Of Swimming and Leadership

At the ”strong” recommendation (read OUTRIGHT SHOVE :)) of my triathlon coach, I joined a Masters swim team this fall. Though I was an athlete in high school, it was softball I played. My school was too small to have a track or swim team, so the three major disciplines of swimming, biking, and running I enjoy now I never learned competitively when younger. Joining Masters has turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made in regards to my triathlon training.

I swim 3x week, usually at o’dark-thirty, aka 5am. Nearly NO ONE is on the road at that hour. I could probably drive with my eyes closed right down the yellow lines (like those cars at an amusement park) and not get into an accident. It makes me think about the efforts we triathletes are willing to expend in the hot pursuit of our goals. I get up at 4am so I can eat something, plus drink COFFEE – other than my husband, COFFEE has become my new best friend :). Seriously, I drink a bit of caffeine to “spark” my mind and muscles, kind of like rubbing two wires together to jump start a car.

This past Monday I was in the pool – usual Bat Time and Bat Channel (a reference back to the Batman show that was on in the 70s for you young ‘uns :)). “Fast Patty” showed up. She is 50-ish and totally ripped. It’s clear she’s been an athlete for some time and is reaping the dividends of a lifelong investment in fitness.

Patty swims faster than I do and it’s been near impossible to keep up with her the past few months. She is about 5 seconds faster than me on the 100. Monday our coach gave us 5 x 50 yard intervals, leaving 5 seconds earlier than we usually do. No way! I said when he gave us the set. I can do about 5 seconds slower but not what he gave us! (These are short intervals, so slicing even 5 seconds off is a daunting challenge). He simply looked at me and said “Swim behind Patty; you’ll be fine.” How does he know these things???

He was so right. For a bit I was in her draft; then incredibly on the last few sets I began to catch her. It helped that my coach was on the deck with a bunch of hand/arm gestures, saying “Get her!!” Do you have any idea how hard it is to roll and breathe while trying to stifle a laugh – or even smile because your goggles might come unstuck??

We finished the set with our hearts pounding – at least I did. I was still in disbelief I had caught up to Patty and even more shocked when everyone in the lane agreed “Catherine you lead this time” for the next set – a nice long 500.

When I turned at the wall after the first lap, everyone was hot on my trail and I was instantly reminded of the stark contrasts between leading and following. Leading was hard. Following was relatively easy. Leading means forging a trail whereas following is walking in someone’s footsteps; setting the course for the group vs being along for the ride; taking the “brunt” of what’s ahead vs being in the shadow. Leading means sticking your neck out despite what’s going on around you. It can be intimidating but the notion of others depending on you for direction and/or initiative often outweighs the accompanying fears.

Leading also means taking people to new territory – to help them discover new potential they had not thought previously existed. This is what my coaches – my triathlon and swim coaches – have done for me. I won’t sugar coat it – new territory is not easy and takes courage. The possibility of failing is ever present, but as I mentioned in a previous post, no one has ever achieved anything big without taking a risk. If you are willing, the rewards can bring amazing satisfaction and increases in confidence, and it can’t help but spill over into other areas of your life.

Do you dare?

The Sign

I’m a big fan of signs, particularly the clever kind. You know, the ones that really get your attention, like the following recently seen on billboards around the country, “’We need to talk.’ --God”. It’s short and effectively gets the point across about how deeply interested God is in every detail of our lives. Like a loving parent, the most trivial details of our everyday living are sheer joy to our Heavenly Father. He loves us with a radical love, beyond anything that we as humans can comprehend. In fact, nothing we do can separate us from His love, not even death!

I didn’t always feel this way about God. In fact earlier in my life I was furious at him for a long time. My parents had divorced when I was a baby, my mother died when I was just 15, and along the way I discovered that my father was an alcoholic. I was raised by my non-English speaking grandmother and the generational divide between us seemed unbridgeable. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, not even cousins, as both my parents were also “only’s”. There weren’t many people I could talk to, and as unlikely as it may seem now (to those of you who know me :)), I was painfully shy and socially awkward. I felt incredibly alone and betrayed by circumstances that had seemingly happened beyond my control. Where was God in all this anyway and why did he have to pick on me?

