In the rigors of Navy SEAL training, the “sugar cookie” is among the most dreaded disciplines. It entails the trainee wearing a wet uniform and falling face down in the sand and rolling side to side until no crevice of his body is left uncovered with sand. For the rest of the day, the SEAL trainee is forced to wear the wet uniform with sand covering every inch of his body.
In his book, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life And Maybe The World, Admiral William McRaven said, “In all of SEAL training there was nothing more uncomfortable than being a sugar cookie. There were a lot of things more painful and more exhausting, but being a sugar cookie tested your patience and your determination. Not just because you spent the rest of the day with sand down your neck, under your arms, and between your legs, but because the act of becoming a sugar cookie was completely indiscriminate. There was no rhyme or reason. You became a sugar cookie at the whim of the instructor.”[1]
McRaven explains that for the SEAL trainees this was hard to accept. The men who attempt Navy SEAL training are among the most ambitious people in the world. They strive to be the very best, and as McRaven points out they expect to be rewarded for their performance. But in SEAL training, as in life, sometimes they were rewarded, and sometimes they were not. McRaven wrote, “Sometimes all they got for all their effort was wet and sandy.”
Not many of us will ever attend Navy SEAL training, but most of us can relate to trying our hardest and watching our best efforts fold like a cheap card table. Like when you…
- Delivered your finest work at the office and got overlooked for a promotion.
- Put your best parenting foot forward and the difficult conversation you had with your teenager ended in slamming doors and the silent treatment.
- Attended marriage counseling and fervently sought to save your marriage but your spouse filed for divorce.
- Attempted to reconcile with a loved one and your efforts were ignored, rebuffed, or mocked.
At times our best endeavors are ignored or rejected by others. But as Christ followers, we shouldn’t measure our success, or lack of it, by human standards. The Apostle Paul wrote,
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” (Col 3:23-24).
Both at home and in the work place there are times when we give our best effort, and we end up with nothing to show for it, or worse yet, we end up face down in the sand. But God sees our motives and our effort. Nothing we do for Him is ever wasted. Our effort might be lost on our boss or a family member but it will not be lost on Jesus.
The good news is, winding up as a sugar cookie has the potential to purify our motives. Human beings are glory hounds who are prone to seek human approval and praise. While it’s true everyone needs recognition on occasion, if we get it too often, it’s toxic to our souls. The goal isn’t to receive recognition from other people. The goal is to be faithful to Jesus. On occasion, it’s not a bad thing to wind up a sugar cookie. It serves to remind us to ask ourselves the question Paul posed in Gal 1:10, “For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
[1] William H. McRaven, Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life… And Maybe the World. (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017, 38).
