Heart of a Champion

Every 2 years the world pauses just a bit from everything that is normal and routine and gets swept up in the phenomenon that is The Olympics. A chance to gather all of the world's best athletes in one spot and revel in the glory of their chosen discipline. A chance to cheer for your nation, to cheer for the underdog, to sing tales of unsung heroes.

We know all the big names...Michael Phelps, Nadia Comaneci, Jesse Owens, Dorothy Hamill, Apolo Ono...the list goes on and on. But there was an athlete several years back that was the epitome of "courage" to me. His name was Eric Moussambani. He was from Equatorial Guinea. He was a swimmer, coming to compete in the 100 meter freestyle.

And prior to arriving in Sydney, Australia for the 2000 summer games, he had never even laid eyes on an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

The International Olympic Committee, in an effort to draw in poorer nations has a wild card draw to give some of these athletes an opportunity to compete. Eric had only been swimming about 8 months. He practiced in a 66 ft pool at a hotel. (An Olympic pool is 160 ft.) Now here he was on the starting blocks of a what must have seemed like a lake to him, waiting for the gun to go off in the biggest race of his life on the biggest stage in the world.

No doubt there were nerves, as evidenced by his two competitors. Before the starting shot was fired, both fell into the water and were promptly disqualified. And Eric stood alone. The gun went off and in he went, about to face the longest 1 minute and 52 seconds of his life. By comparison, the winner of the 100 m would finish in 47.84 seconds. But time wasn't the issue in this heat. It was just about his being there with the impossible laid out in front of him....and not backing down.

It wasn't easy. I remember watching him thinking first he'd never make it to the wall. When he finally did and touched to flip, I was afraid he was never going to come back up from under the water. As the spectators held their breath, suddenly he bobbed up, moving ever slower still. It didn't look good. It didn't look like he'd make it. They said there were lifeguards standing ready to jump in and get him. He was really struggling.

But then something happened. The crowd, who had been politely watching, suddenly realized what kind of effort was being put forth, and they started to cheer. Not just applauding him...but CHEERING for him. Cheering that slowly swelled around the pool like the ocean waves crashing on a beach. They cheered and cheered as if the only gold medal ever to be awarded was at stake. They cheered for his courage...courage to start the race, and the courage to finish it. They cheered to let him know that in that huge, vast pool of water that he was struggling through...he was not alone. They cheered to bring him to the end of this unbelievable journey he had started.

Later Eric made the statement that he "could hear them (the crowd) and it helped me get to the end. Thanks to the crowd, I made it. I'm going to jump and dance all night in celebration of my personal triumph."

When you think about it....isn't that really what it's all about? All of us....just helping each other make it. At some point or another we all end up jumping in that pool in life...unsure, unprepared for the circumstances ahead, feeling so very alone. Hoping to hear someone cheering for us in the background, to give us just that small tiny spark to help us make it to the end of the race.

I've had days when I've been in the pool. And I sincerely thank everyone who stood and cheered.

I hope you'll always find me returning the favor.

And for all of us...
I hope Eric is still dancing out there somewhere in glorious celebration.

Magna Cum Not So Much

One of the objectives my boss gave me at my last performance review was to get some education under my belt. See, insurance is one of those grand professions where you can take classes and get designations that show your mental fortitude to memorize all kinds of fun and interesting facts about things like discreet probability management and loss severity distribution and the factors that should be considered in selecting a domicile and.....well, have your eyes glazed over yet?

Imagine how I feel.

When I was in grade school, test preparation was not this difficult. I mean, I could read a sentence and comprehend it. "Jack and Jill went up the hill." Got it. A dude and a chick, climbing an incline. If they asked me, "Who went up the hill with Jack?", odds are I'd have a pretty good shot at giving the correct answer. In high school, I could study 1/2 hour prior to a test and get at worst, a B. (OK, unless it was math or science. Those took a bit more effort.) In college, had to work a little harder, but you know...I survived my classes pretty well. I knew how to read a text and prepare for a test.

What has happened to me?!

Somewhere between 18 and 38, things have really fallen apart. My brain does not engage like it is obviously supposed to do. Now, I know I'm not stupid. I mean, I work in insurance, for the love of Pete! I have spent the last 4 weeks deciphering the legal jargon of the General Statutes of the state of Connecticut! I understand insurance policy wording! I can quote passages from the Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act for you! (Wouldn't you just love to have me come to your next party?!)

But set me down in the evening with the ever compelling "Risk Management and Insurance", and my mind is mush.

2 more weeks of this may just send me right over the edge.

I just hope I can keep my mind intact long enough to remind my boss that the goal was to take classes.

She never said anything about passing them....

