“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” – Soren Kierkegaard
When I read a book, I split my time between actually digesting the material and trying desperately to figure out the ending. Oftentimes, the ending features a last minute plot twist or something that could have never been seen from the readers’ vantage point, throwing off all of my theories. This leaves who knows how many fruitless attempts to figure out a tangled storyline, wasted.
(This is the part where I cleverly bridge this metaphor into a comparison with life.)
From your present vantage point, you are as powerless as the reader in the middle of a novel when it comes to predicting the ending. From your position at age 15, 18, 22 or 40, you have no idea what plot twists are to come in the future or what cliffhangers turn into the best storylines. Once you turn the final page of the book and close the back cover, the loose ends have been tied up and all of the burning questions you mulled over and over again have been answered. (Well, at the end of a good book they have been). You can reflect and realize that every plot twist and raised question served to reach the purpose revealed in the ending.
In my wise old age of 21 years, I found the same thing to be true about life. Every season I have struggled through and trial I wished away served to either bring a blessing into my life or teach me a lesson.
Just recently, I rekindled with a longtime best friend. A disagreement and life changes drove us apart for the better part of a year and the separation was full of bitterness and resentment. Thankfully, absence makes the heart grow fonder and gives much needed perspective. The mourning of an old friendship gave way to the birth of a new, stronger one. She and I were able to work through the issues that came between us with maturity and empathy that would not have developed without the pain of the moment. Today, our friendship is one of immense support, deep understanding, and complete acceptance. Not only do we reap the benefits of a strengthened bond, but she was able to channel the painful emotions she experienced into lyrics, and even produced her own EP with songs that helped her heal. While neither of us would like to live that season of life again, we are each immensely thankful for the growth we experienced as individuals and as friends, which is something I wouldn’t have dreamt of saying a year ago, when things seemed bleak and hopeless for us. I came out the other side more forgiving, more humble, and much more apt to apologize when I am wrong.
When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, I felt like screaming at the universe. I questioned everything and understood nothing, and it truly felt like the most daunting season of my life thus far. Fast forward through several of the most challenging years of my family’s life, and we now consider that season to be one of our biggest gifts. That dark cloud looming over us for months on end made us appreciate the good days more than we ever could before. I was humbled by our frail humanity and the fact that even my mom, my superwoman, was not invincible. From the days of chemo and hair loss and endless nights crying, we have found a testimony that connects us to more people than we ever would have dreamt. Every member of my family has been able to use our nightmare to witness to other people, some of which are living through their own. An organization who helped us in so many ways is now one that I am on my third year of working with as a volunteer and committee member and has connected me to so many wonderful human beings that I never would have met otherwise. I came out of this season more empathetic, quicker to hug, and incredibly aware of how precious and finite life is. I could talk for paragraphs on end about all of the good that has come from all of that bad, but that isn’t the reason I’m writing today.
During both of these oh so challenging seasons, I was so deep in overwhelmingly negative emotion that I never would have imagined good could come from them. Those are only two examples of times in my life that I was so consumed with what was happening around me, I couldn’t see what was happening within me. When you’re standing in the middle of the woods, you can only see the trees right in front of you, it’s impossible to see the entire forest. Regardless of how many times I can repeat this learned lesson to myself, I still get caught up in the now and forget that each trial is a teacher.
For the rest of this post, I want to do something a little different and let someone else do the speaking for a change. Someone very near and dear to my heart also happens to have one of the more adventurous and interesting lives I've encountered thus far. I hereby defer to my partner in crime.
My name is Austin Ruder, Hannah’s very good-looking (and humble) boyfriend, and I have been asked to give a little more insight on this topic based on some events that have taken place in my life. I, like all of us, have faced challenge after challenge, but throughout the years I have learned to face them all head on.
Before I tell my first story, here's a little background on me. I grew up playing sports my entire life, and eventually went on to play Division 1 basketball at Missouri State University. I spent thousands of hours practicing and perfecting my craft to reach my lifelong goal of playing Division 1 basketball. I finally realized that dream in 2012 when I signed to play at Missouri State. I knew college basketball would be a lot different, but the four years of playing at Missouri State gave me a different perspective on almost everything, both good and bad.
My senior season of basketball at Nixa I got sick. At first, it was just a really bad sore throat that I though would cost me a day or two at school. That minor sore throat ended up turning into one of the longest week and a half of my life. I couldn’t eat or drink anything, and I mean ANYTHING, for a week. I had to make two trips to the emergency room, and another trip to the doctor during that week. One trip to the hospital had me spitting into a water bottle because it hurt so bad to swallow. I ended up losing 12 pounds that week, and had to get four bags of IV fluids because I was so dehydrated. This was unlike anything I had experienced before because there was nothing I could do, and none of the doctors seemed to know what I was dealing with. They finally figured it out, but unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot they could do about it.
I remember sitting there with the IV needle in my arm, looking at slushy flavors from Sonic on my phone because I was so thirsty. It was especially disheartening because I was about to start my first year playing at Missouri State, and starting with this setback was going to be tough to overcome. All these things kept playing in my head, along with the usual frustration of never getting better when you’re sick.
Eventually I did recover, but gaining all of the weight and muscle I had lost took a bit of time. The day I arrived back at school, I had friends and teachers telling me I looked super skinny (which I was). It was a long road back.
