Halifax, July 6th, 2008
This may be one of my final BLOGS to all the loyal fans who have been so patient, trusting, supportive and kind over the years. It is official, we will NOT be representing Canada at the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008! This has been a 7 year team goal and a life-long goal for me personally. At our team wrap up, we assessed how we truly gave 100% with the skills and tools we had and we were willing to do whatever it took to create success at the Olympics. It was nice to not feel regret and resentment for wishing we had done more or done it differently. We heartfelt knew that we gave it our all and our game was not enough to get us over the line this time.
In my personal experience, it has been much less dramatic than I thought to not achieve this goal. Perhaps the fact that the season was challenging from the beginning helped me to find my own sense of self (beyond my game) as the months passed. The one major topic that was really trying in the final tournaments was TRUST and FAITH. These notions were sourly tested and still are as we digest the reality of our Olympic fate not coming to pass! Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote the crazy great book "Eat, Pray, Love", expressed how I felt during my journey towards the World's grandest sporting stage, the Olympic Games:
"Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the Universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding." There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligent scholars of every religion will try and sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through Scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be – by definition – faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be...a prudent insurance policy"
This statement depicts what it is like to go for something that seems impossible (because it truly is that when you are a young girl watching gymnastics on TV from the Olympic Games and then swiftly heading out to the backyard and imagining the roar of the fans as you back flip off the picnic table!) and creating the space for it to become a reality. I ran head first into the darkness of getting to the Olympics in a sport that did not even exist in the Olympic Movement at the time of my imagining! Life opened up to my imagination and dreams and layed out a path that you I could either run away from screaming (because it is all too hard and daunting) or go for...with no guarantee of how I would end up! The pain of "not knowing" killed me many times on this journey yet deep down I knew that it was the magic of the unknowable that was were it was at. Two years ago, Marie asked a group of us the poignant question of whether we would accept the Olympic Gold Medal if someone came knocking at our door one day and handed it to us? The medal deliverer would alert the media and the whole world would know we had won but we did not have to compete for it. Would we accept that gift at the door? Said so plainly, I knew I wanted to play for it. Not because, "I wanted to earn it" and all that jargon, but actually because I want to enjoy those exciting plays on court, I want to laugh with my beach partner, I want to feel the fear and then do it anyway, I want to get over my insecurity of wearing a bathing suit in front of the world and because I want to LIVE it all! While I always assumed that it would be the realizing of my dream that would transform me, it was actually the "going for it" that did it as a bi-product! I am so grateful that I engaged fully in this process and went for it full out and that I have peace in my heart as the song ends and the curtain comes down on an amazing chapter in my life. I am retired at age 31 and that is comical in its own right...
I only hope that through my sharing our process that something may have touched your own life and the journey you are presently on. That expression, "life is what happens when you're making other plans" is exactly how it went down for me. While I was planning for the Olympics, everything happened to me. I went from an anxious fretting teenager who often contemplated staying in bed all day in University because it was easier than facing the stress of the world, to someone who can be in the still and quiet of her own self and like what she sees. Its a minor miracle really!
Thank you for being the Source of my transformation and belief in unconditional love and acceptance. That was one of my desires as a young girl, to have unconditional love and to be able to give it one day...I feel that you all have opened up that realm for me and showed me things I never knew existed.
ADIEU from the girls from MtotheMax. To the next great feat we all take on...
Sarah from MtotheMax