Hanging on by a Thread....

One of the things I do at work is troubleshoot problems. Most days, though it can be challenging, it's not too bad.

Today was not one of those days.

Everybody...I mean EVERYBODY...kept coming up to me starting conversations with the same sentence...."I have a problem I need to talk to you about..." And in grand escalation fashion, each and every problem seemed to be just a wee bit worse than the one preceding it. At about 3:00 I walked into my boss' office and informed her I was putting my application in at McDonalds, because I doubted french fries and chicken nuggets had to deal with anything as intense as verifying if system algorithms are accurate and should we be using processed dates or renewal dates and what about the calculation of violation removal... She told me to sit down and quit whining...she had a problem to talk to me about.

So I was sitting there trying to help decipher the latest dilemma, when I suddenly and inexplicably got THE flashback. This is not the first time this has happened...but it always amazes me when it does. It takes me back to when I was 11 or 12...

I was a tomboy as a kid and many times, what my Dad did, I did. So it wasn't surprising to find me up on a roof with a hammer in my hand acting like the master carpenter that I definitely was not. But this was where we were that day...helping a friend put a roof on his son's house. Things were going A-OK... for a while, anyway. And then it got real interesting. I took a step backward to pick up a hammer, which apparently was one step more than I should have taken....and walked right off the roof.

Now, the only thing underneath me was a concrete slab, which obviously was not all that inviting a place to land. The trouble was, it's not like I really had much time to assess the situation and aim for another spot. Granted, I was much smaller than then I am now, but it still doesn't take long for gravity to pull a little kid to the earth when nothing else is in the way. I was plunging to a disaster.

And then...suddenly....I stopped. Just stopped...looking eye level at sky, my feet dangling with nothing under them...and wondering what in the world was going on.

Instinctly, I looked up, and there I saw it....my hand clutched in a death grip around a thin little electrical wire that was swaying in the breeze...and saving me from nothing short of broken bones and bruises (or worse). Apparently on the way down I stretched my hand up in a subconscious plea for help from above...and by nothing more than the Grace of God, caught hold of this tiny little wire.

Wow...it still makes me shudder to think about it.

Dad quickly scrambled down the roof and brought the ladder over to get me down. I remember how he held me while I was shaking and a bit in shock. It felt good to have his arms around me, assuring me it was OK. A lot of bad could have come from that day....but a miraculous story emerged instead.

I'm sure we've all had things happen in life that we never really understand why they happened, or what they meant. I've had more than my share of them. For a while, this day belonged in that category. But as I've gotten older, I get those flashbacks. Usually they come right at a time when I'm ready to run screaming from life as I know it, and/or choke the next person that crosses my path. It's as if God is reminding me..."Hey - you've been in bad spots before. And I've always been there to keep you from crashing to the ground. It's gonna be OK, so just get your feet back on solid ground and snap out of it!"

Not a bad message to remember.

So, whenever the day seems a bit rough, just picture that little kid dangling in mid-air and remember that no matter how desperate the situation, or how impossible the solution, or how unstable the safety net seems, God's got in all under His control.

I'm thankful for the day I learned how to hang on to God's Grace by a thread...

And I'm betting that tomorrow...will be a better day. :)

I'm back!!!! Under a mound of snow!!!

Well, here I am...blogging again. I really enjoyed this when I was doing it before. Then life went all crazy...buying a house seemed to have a lot to do with that. But I'm gonna try to hit it again, at least periodically here. I think the voices in my head should have someone else listen to them besides just me....


So, it is February 15, and apparently we have moved to the Arctic Circle. Up until just a couple weeks ago, the weather hadn't been too terribly bad this year. Then came February. That groundhog must have been really ticked off the morning they woke him up to ask him if winter was over or not, because he's really socked it to us here. (Does anyone else find it very strange we rely on a giant rodent to predict the weather??)


So, first it was freezing. Like, so cold that you could feel your nose hairs turning to ice. (Believe me, that's cold!) Then, we got like 13 inches of "accumulation". (That's our fancy weatherman terminology for "Good Gravy, it's snowing AGAIN!") And everybody spent a day digging out. Then we got 4 or 5 more inches. And everyone dug out some more. Now it's snowing again. This is ridiculous. We tried driving through our local Target parking lot the other day. I felt like we were in the Himalaya's. Snow mountains piled up everywhere....I could almost hear the yodeling....


But, such as is winter in Ohio. Why, we even had freezing fog a few days ago. Freezing Fog. Now that is some wild stuff. Even for this neck of the woods.


But we'll tough it out and hope it won't last too much longer. And that our basements don't all flood when all this mess starts to melt. And try to remember one more time why on earth we live in this glorious state.....