The first year I played in college, there were relatively no problems extraordinary from the environment I was in. We had some really fun moments as a team, and I got acclimated to college life. Then came my sophomore summer where the real struggles were about to begin. It started by being told I was not going to start that year before we had even finished one workout. The player who was going to start over me had played sparingly the prior year, and I was among tops in the conference in minutes played (and started). This came as a complete shock to me because the team had a good last year, and had most of the team was returning for the current. Then I suffered what was called a strained groin in a fall practice that would later be revealed to be a torn hip labrum, which requires surgery. It plagued me the entire season. That year was a disaster from start to finish. We had one of the worst seasons in Missouri State program history, I played less, and the head coach and I did not see eye to eye on almost anything. I started to question if I would quit basketball, started eating however I wanted instead of staying in shape, and let my attitude reflect my internal dilemmas.
My junior year came with two surgeries; one sports hernia + adductor release, and a hip labrum repair surgery. These forced me to medical redshirt the year, on top of going through endless amounts of rehab just to be able to get back on the court. It was a discouraging time to say the least. I had just come off a year where I didn’t play a lot (or very well, when I did) and now faced a full year of just rehabbing my injuries. Was this God trying to tell me that it was time to hang it up? Could I mentally handle playing for a coach I didn’t agree with, and that I felt didn’t have any respect for me? All of this on top of having to deal with typical girlfriend problems, (not Hannah) upper level accounting classes, and a declining attitude that was changing my outlook. Then came the real sign from God.
I heard that my old coach and mentor, Rodney Perry, was getting a job at Oral Roberts University. Because of the medical redshirt I had taken, I would be able to transfer to Oral Roberts to play for him once again, at the collegiate level this time. Of course, that meant I would have to stay at Missouri State for one more year to finish my degree, but that was okay because I now had a light at the end of the tunnel. I did what I could my last year at Missouri State, battling a coach that didn’t want me there, a fan base that thought I was washed up, and a body that had been beaten down from years of playing. I started that year playing a decent amount until conference came along. Then, I hardly played at all for a stretch, then started a couple games, and ended the year back on the bench. My morale was shattered once again because even though I knew where I wanted to go, I still wanted to win anything and everything I put my time into. I have too much pride to put work into something and be happy when it fails. With that said, I can’t say I wasn’t relieved for the season to be over in the end, although I was sad for my teammates who didn’t have the chance to play one more season in college like I did.
I told the coaching staff I would not be returning for my 5th year. After that, a couple significant things happened to me. The first was the online sports' community message boards started saying things like I could 'maybe play at Drury,' and I 'just wasn’t good enough to play Division 1 anymore', and so on. Disclaimer, there is nothing wrong with playing at Drury, or anywhere for that matter, but the intent from the people writing this was to insult me as a person and a player. Around the same time, one of the team staff said he was getting a lot of calls from Division 2 schools saying that they would love me to attend. Which again, was implying I wasn’t capable of playing at the Division 1 level and even my own team staff agreed. Lastly, the athletic department didn’t give me my athletics' sash for graduation after announcing my transfer. I had to call in to say I didn’t receive one, after which I was given the white sash without the words “Athletics” on it that all other student athletes receive. That’s when I knew, without a doubt, I had made the right choice to leave. As soon as I made the decision, I felt hopeful, relieved, and reinvigorated before the next chapter of my life.
A couple months later, I was off to Tulsa to play for Oral Roberts. When workouts started, it was brutal because I hadn't been working out like I should have been. I called my mom to tell her I had made a huge mistake deciding to play basketball another year. My apartment wasn’t ready, so I had to stay at a hotel for a month, and it was my first experience really being away from home. With my previous negative experiences with college basketball, all of these things didn’t phase me as much as they once would have. I adjusted quickly to the new surroundings, and actually started hanging out with teammates, which I never did at Missouri State. I got involved, started going to different events like soccer games and volleyball games. I also met two of my best friends there that year that were involved with the team.
The season was filled with struggles, though, as we played a very tough schedule on top of dislocating my shoulder about a month into playing games. Despite all of that, I had my best season since my freshman year, for a lot of reasons. I genuinely enjoyed playing there. We finished the season about the same as the last four I had played, but this one was different. I knew would never get to be around this group of guys again. I had never had that feeling before in my years at Missouri State. I mean, sure, I had guys I liked on the team, but it wasn’t like this. These guys were my brothers, guys I would do anything in my power to help in any aspect of life they needed me in. The coaching staff treated me with respect, and gave me a place to play when they didn’t have to. I will always be grateful for that and the opportunity they gave me.
All of that was to lead up to what I learned from the experience. I know my story was a little bit more drawn out than Hannah’s, but mine was over a span of five years so hopefully y’all give me a pass. My mentor Coach Perry had helped me throughout my basketball career, but also with building life skills. Sports are a means to an end with almost everyone on this planet, so use it to meet great people and get a great education that means something. Sports are not life, but they can be a tool for conception of opportunities. Some of our biggest challenges in life will often fade into obscurity as time passes by. I will always remember that time in my life I was so sick, but now I'm not afraid of illness that are potentially life threatening or painful. Those events will come and go to everyone in this life at some point, so why constantly panic about what we can’t control? Just remember, it's always darkest before the dawn and your struggles can turn into blessings, changing the way you see the situation entirely.
Thank y’all for letting me share a couple stories with you, and hopefully I will be invited back soon. - Austin Ruder
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”-John 16:33 NKJV
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