This is the story about how a tiny Starbucks can now has the sweetest meaning to me, and will forever.
So, picture this, me and my teammate Ellie are sitting at lunch and I have just bought a tiny little Starbucks can from the vending machine. Double shot espresso. The key to surviving the race, lol. Now, follow me. Me and my teammates are losing brain cells by the second, we’re probably a little sleep deprived, and we’ve been stuck in isolation for weeks. We’re losing it. We start singing about the tiny can.
“Tiny CaaAanNn” “So small caaaan” ”Petite CaanNn” “Not big caaan” and the list goes on and on. For days, we couldn’t stop singing the phrase “tiny can.” Eventually, most of our squad & some leadership is singing along. It was hilarious. A few days pass, and it’s time for us to complete the fitness hike. Every racers’ nightmare. Fifty pound packs on, strapped and ready to go, to hike the 2.2 mile fitness hike in under 38 minutes, and I am already thinking to myself “I can NOT do this.” I stumble my way through the majority of the hike with Regan, my squad leader encouraging me in one ear & satan lying to me in the other. I just remember constantly saying “I’m too tiny I’m too tiny I’m too tiny.” Finally, Regan grabs me and looks me in my eyes and says “Yes you are so tiny, but you are SO MIGHTY.” I’ll never forget.
Needless to say, I had to redo the fitness hike. I let Satan win, and I finished within just a few minutes over the 38 minute mark. & I thought it was the end of the world. I was so defeated. I was so anxious. And I was feeling tinier than ever. So a week goes by, I wrestle with the Lord about the fitness hike, my teammates pray over me, and it’s time to try again. I pack up and get ready to take on the re-hike and Ellie says “Sierra, when you think you tiny can’t….. you tiny can. Tiny can!” And of course we both DIED laughing and told our entire team about Ellie’s new joke. But it was true! I am tiny, and tiny CAN. So my teammates along with two of our men, Payton & JP, took on the fitness hike with me for the second time, (first of all, their selflessness wow. My people are the best people) and everyone is yelling ”TINY CAN!” TINY CAN!” It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life, I felt so tiny, I wanted to quit. But when we are so tiny, He makes us so mighty. I was on the homestretch of the hike, 30 yards away from the finish line, and I looked at Payton and said “I’m not gonna make it am I?” And he said, “Sierra, you literally have SIX minutes left!” And tiny crossed the finish line. With my favorite people beside me & with a brand new perspective of not only the Lord’s strength, but my own, through Him. Tiny can. <3
