence when the guitars stop and just before the lone piano starts up again which is like that moment of clarity when you just...get it.  You know what God has said to do and it's your choice and you choose to do it even if you'd rather not.   So, the last verse is Jesus leaving behind the human need to understand or demand answers and acquiescing, submitting, to the will of God ("God, thy will is hard/But you hold ev'ry card") even though He knows the way ahead will not be easy and that there will come a moment where He will be totally and utterly alone.  Even the last line, that last soft "before I change my mind" isn't Jesus being indecisive.  He isn't waffling.  He has submitted to the Father and is going to follow His will.  When I hear that line, it's like that moment when you make the decision to do something monumental or frightening or distressing or any other adjectives (good or bad) that involves faith.  You've made the decision to do it but you're still human and there is still that vestige of nervousness or anxiety accompanying your decision.  That last line of the song is the big, shaky breath you take before you put faith into action.

So, er, yeah...that's me rambling on about why this song will pretty much always be on any playlist I make...

(YouTube doesn't have an embed code for this song but a URL for it can be found here)