PAST IMPERFECT

I spent a few days the weekend before last helping a little with my parents’ move. One of the things you go through is sorting a lot of memorabilia. My nephew, his new wife, and I took a few minutes to look at some old photo albums. It was fun to see everyone in their different stages of life and stirred up some old memories. While I was driving home, I started thinking about a track meet I competed in. Yes, that is really me in that photo up there. We moved to a tiny town my sophomore year of high school, and my father was the entire science department, for grades 7-12. My mother taught music K-12. If that sounds like a teenager’s nightmare, it kind of was. Plus, my dad drove one of the buses and coached the track team.

Did I mention this was a small school? That meant everybody did everything. There was no year-round specializing like there is now. I’m not really a fantastic athlete, but I was actually reasonably fast. And you know how every Winter Olympics the Koreans dominate in speed skating? It’s something about their legs. So, my dad had me sprinting the 200, and in some relays, which I was surprisingly good at, btw. We went to state a couple times in a few events. But he had also decided that I was a hurdler. That’s right. I was a 5 foot 2, half-Korean girl running the 300m and 100m hurdles. The 300, I could understand. It’s really more of an endurance race and the hurdles are lower. The 100, though? You have to be fast, tall, black, and have cat-like reflexes to do well. Plus, super great rhythm so that you don’t get off-stride.

I was neither black, tall, nor did I feel particularly feline, but I actually took to hurdling pretty well. You don’t actually jump over them. You lean and stretch and lift your back leg and then quickly put it down in time to take a step and take off and do it again. Maybe it was all those years of playing the violin, but my rhythm was pretty good, and I may not have won every race, but I usually placed.

So on to my spectacular failure. I made it into the finals of the 100m hurdles at the Magic Valley Classic, where pretty much all the tiny towns in Idaho came to compete. We got in the blocks, the gun went off, and so did I. I was winning at the 9th hurdle. Big time. I could taste it. And then…my cleat caught the last hurdle and I went down with it. I managed to scrape a huge patch of skin off of my arm and even tore through my running tights and took a large chunk off of my knee. Bloody and covered in asphalt, I still managed to crawl/limp across into third place.

I was pretty disappointed with myself. Did I time my takeoff wrong? Was I just tired? Did I just not lift my leg high enough? And then there were the scars. Huge scabs for a few weeks, and then huge ugly scars that were a constant reminder of my crash. And if I managed to still get third, how far ahead must I have been! It was devastating, because even though we won a lot of relays, this was my own event and I had failed myself.

Track season ended. I graduated in a class of 13, 2 of whom were Japanese exchange students. (I am NOT kidding about that.) My family moved that summer and I went to BYU. By then my scars were starting to fade a little, and I was more worried about handling college classes, and making new friends and figuring out life, than a race that I had lost.

But as I was driving home last week, I realized that losing that race in such a spectacular fashion had taught me three really important things.

THING ONE

I AM NOT A QUITTER.

I could have curled up in a ball, or cried and waited for the herd to pass me by, and then walked off the track or waited for someone to carry me. But it is not in my nature to start something and not finish it. Even when it’s hard and it hurts. Maybe especially then. I dug in with my hands and cleats and pushed myself across the finish line. All that mattered at that point was finishing and giving it my best effort, even if at that point it was crawling.

How has this helped me in my life? Being resilient is a quality that has been essential for me. I haven’t necessarily defined it as part of my character until lately, but I have needed resilience to fight the battle of chronic depression and anxiety. To be a military wife. To move 20 times, sometimes by myself. To travel cross country or internationally with 4 children and no husband because we felt it was important that they spent time with grandparents and cousins. To deal with secondary infertility. I’m not saying any of this has been a cakewalk. But I have always felt an inner strength even in the middle of self-doubt and discouragement. That if I just kept going I would make it through.

THING TWO

SCARS CAN HEAL

My scars didn’t just fade with time. They totally disappeared. In fact, at this point, I can’t remember which arm or leg had the scars. I did have them for years, but eventually they just started to shrink and I quit thinking about them. One day I realized they were disappearing. I know that doesn’t happen with every physical scar we carry, and I certainly have others that remain with me. Like the three in my left hand where I have cut my finger or palm open with scissors. (Because I’m super coordinated. And I couldn’t get my eye to tell my brain to tell my hand to stop cutting fast enough.)

