Good evening Worthy FAM! Murray here. :)
For those of you who are new to us, the coaches take turns in sending out a bi-weekly devotional to encourage you and share our story. You may have seen the WORTHY STRONG shirts around the gym, and we wanted to let you know the story behind those!
This past April (2020) marked our one year anniversary in our current facility. We had a one year anniversary party planned.. BUT THEN, COVID. The mandated shutdown brought out so many fears and unknowns, and for those of you that have been around, you know that fear and unknowns haven't been strangers to our Worthy journey, thus far. Yet again, we were faced with another opportunity (I can say that now) of growing our faith and to challenge us to dig deeper to grow our dependence on God.
Mark and I have been so fortunate to have amazing coaches and clients that continue to inspire, encourage, teach, and pray with and FOR us. When the shutdown started, we were sad, scared, upset, and very worried about what the future of Worthy would look like - "How do we train?" "How do we keep up with monthly expenses?" "How do we continue to care for our Worthy Family?" You are our friends, Worthy is our baby, together, we are a FAMILY. "How long are we going to remain closed?" "Will people come back?" What happens to this business that we have poured into for the past 6 years?" "How long can we sustain paying for all of our expenses before we have to close our doors?"
Mark went into protector and provider mode and started to look at our finances to evaluate the length of time we could self-sustain our business during the shutdown. We started coming up with ways to cut business and personal expenses. After a few days of trying to come up with a plan, we still didn't have one - we were also looking at what other gyms were doing. We received so many calls and texts of our Worthy family checking up on us to ask what they could do to help. We had a list of clients that we also knew were affected by the shutdown, so we started to check in with them. One of those clients called us before we had the chance to call her. She called to let us know that she wanted to continue to support us by paying for her monthly sessions. WHAT!?! Here she was, twenty something, single, her job was affected by the shutdown, and she wanted to continue paying?
WHY??
She said, "I prayed about it, and this is what I am supposed to do." OUCH, conviction hit me like a LOAD OF BRICKS. Here we were, trying to figure out on our own how to make this work, and WE HAD NOT STOPPED TO PRAY ABOUT HOW HE WANTED TO WORK IT OUT. Have you ever done this? I mean, come on... we know better than that. We teach our kids to lean on HIM, we preach this, but we were trying to figure it out on our own. At that very moment, we stopped, prayed, and asked for forgiveness for our selfishness, and asked God to provide the way for our business (HIS BUSINESS) to survive, should that be in HIS PLANS, not ours.
We sent out options to our clients, and we were flooded with emails, calls, and texts from clients that had the means to continue to pay for their monthly sessions. We did not expect the response we received. YOU came together to support WORTHY, whether it was financially, emotionally, or most importantly, with prayer. If you know Mark, this is something that was (and is) so tough for him. He didn't know how to accept help and didn't like to ask for help, but HE was forced to accept it. He got to see God's mighty hand, covering our business, providing for our family, PROTECTING WORTHY. Dustin & Amy came up with the t-shirt design and it's true, all together we are WORTHY STRONG.
Without HIM, Worthy wouldn't be. HE has shown up time and time again - even when we forget to ask HIM first. What have we been reminded of, yet again? This is all HIS, we don't have to figure it out on our own. Psalm 121:1 says, "I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth."
Thank you for being a part of our Worthy FAM... and together, we are WORTHY STRONG.
