Encouragement

Some recent events made me start thinking about when I was back in high school. Do you ever wonder why you are the way you are and what shaped the way you approach life? I probably do way too much. There are just some incidents that just click together to make me see something in a whole different light.

It would probably surprise you to learn that I was on the diving team when I was in high school. In my defense, it didn't last very long, and it was only during the summer. You would have to know about my family to understand the absurdity of this endeavor. You see, two of my siblings were gymnasts. Very good gymnasts. And gymnastics translates very well to the diving board and with very minimal effort they excelled at diving. Me, not so much. I was mostly a dancer, and while I could prance down the board very gracefully, once I launched myself off, all bets were off. I decided to join the diving team because I was going to have to sit through all the meets every Friday night through the summer and it was much cooler in the water than on the side. And also, by the time most team members reached the 15-18 age category, diving was not cool enough for them and they quit. So just by getting myself off the board and into the water in a relatively graceful fashion, I could potentially earn some points for our team. But once I decided to do it, I worked hard at making it less embarrassing for myself. I went to both the morning and afternoon practices every day. Remember, when other teams heard our last name their knees would quake because my brother and sister were that good. My brother rarely came to practice and routinely the coaches would ask him if he could do a new dive during the meet. So he would try it during warm-ups for the meet and then compete it and blow the competition out of the water. (Pun intended!) My sister won nearly every meet she entered and she was interviewed for the evening news and her picture was in the newspaper.

I never got that good. Most of the kids in the 10 and under age group were better than me. One of the big dives the coaches always pushed the kids to try was a double somersault (Did you know that a feet-first entry is actually considered a dive? I didn't until I joined the team!) I am still talking about the 10 and unders here! One of the ways they started working towards the dive was by wearing a large sweatshirt to dull the sting of slapping the water on your back when you didn't quite make it all the way around. I spent many mornings with one particular little girl trying to coax her off the board to try a double. Telling her it wasn't going to hurt didn't help. We had to be creative in our efforts. Rewards were useful too. We would offer "double bounces" off the board, using our own weight to catapult the person higher into the air than normally possible. By the end of the summer she was more willing to try the dive, but she still hadn't mastered it. But we bonded through those efforts.

My diving career never made me famous. I only won one competition (never mind about how many people I was competing against...) There was never a "triple threat" with my siblings. I faded from memory very quickly as more talented divers came up the ranks. But for some reason I really looked forward to going to the awards banquet at the end of the summer. I certainly wasn't getting any awards, but I was hoping to see some of the younger divers receive their well-deserved accolades. Plus my siblings of course! Their names are probably still on the "Records" board at the pool. But the very last award of the night ended up being a huge surprise to me. I remember the coach getting up and beginning to describe the person who was going to get this award and how she always was so encouraging to all the divers and she always came to practice and tried so hard and at the meets she always rooted on every member of the team. And I remember thinking," Wow! That is so cool! I wish I could be like that!" You can already guess what happened next. They called my name and named me Team Captain for the next season. I could not believe that was me. That they had seen me like that. I don't think I have ever been prouder of any award I have ever gotten. That plaque with a diver on it hung on my wall for years.

My mom mentioned the other day that when we were younger, she had required us to participate in some activity in which we didn't excel to help us learn something about not being the best. I am not sure what my siblings "failure activity" was, but I can say that diving definitely qualified for me! But that caused me to think about the value of requiring that of all children who tend to be particularly gifted in one area. This past month we had a continuation of the "His Very Own" program we did in February. We just picked out "Loving our Kids" and we had panels on different age groups each week. During the jr. high/high school age panel, several of the parents mentioned how foundational that age is when it comes to forming self-esteem. One woman said that girls' self-esteem tends to be grounded in appearance and guys' tends to be in performance, especially athletic performance. Do you think that it is good for boys to do something they are NOT good at during a time when their self-esteem is so fragile? Or is that just what they need to help see outside themselves?

I ask this because the light bulb that clicked for me in this whole thought process was that what I learned during this amazingly humbling time in my life is that I have the gift of encouragement. I love helping people see the value of pushing through the hard times for the rewards on the other side. Of looking for the lesson in both the good and the bad. Of celebrating the successes and admiring the qualities I appreciate and highlighting the way I am touched by other's words or actions. I know the value of encouragement in my own life. I could not have survived Justin's surgery without your words to lift me up. I can see the way I have carried that lesson on through my life in the thousands of letters I have written, the hugs I have shared, and the shoulders I have offered for tears to be shed. I never made the connection before, but I am thankful that now I see and that I can look for more ways to use this gift for God's glory. I love it when He helps me to see something new in old memories. It helps me to think that even things that I see as ordinary and even boring are actually foundational for what God is teaching me and what He wants me to be. It makes me look for other lessons I have been missing!