US Olympic Trials is arguably the fastest meet in the world. Since the United States dominates the world in swimming, our Olympic Trials are oftentimes faster than the Olympics themselves. Thus, I ended my swimming career three tenths of a second away from qualifying for the fastest meet in the world.
And that was it. It was over. A pretty anticlimactic ending for such a dramatic story. And no, it didn’t seem right to me. No, it didn’t seem fair to me. People have asked me how I’m doing now that the sport that has dominated my life for eighteen years is finally bowing at center stage. I tell them I’m really okay with it, and they look at me with boggled eyes, grappling with the absurdity of what they are sure is my pride unable to admit the pain of missing my ultimate goal. But I’m here to tell you that despite what you think, I really am okay.
Three years ago I asked God for an impossible life. To live in the miraculous became my uttermost goal, more prized in my prayer life than anything else. It became the prayer that defined all others. But it never should have.
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“What happened to the girl who cried herself to sleep because she got second at the state championship? What happened to the girl who trained for nine months by herself because she believed she could come back when no one else did? What happened to the girl who inspired a standing ovation from a crowd of hundreds when she demolished a 20-year-old state record? What happened to the girl who hit the wall so hard at the end of a race she tore her shoulder from the bone, simply to get first place? What happened to the girl who swam for eight years through a decaying arm until she almost killed herself? What happened to the girl who looked at a surgeon who told her she had no chance and said, ‘watch me?’ What happened to her? Where is she? I bet if she was here, she could swim through a pulled groin and qualify for Olympic Trials regardless.
You have worked your entire life for this, for one moment to show the world what God can do with a life surrendered to Him. Thousands of hours of rehab, hundreds of people laughing at you, thousands of strokes a day, all in vain. All to get to this moment and not finish it how you really should.”
These are the thoughts that bombarded my mind in the last week of my career. I wanted so badly to force myself to believe that this race was a do or die moment, because surely that would give me enough adrenaline to make the time standard I needed. After missing Olympic Trials again by less than half a second in Atlanta, I had one last chance at a meet in Dallas to make the cut. I went for the 100 Breast split on the 200, I missed the cut by less than a second (again), and I pulled my groin so badly in the process that I couldn’t walk without limping, much less kick breaststroke. And all of a sudden, my career was over. I couldn’t race the 100 the next day with a bum leg, and I couldn’t race the IM on Sunday because a fourth of the race was breaststroke. In one moment, it was just over.
Yes, I cried. And yes, I was upset. To overcome a rotting arm, three surgeries, a lung collapse, and countless compensation injuries along the way for ten years only to end three tenths away from the ultimate competition in a swimmer’s life sucks. Yet instead of beating myself up about failing, I beat myself up about guilt. Not guilt that I could have done more, because I knew that I did everything I could possibly have done with the hand I was dealt. But I felt so guilty to be relieved that it was finally over. I was relieved to not be questioning my sanity anymore and dealing with more physical pain in one practice than most people have faced in their life. Don’t get me wrong – I will miss my sport tremendously, but living my miracle on a daily basis really wore on me. And I berated myself because I thought if I could have just found that girl I used to be, if I could have just made myself care about the sport like I used to, then I could have written the perfect ending to an epic story.
But I’m not that girl anymore. And I never will be. Because somewhere along the way I lost her. I lost her at the feet of a Savior who is more entrancing than any gold medal ever could be. I lost her in the extravagance of a romance filled with more adrenaline than any race. I lost her in the plot of a story being written in my life that was so much better than I ever could have written for myself. I was trying so hard to hold onto a girl who I just wasn’t anymore. I couldn’t convince myself that that race was an ultimatum, because it wasn’t. I couldn’t convince myself that the end of my sport was the end of my life, because it’s not. Somewhere along the way of finding God, I lost myself. And I’m okay with that.
That fearless little girl who thrived off of intimidating her competitors is still in me, it’s just that I’ve found a much more important battle to be waged than the one in the swimming pool. I don’t live for the applause of the crowd in a natatorium but for the applause of the crowd of witnesses who have persevered through faith and now stand on the other side of heaven cheering me on in the war that has yet to be won. I don’t live for the domination of my competitors but for God’s love to be known and shown through the story of my life. My heart breaks more for the girls on my team who do not know my Savior than it does when I don’t get a best time.
So as I stood on the block one last time, I stood with a smile on my face, for I knew that the end was only the beginning. I, of course, was determined to go out in style, even if I was somewhat of a cripple with a pulled groin. Diving in for the 200 IM, I had every intention of kicking butterfly on the breaststroke leg of the race (which for you non-swimmers is an automatic disqualification). I knew kicking on a pulled muscle wasn’t worth the cost, but I needed one last race to go down fighting.
But when I turned into that third leg of the race and did my pull out, a breaststroke kick magically escaped from my legs. Halfway down the pool, my legs were still flailing in narrow little frog kicks, avoiding the pain, and I told myself I had to start kicking fly. And then classic carnal Tera instinct took over and I decided to kick the whole lap breaststroke anyway. I turned and came home on free, touched the wall one last time, and looked up to see I had swum the fastest 200 IM since my third surgery. My teammates enveloped me in a hug, the Aggie parents cheered from the stands, and I passed from being a swimmer to being a swammer.
That audacious, no-comprehension-of-pain little girl is still there, even if she shows her stubbornness less frequently than before. And I have no doubt God will use her in the future. It’s just that now she is inside of a woman of God who plans to take the kingdom of darkness by force and use everything that the enemy has meant for bad for the glory of the One who was, and is, and is to come.
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I have been the fastest swimmer in the country and I have begged God to die for months. I have seen the highest this sport has to offer and I have seen the lowest. And through it all swimming has always just been the tool God has used to show me more of Himself. I’m not upset at leaving it all behind because it was all for Him, anyway. He will continue to complete the work He began in me, it’s just that now He is going to use different things to mold me and shape me than He has thus far in the journey.
God has answered my prayer and given me an impossible life. I came three tenths from qualifying for the fastest meet in the world with part of my arm missing and three fourths of it rebuilt with anchors. But living an impossible life isn’t my ultimate prayer anymore. Desiring anything above God alone is idolatry, even if it is mighty displays of His power. So now my prayer is simply, “God, let me be faithful to You until the day You take me home.” That’s it. Nothing dramatic. Nothing awe-inspiring. Because that’s all we really need.
If I am faithful to my King until the end, then He will lead me into the impossible in every aspect of my life. I will impossibly love people, I will impossibly forgive, and I will see impossible miracles. But most importantly, I will get to know the heart of the King of the Impossible, the One who defeated death and makes all things possible for us: Jesus. If I am faithful to Him until the end, then I know the journey of finding His heart will always be the reward.
Thank you to everyone who has been a part of my journey thus far, and I look forward to you being with me on this journey called life for everything that is yet to come!
The final race of my career:
