Reflections on Connection-Centered Leadership - Issue No. 20: Beginning Again...Again

Melissa Swonger on the Southern Steps of the Temple Mount, Pentecost, 2019

Another first day in the gym. Honestly, I have had too many to count at this point.

At some point, rebuilding loses its novelty. People love comeback stories, but they rarely talk about how exhausting it can feel to continually begin again after injury, grief, burnout, trauma, caretaking, disappointment, or life simply shifting underneath you before you fully regain footing from the last thing.

A year ago last week, I fell through a trap door and broke my back in two places. There was also the pelvic avulsion fracture, complete tears in the hamstring of my left leg, and the strange surrealness that follows hearing doctors say you were about a centimeter away from catastrophic injury and paralysis.

I spent months flat on my back afterward, wondering what recovery would realistically look like this time. Not theoretically. Not optimistically. Realistically. Because when you don’t know what rebuilding looks like in real time, when it's still all theory before the work has been put in, it can be romanticized and feel like hope.

When you’ve had to rebuild in mind, body, and spirit before, well, you don’t have the luxury of romanticism. I know the grind. I know it’s not sexy. Still, because I’ve done it before, there is still hope.

I remember the uncertainty more than the pain.

I rebuilt after the 2009 freak accident that required several surgeries and relearning how to walk over four years. My body adapted because it had to. Even now, my right quad compensates, doing the work my lower leg can’t. No practitioner could have predicted that adaptation. We didn’t amputate. I believed my body would adapt, and it did. The body is fascinating that way. It survives. Brains do too. Neuroplasticity is real, and human beings are often capable of adapting long before they emotionally feel ready to. The spirit can rise again, receiving beauty for ashes. No, it’s not easy. But we can merge back into life after trauma.

Adaptation is rarely dramatic in real time. But it is part of leading ourselves well.

It is repetitive. Often frustrating. Sometimes painfully slow. It is showing up consistently before there is evidence that what you are doing is working. It is trusting the process over emotion, consistency over intensity, frequency over motivation. It’s really not discipline. It’s one decision at a time that moves you forward rather than staying still.

Before this latest injury even happened, my body had already shifted through another difficult season. I had gone from summitting mountains to sitting for months rocking a terminally ill baby. Somewhere in the middle of caretaking, research, stress, travel, and trying to hold everything together, my own health quietly moved further and further down the priority list. Before I could physically rebuild from that chapter, I fell through the trap door and watched my strength and conditioning decomp even more over the last year.

It is humbling when your mind remembers what your body used to do with ease.

This week, I realized I was out of excuses. All doctors had told me that after the one-year mark, I would be free to strength train and rebuild freely. There was no dramatic emotional moment attached to it. No declaration. No “perfect Monday.” Just a random day when a decision was made, and I met my daughter, who is my physical therapist - no, really - at the gym.

I did not buy new workout clothes or shoes first. I did not create a new system to motivate myself. Those things may help people initially, but they have never sustained me long term because my challenge has rarely been getting started. The challenge is to keep going once the emotions wear off and the work becomes repetitive.

The goal was never to get into the gym. The goal is to stay in the gym. Arguably, the harder objective.

I did play my playlist of motivational clips to encourage me. I did pause to recount that a year ago, I couldn’t get out of bed to even go to the bathroom. Now, I’ve come a long way, quite frankly. Two things can be true simultaneously, and they’re both critically important to remember, lest I get stuck. I have come so far and challenged myself to do so. I still have quite a long way to go, and without intentional effort, I will lose more ability, and the margin is too slim to accommodate that. That is an untenable reality for me. So today me will honor future me by rebuilding.

As I reflected on all of this this week, I realized the timing overlaps with Shavuot and Pentecost, which feels significant in ways I do not think I fully understood before. In 2019, I sat on the Southern Steps of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during Pentecost, not long after a celebratory Shavuot meal. This year, I keep thinking less about the dramatic moments in Scripture and more about the rebuilding seasons surrounding them.

Shavuot means “weeks.” It comes seven weeks after Passover and originally marked the wheat harvest and the bringing of firstfruits to God. Later, it also became associated with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

The progression is significant.

Passover represented freedom from slavery. Shavuot represented becoming a people with purpose, covenant, and identity. There is something deeply human about that progression because survival is one thing. Learning how to live afterward is another.

For Christians, Pentecost carries that same continuation. Jews from many nations had gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot when the Holy Spirit was poured out in Acts 2. Many theologians draw the parallel that at Sinai God wrote His law on stone, while at Pentecost God wrote love through His Spirit on hearts.

And maybe that is part of what rebuilding actually is. Not simply surviving what broke us, but becoming someone capable of carrying what comes next.

Nehemiah rebuilt walls while carrying exhaustion, opposition, grief, responsibility, and uncertainty simultaneously. Ruth rebuilt a sense of belonging after a devastating loss. Mary Magdalene rebuilt a life of meaning, dignity, identity, purpose, and belonging that led to helping build the early church. The disciples rebuilt their identity and purpose after fear, confusion, and the collapse of everything they thought they understood.

None of those stories bypassed the process. They moved through it. One day at a time. One stone at a time. One act of faithfulness at a time…but, and this is important, not through perfection but through progression and a refusal to completely quit.

I think about Nehemiah rebuilding ruined walls and how unglamorous rebuilding must have felt in real time. The goal and the outcome are inspiring. However, the in-between days were not. Not every day excitement full of support and cheers. Just repetitive work requiring people to continue showing up despite exhaustion and opposition because they believed what was broken was still worth rebuilding.

I think a lot of people are trying to figure out how to merge back into life after trauma right now. Mentally, physically, spiritually. Integratively, it’s usually all three at once. And the temptation is to look at the entirety of what feels broken, overwhelming, or exhausting, and decide it is too much before we even begin.

Healing rarely happens all at once anyway. Most meaningful transformation happens through motion. One walk. One prayer. One therapy session. One honest conversation. One boundary. One workout. One decision to step back into life instead of waiting to feel fully ready first. One moment of surrender that refuses to let our identity remain stuck in what we’ve done, what was done to us, or the limitations trying to define us. Not in our own strength. Not in our own way. But a surrender to what is possible in His strength.

Progress over perfection sounds cliché until you actually need it to survive something. Sometimes courage looks less like leaping and more like refusing to stay still.

You do not have to sprint out of the tomb holding you. Sometimes all you can do is take one step toward the opening. Sometimes you only manage enough movement to feel the sunlight begin to hit your face again.

But even that is still movement. And sometimes leading ourselves well is about the hard shift, simply choosing to begin again… again. Pause with me this week and ask,

- Now that I have survived, what is one step I can take toward rebuilding?

- How do we steward freedom?

- How do we become people capable of carrying revelation, responsibility, and renewal?

Let’s link arms and raise shields and build, or rebuild, something meaningful together.

— Melissa, Architect of Connection-Centered Leadership The Sage Hill Project

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