Growing Pains

I stepped out of class into a gray October afternoon. Stone paths wound their way between the gothic halls of Princeton University, where I was a sophomore.

I walked slowly until I came to an intersection, two paths splitting. Like I had so many times before, I stopped. A painful, soul-draining decision faced me. One path led toward my dorm room, where I knew I should go and get started on my classwork. The other path led to where I wanted to go—down the hill past the tennis courts to the boathouse on the lapping shore of Lake Carnegie.

Just now, I knew, my crew teammates—or were they my ex-teammates?—were putting their long, slender competitive rowing boats into the water, climbing in, locking oars to gunwales and knifing through the glassy surface of the lake. I ached to join them. Why, God, I demanded, can’t I be out on that lake too?

In fact, I knew the answer to that question. Months before—it seemed a lifetime—I’d sat in a doctor’s office looking at an X ray of my spine. “See this?” the doctor had asked, pointing to a white smudge in my lower back. “This is why you’re in pain. You have an extra vertebra in your lower back. Most people have five lumbar vertebrae. You have six. That means the vertebra that normally fuses with your pelvis, supporting your back when you bend and lift, is in the wrong position. Every time you take a rowing stroke, you’re straining your back terribly. I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you want to hear.”

No, not what I wanted to hear at all. And not what I wanted to accept, either—that the new life I’d made for myself in college, the new athletic, admired, Ivy League person I’d worked so hard to turn myself into, was being wiped out by a little piece of bone.

If I wasn’t Beth the Princeton rower, who was I? Beth from suburban San Jose, California? Beth singing worship songs with the college fellowship group my hometown pastor had urged me to join? I didn’t want to be those Beths. I wanted to be the Beth I’d been dreaming of ever since I’d found out there was such a thing as the Ivy League.

I stared at the two diverging paths. Despite the doctor’s admonition, I’d refused to abandon rowing. I had seen physical therapists, chiropractors, back specialists. I’d tried exercises, bed rest and painkillers. The pain was still with me. It was worse than ever. But the alternative—giving up rowing, going back to being plain old Beth—was intolerable. I had to get back into that rowing boat.

I simply had to.