Former Gymnast Finds Her Value In Christ, Not Accomplishments
By Movieguide® Contributor
Former gymnast Mari Perkins shared with SportSpectrum how a suicide attempt drew her closer to God and helped her reject the perfectionism she struggled with.
After Perkins’ Olympic dreams were shattered due to a fractured jaw, she decided to take a scholarship at the University of Alabama.
“It’s interesting what happens when God makes you lie down, like He did with my injury,” she expressed. “Surrender isn’t giving up, it just means we look to our Father and not to ourselves. I began to devour my Bible, because I couldn’t talk or do anything else but rest.”
“In college, there were many high scores, grades and championships won. However, I became burnt out and battled depression. Most of the time, I was competing sick or with an injury and a cortisone shot to numb the pain,” she added.
After she finished college, Perkins married and became a military spouse. She traveled the country with her husband and three kids.
“My chronic fatigue, adrenal fatigue and depression quickly escalated. ‘I can’t’ was becoming more of my narrative,” she explained after her family moved to a military base in California.
“I sought to find some kind of happiness in my kids, home, marriage, health, looks, family, friends,” the mom of three continued. “I was struggling with perfectionism, and it kept me from being still or ever feeling good enough. I was constantly seeking to find value in my performance and external appearance. I ran myself into the ground. I felt hopeless and I just wanted to go home. To my eternal home.”
In 2016, Perkins found herself in the emergency room.
“It was 2016. I was brought to the ER because I had tried to commit suicide. I had officially hit rock bottom. But sometimes it’s at the bottom when you discover that God is the Rock at the bottom,” she said.
“I was soon admitted into a behavioral health center, where I was able to address the chemical imbalances in my brain,” she said with gratitude. “Also, I could spiritually and mentally address where the enemy, the father of lies, had planted seeds of deceit that I had allowed to grow into actual beliefs.”
Perkins continued, “I recognized the lie that I had come to believe — that my value was based on my performance. In sports, value is based on performance, but I am saved by grace through faith. I am bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus, given a deposit of the Holy Spirit guaranteeing what is to come — eternal life in paradise in the presence of a Holy God.”
“I am an heir and co-heir with Christ to the Kingdom of Heaven,” she added. “I am His daughter, His beloved. I have access to His presence now, supernatural power now, freed from sin and no longer hopeless now. The veil was torn top to bottom, not by human hands, but by our Creator who has made a way for imperfection to worship perfection.”
“My value is based on who God is and what Jesus has done, not anything I’ve accomplished. And when there are truths God wants us to hear, there are also lies the enemy wants us to hear more loudly. I have to make sure I don’t re-arm the same devil that Jesus disarmed on the cross,” Perkins concluded.
