Pausing to See the View

Possibly one of the most frightening things in life is change….either change that you chose, or that you are forced to make…we all have moments when that change happens and we know our life will never be the same. It’s a scary thought…. what is perhaps a more daunting thought is waiting, in anticipation knowing that that very moment, sometimes dreaded moment, is about to come, and you know that once it does you can never return to where you were. You have no choice. Sometimes it will hurt, and you somehow have to get through it, but it seems insurmountable. You are told to have faith, that God will bring something better, but faith seems to be clouded by uncertainly, pain, and unwillingness to open our minds that our lives will change forever.

As I move through my transition from 20 years as a gymnast I went back to what I wrote when I was waiting for that moment to occur. And now, 10 months later, am reflecting on what I am learning, and just what that pivotal moment in my life is meaning.

Awaiting the moment: April 2008

As I go into my last week of my 20 year career in gymnastics, I can’t even describe the emotions I am feeling. I think I am going to be lost without my teammates and sisters. Of course many of them will be lifelong friends, we have been through more together than I can describe, and I love them so much. My coaches have pushed me harder than I thought I could handle, and helped me rise to a new level of gymnastics, I have been challenged, and have grown tremendously. The sport itself, I have literally been doing it for longer than I can remember, it’s been five hours a day, every day since I was a little girl, so I can’t even imagine life without it. It has been a lifelong dream, and in a week I have no choice, the dream will end with a final salute to a judge, final routine, and final landing, I will write the conclusion to a career that I will not be able to go back and re-write.

This past week I was interviewed for an article about my retirement from the sport and what I will take with me from it. A couple of the questions that sum up what I would be writing here are:

what will stand out the most about my gymnastics career:

MPSF Conference 2008 was the meet I will never forget. Both of my parents were there, and I will never forget the feeling when I nailed my bar routine, Kathy threw her arms around me, my teammates screaming, and looking up into the stands to see my parents standing and screaming. I will replay that single moment in my mind as one of my most treasured gymnastics memories.

Treasured not because it was the best bar routine of my life, but for what it signified. I MADE IT. Through all the doubts, struggles, and having so many people give up on me, and many times nearly giving up on myself…. I did it. From every doctor that told me I would never train or compete bars again, to the countless nights I cried myself to sleep because I wasn’t ready to give up my dream…I did it. I did it with the love and support of so many people, my parents, coaches, teammates, and God.

After an amazing meet at Conference, we found out we had done enough to qualify to Nationals, we beat the odds, and for that it feels like we won. I will always remember Ashley running over to me and us jumping up and down nearly in tears because we did it. I will remember competing in front of 3,000 people (and loving it!!!), the feeling of a nailed dismount, and the cheers of my teammates.

was there ever a defining time when I knew gymnastics was what I wanted to do?

When I was four…I wanted to go to the Olympics, I knew I wanted to do gymnastics, there was no other option in my mind. I grew up watching the Arizona State gymnasts compete and was determined to earn a college scholarship and compete in the NCAA. I decided from a young age that I would do whatever it took to reach that goal. From the age of four I set out to get it and refused to look
back.

was it worth it, all the surgeries, injuries, pain, heartache…to do gymnastics?

HANDS DOWN, YES. it has been a blessing in every possible way, I wouldn’t trade a single moment of the pain because it made what I achieved in the sport that much more joyful. As they say “the greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” I was blessed with a talent and love for the sport that few ever experience, and I know gymnastics will be a foundation and a strength for the rest of my life.

…. I can’t believe 20 years is going to be over in one week…..I am promising myself right now, to soak in every single moment of my last week, and when I salute the judge for the last time at Nationals to KNOW that THIS is what I worked my entire life for…And…in the words of Carrie Underwood..”Thank God even CRAZY DREAMS come true”

“Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become, the hours of practice, the coaches who pushed you, the fans who cheer for you, is the little girl who fell in love with the sport and never looked back…Do it for her.”

……this week is for the little girl in me who feel in love with the sport twenty years ago.

10 months later: what the moment looks like now

The plane ride from Nationals in Louisiana back to Seattle was the longest ride of my life. Knowing that I left Seattle still living my dream, and will be landing in Seattle, my life changed forever. These 10 months of my life have been the hardest I had ever experienced as I continue to struggle with the loss of my life as a gymnast, and find who I am apart from the sport.

In order to reach the goals I set out to do I had to devote every aspect of my life to the sport. It was only when I came out of the gymnastics world that I have slowly been allowing myself to see the world in a new light and am learning who I am…as a person. I have begun to see how gymnastics has shaped me…and will continue to shape me my entire life. I realized that allowing myself to move beyond the sport requires revisiting both the painful and wonderful memories, and learning what the “real world” is like.

I have been blessed to be surrounded by people who genuinely care, not because I can perform for them, but because of who I am. People who challenge me, love me, and are helping me grow. I am surrounded in life and work with people who are patient as I learn that the real world is not as cruel as the gymnastics world is. At times it is difficult to understand and I don’t believe that it is possible to be loved and valued without losing that it because of a fall off the balance beam.

Gymnastics demands an un-attainable goal…PERFECTION. And when I think about it, I was set up for failure since the age of 3. That’s a hard goal to tackle, and after 20 years, quite a letdown when you don’t accomplish it. I could go and list the many things I didn’t accomplish that I set out to do, the numerous times a coach yelled at me, that I was disappointment to them, or they up threw their arms up in surrender and walked out the door because I had failed them. It happened more than hugs of pride and love. Gymnasts are trained to find the negative in every routine we do, because if you find positive then you are lowering your standards and accepting less than perfection, right? This is how I have lived my entire life, and it will be an ongoing challenge to accept imperfection.

Every mountain I set out to climb I would reach what I had set out to get, and as soon as I got there the mountain became higher and steeper. It was an endless hike, that in the end left me wanting to keep climbing in hope of reaching the top and being able to look down and see that I had FINALLY accomplished something. But living by THIS truth, the top would never come.

This weekend I sat with Ashley, a teammate and best friend, who since we graduated has moved home. We talked about our transition out of the sport. We have known each other through gymnastics for 10 years and became the best of friends. She has a faith that I admire, and pushed me to be my best because she believed in me. She knows me deep as an athlete and sister.

As I sat with her I realized what I treasured most about the sport was not the goals that could be measured by a score, but the parts I did with my teammates, the struggles, the triumphs, fighting with everything we had to reach a goal, and crying with each other when we knew we had done all could and it wasn’t enough….being able to be in a place of joy or sorrow that didn’t have to be expressed, because we all knew how we felt, and that a lifetime of work and dreams was built into everything we did.

It was in this moment this weekend that I also realized that those moments didn’t go away when gymnastics did. I was in fact having one of those moments right then. There I was, sitting with the girls that were with me during some of the most difficult and also exciting times in my life, and we were once again working through one of the most difficult things we will have to do, moving on from gymnastics- and we didn’t have to explain it to each other, or justify our feelings, because we knew, it was a lifetime of work and dreams that had to come to an end.

As we sat talking I wondered, how do you walk away feeling successful from a career when you didn’t meet the goal “perfection.” While my teammates have struggled with the same thing she was able to see beyond what we have been taught to expect…she saw all the successes. She saw that we earned college scholarships, an honor that only a handful in the country get to do. We competed for the NCAA and at Nationals 5 times. We were Conference Champions, we won titles, but more importantly, we never left each other’s sides, and we LOVED the sport more than most. We fought back against coaches when they gave up, we didn’t accept surrender, and we NEVER gave up on each other, even when the rest of the world had.

Then she went on to point out more things that I have been blind to….my own accomplishments. As she listed them off I wondered why I was left feeling like a failure when my career finished? I had reached nearly every goal I set out to achieve, fought adversity, and finished my career at an all time high athletically, and wanting more. Wanting more not because I hadn’t achieved it, but because I HAD. I would never feel successful if I defined my career by my coaches, because NOTHING would be enough for them, I was not perfect. This past year I finally saw my potential because I was healthy enough to reach it. I fought through extremely hard years of surgery and illness when it would have been easiest to give up, but I came out on top…and I wanted more because I LOVED IT. I enjoyed the thrill, the crowds, the achievement, my teammates, the challenge, and doing the sport that I loved. And I wasn’t ready to give it up, and truthfully, I probably never will be ready to give it up. But, when I think about it, that’s the best way to go out…on top. I had reached the top of this mountain; it just took others to help me see the view from the top and the journey it took to get there. I only wish that I had paused every so often during my 20 year career, to look at the view, instead of focusing on continuing up the mountain.

Since that pivotal moment my life continues to change. I am seeing what I learned in the sport shine through in other areas of my life. 10 months ago I thought that gymnastics was all there was in life, and I was saying goodbye to gymnastics and goodbye to who I was. While I still struggle with this, I am beginning to realize that I haven’t said goodbye, I will forever have those relationships, memories, and accomplishments, and will always be a gymnast, but now I am adding to the depth of my character by allowing myself to experience new joys in life. Every day I work to move through the loss I feel and the physical and mental damage that is part of the sport, and I will probably continue to work through it for a long time as I struggle to accept this new life. But slowly, I will accept it and thrive in it.

I have been placed in the hands of friends, mentors, and co-workers that are helping to shape me and challenge me in new ways, and patiently help me grow. I am catching glimpses of hope that I hadn’t seen. I am realizing that without gymnastics these people probably would have never been brought into my life, and that God did not just bless me with the ability to do gymnastics, but as a child of His, with His guiding hand, I can and hopefully will have a positive impact on the world around me. When I await the next pivotal moment in my life I will be able to look back and remember what I am going through right now, and have more faith as I take a new path.

For now, I am climbing a new mountain that has it’s bumps, hills that I am unsure how I am going to get through this transition in my life. It still seems daunting, and at times insurmountable, But when climbing this mountain , the top is nowhere in sight, I will NEVER reach the top, not because I am striving for perfection and unattainable goals, but because the mountain is a journey with many small “tops.” My life will continue to change and I will be challenged to grow and faithfully walk the path, and every so often, pause to see the view.

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