But other scars, from being hurt, left out, offended, criticized, isolated, judged, gossiped about, misunderstood, lied to, betrayed, mistreated, manipulated, used….those can completely disappear. I’ve realized I have the power to forgive, through the grace of Christ, and that forgiveness sets me free. I read a book on forgiveness by Bishop Desmond Tutu and his daughter a while ago. You can find it HERE. He compares conditional forgiveness with a chain. When we are only willing to forgive if someone asks our forgiveness, then we are bound to them. But if we forgive them entirely independent of their actions or intentions, then we are set free. Forgiving someone is all about CHANGING OUR HEART and not about changing theirs. I’ve found as I change my heart a little at a time, my scars start to disappear.

THING THREE

FAILURE IS AN OPTION

I know that sounds ridiculous to some of you, because it’s so obvious. But at 17, I was practicing the violin at 5 am before early morning seminary at 6 am. I was studying independent math, because super small school, remember? And I was two grade levels ahead. So I sat at a table in the corner during the regular math class and worked my way through a completely different text book than everyone else. I would occasionally go over to the teacher’s desk if I had a question. I was a finalist for the Japan/US Senate Scholarship, and if I won, I would have spent the summer between my junior and senior year in Japan. I made it to the top 10 finalists in the state, but didn’t receive that scholarship. Instead I won and completed a summer honors program at Idaho State University before my senior year started. You have to understand that college was of the utmost importance in my family, and I really needed a scholarship to help get me there, plus there was always this dude

just hanging around whispering a lot of helpful things like ⬆️ to me. I was a classic overachiever with perfectionist tendencies and while I certainly had a tiger mom, I was just as driven to achieve. I had to. Or I would bring dishonor to my family AND the cow. And guess what? I did get a great scholarship, but I also had some bumps on the road to college graduation. Let’s call them…Andy and Rachel. Two kids in 2 1/2 years of marriage, plus let’s throw in a kidney stone during my first trimester with Rachel, and I did some failing. Not just tests, but classes. I KNOW. I could hear this guy, too!

My cows were ashamed. For a minute. And then they realized I literally could not get out of bed for 5 months except to pee and throw up everything that could possibly come out of my body. Including my eyeballs, but those suckers are attached pretty well. Although there were a couple of moments I thought one was going to just pop out of my head from the force of my vomiting.(That might have become a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not episode.) Sorry, where was I? Oh, failure! I failed some stuff! And the world did not blow up! I retook the classes I needed to, in between pregnancies and had a nice, pukey, kidney stone-enhanced last semester of college. But because I now knew that failure was an option, I was able to let go of some of the anxiety that was trying to steal my air and my sanity. I graduated in December, Rachel was born at the beginning of March, Vaughn was commissioned and graduated at the end of April and we were off to start our adventures in the wild blue yonder!

THINGS ONE THROUGH THREE

So it was just a race. 15 seconds out of my life. But when you have “skin in the game” as our former President Obama loved to say, it matters way more to you. My skin was literally in that race, and on the asphalt, and probably everywhere if we got Gil Grissom from CSI to examine the scene afterward.

Yet those 15 seconds taught me invaluable lessons I might not have been able to learn any other way! Well, at least not that quickly. My husband always tries to get me to say positive affirmations. I’m super uncomfortable doing this and feel like an untrained parrot at a cockatiel convention. (Wait, do cockatiels talk? I don’t know. I’m terrified of birds. That’s another story.) He’s SUPER great at expressing his feelings, both verbally and physically and telling me how much and why he loves me and why he thinks I’m amazing. So, honey, this is for you! (pretend I’m looking into your eyes).

I AM NOT A QUITTER. I AM RESILIENT. I CAN FORGIVE AND SHOW COMPASSION TO MYSELF AS WELL AS OTHERS. AND WHEN I FAIL, THE WORLD DOESN’T END. I JUST KEEP GOING AND KNOW THAT EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY.

AND ONE MORE FOR THE ROAD-

5 foot 2 inch Korean girls probably shouldn’t be running the 100 m hurdles.

What have you learned from failing?