Epiphany

I recently had a couple of epiphany's. I was just going on living my life when these random thoughts and timely reading hit me.

The first one was that I am and was a very good athlete. I have always considered myself to be a decent athlete, but maybe average. Now you may ask why is a 35 year old worrying about what kind of an athlete he is and or was. Well I was asking myself that question as well. You see I have a cousin who is playing pro basketball in Italy (Trent Whiting) I also have other cousins who could and should have played at least collegiality, they were first team all state in numerous sports. And most of my friends played collegiate level sports. I have always had self-esteem issues and sports in my family are extremely important. So when ever I played a game of pick up basket ball or whatever sport when I was young people would never pick me because of my Tourette's. I was always the last one picked. And after so many years of this you start to doubt yourself.

So at the ripe young age of 35 I had this epiphany, I am a good athlete even a collegiate level athlete. What set this whole thing off was I was golfing with some friends who golf weekly and shoot in the low 80's and I shot 100 not too good right. Wrong, I had not hit a golf ball in about a year and was still just barely losing to these every week golfers. I even had some shots that were really good. Now here is the epiphany: If I golf once a year and shoot 100 I know that if I golfed once a quarter I would be able to knock off about 5 to 10 points. If I golfed monthly I believe I would drop another 15 to 20. I have enough confidence that if I played weekly I would at least shoot in the low 80's or even the high 70's.

Now this may seem very cocky of me but I believe it to be true and my cousin Len can attest to what a good golfer I have been as we used to golf all of the time when we were single and we were shooting in the high to mid 80's. I guess what I am saying is that I was comparing my athletic ability to Pro athletes. And not to those of my same demographic. I know I am no Lawrence Taylor. But I thoroughly believe that I could have been a collegiate football player if not for my own personal doubt. I never believed in myself. I believe that I would have been a good collegiate athlete. Would I have been as good as my cousin Trent? no, but who is?

The second epiphany was rather more of a validation. I had a rough mission and a not so wonderful Mission President. I will not go into details on here but if you are interested you can ask and I will email or call you with a response. I believed and never doubted that I was a very good missionary but it is hard when your Mission President does not like you to feel too hot about your work. Then I read in the http://www.ldschurchnews.com/ that President Monson gave the following counsel to the new Mission Presidents:
President Monson spoke of the importance of building "mission spirit." Let each missionary, he said, know that he or she "has been called to the greatest mission in all the Earth."
He said he liked the philosophy of a teacher he once read about. She said, "No one fails in my class. It is my responsibility to help each one succeed."
He said that for years he carried in his wallet a photograph of one of his missionaries, Heber Barzee. President Monson held up an enlarged copy of the photo, and said, "Elder Barzee gave me the picture, and on the back he wrote, 'Dear President Monson, I am happy.' When I would look at that smile, I would say to myself, 'It is my job to motivate and demonstrate and to show every missionary in my mission how to be successful. It isn't my job to scold; it isn't my job to berate or to pressure. My assignment is to show each missionary how to be successful so that he's as happy as Elder Barzee.'

I felt so validated.

Jerry