Ever since the Olympics began, however, our TV has been turned on every evening until at least midnight. The Olympic Games are such a time suck, but they sure are inspiring. Our kids have been staying up late with us to see history in the making, although I do make them exit the room during commercials since they tend to be morally atrocious or politically nauseating. The stories of courage, faith, overcoming obstacles, patriotism, and sheer determination are just riveting. What pricks my heart the most is when the camera zooms in on the athletes' parents and loved ones. I cannot imagine the pride, gratitude and anxiety they must feel as they watch their kids perform at the Olympic level after all those years of training. I have also been encouraged to see athletes give God all the glory for their accomplishments. Read more about the faith of Gabby Douglas and others here.
My kids have been powerfully affected by the Olympics. My daughter made me laugh at first when she began cheering for whichever swimmer happened to be wearing a hot pink swim cap without giving any thought to which country she represented. All that soon changed, however, as my kids became fascinated with the countries of the world. Yesterday, I woke up to find the kids in the school room in front of the world map. They had the children's encyclopedia open and a flag sticker sheet out, and they were looking up the flag for each country. I would like to thank the 2012 Olympics, our daughter's friend living in Taiwan who gave her the flag stickers, and our daughter's teachers who share my desire to see our kids grow in their love of learning for inspiring this educational moment.
My daughter is a mini-me in lots of ways, but she is also very different from me in other ways. Kermit the Frog defined my rainbow loving girl best when he sang about the rainbow connection. She's the queen of the "lovers [and] the dreamers". She's passionate about everything she does, and she believes anything is possible. There are no limits in her mind, and her dreams are big.
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| One of many rainbow sunsets viewed this month from our front porch. |
"I can do all this through him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:13)When I was her age, I was much more like her in that regard than I am now. Time, experience, and engineering training, where success hinges on being able to identify everything that could possibly go WRONG and then designing OUT all those modes of failure, have turned me into more of a realist or pragmatist and at times, unfortunately, a cynic.
So after watching these young gymnasts accomplish amazing feats that were deemed impossible for world class gymnasts when I was her age, she determined in her mind that she would become an Olympic gymnast. My first thoughts were:
- You should have set that goal about five years ago when I first started giving you gymnastics lessons to see if you loved it, but you wanted to try other things. You are far too old to start down that road now.
- While you may have the build of a gymnast, you did not inherit natural flexibility. You may not ever be able to do a split, much less pull your flexed and straighten legs up to your ears while flying through the air like Gabby Douglas.
- Are you crazy?
On her own initiative, she turned our garage into an Olympic training center. We already have a well equipped workout room in our house, but I guess she wanted her own digs or was just respecting the workout space I tend to hog for myself. I have enjoyed watching her train.
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| Warm-up |
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| Push-ups |
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| Working on balance and somersault rotation |
She also decided to train her brother. He does focus intently when
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