Through my parents’ eastern European heritage I was brought up Roman Catholic. I attended a Catholic elementary school, a Catholic high school, and subsequently a Jesuit university. The Catholic faith was deeply steeped in my upbringing. The notion of guilt for my sins and making restitution for my wrongdoing was something taught nearly every day in my school years, and I spent a long time trying to figure out what grave sins I had committed to warrant such “punishment” from a God who was clearly meting out his judgment on me. In the end I was more angry than interested in figuring it out. I stopped going to church and sunk deeper into a destructive lifestyle of drugs and promiscuity. It was pure rebellion; I was through with being told what to do.

Then I met someone who said he was a “born-again” Christian. I had heard of these types – weird folks who lift their hands and close their eyes in worship. They carried their Bibles with them to church and said openly they “prayed for me.” Huh? I didn’t understand, much less believe, their sincerity.

I had questions for my friend and lots of them. What’s “born-again” and how is it different from being Catholic? You know you’re going to heaven? How? I didn’t know at all where I would end up, and I thought it a bit arrogant that my friend was so certain about his eternal destiny.

He invited me to church and it was wildly different from a Catholic Mass. Some people did lift their hands and close their eyes during worship. The music was more energetic than the traditional hymns I’d grown up with, and the people seemed so happy. I couldn’t understand it at the time – be happy about what? Serving a judgmental God who seemed to be hovering and waiting for the next misstep so he could whack me again with some tragic life event? I had no other view of God except as a stern judging father. The distance between my view and this Christian view seemed too great, and there didn’t seem to be a way to bridge the two together.

Then I saw the sign. It was big and easy to read. It was along I-44 just after the Fenton exit in St. Louis County. At first I thought it was a legitimate highway sign because it was the same size as others, but this one was different. It was handwritten and it contained a Bible verse that I was familiar with:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in him would not die but have eternal life.” John 3:16

I thought how nice – and how clever – that someone made a handwritten sign and somehow got away with it being posted on a public road, visible to everyone driving by. I drove on to my destination without giving it another thought.

Two weeks later I was on the same road, headed south towards Springfield to see a client. The sign was there – still. Amazingly no one had taken it down. I looked at it again, but this time I read the words out loud:

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him would not die but have eternal life.”

He so loved that He gave...

To say “I got it” would be a severe understatement. The thoughts and realizations that came at me all at once were almost too much. I was sure my brain was about to explode. God loved me that much that He gave His Son! Jesus went to a criminal’s death an innocent man – he took my place! Indeed, if I held up my past mistakes and detours as a comparison to God’s perfect standard, I deserved God’s judgment, but instead I received His unmerited favor – His grace. It was over; my eternal destiny was assured, a done deal. Jesus died the death I deserved so I could live forever with Him.

I had to pull over to the side of the road. I was sobbing uncontrollably. In a matter of seconds my view of God had radically changed from seeing Him as a rigid judge to a loving and deeply committed Father who longs to be with His children, and not just on Sundays. The relief of the struggle being done washed over me like a spring rain; gratitude flooded my heart. Suddenly the reasons why I did good works flowed with new meaning and renewed motivation. Good works were the fruit of my faith, no longer the root, as I had previously believed.

My life has never been the same. When you answer the call of God on your life, you can look back and see where He’s been at work all along. No tragedy or mistake is ever wasted with God; He is able to use it all and I can point to countless examples in my own life.

My prayer for you today is that you open your heart to the radical and life-changing love that God has for you. He loves you more than you can imagine and you matter to Him more than gold or all the treasures of the earth. That the God of the Universe would provide any way at all for a flawed mankind to be reconciled to Him is beyond human understanding.

Did I say I was a big fan of signs? :)

Why - Take 2

I believe there is NO SUCH THING as “staying in one place.” People are always improving or regressing and no one can really claim they have “arrived.” (Even millionaires are smart to hang out with billionaires). I am amazed at how much fear (what’s really lurking inside the heart, not some outward excuse for why someone doesn’t do something) holds people back – and even more sadly, how much in denial people are about why they won’t attempt something new. Few want to admit to being afraid of failure, but without failing there would be no chance of succeeding. It is true that trying something new is a risk, sometimes a significant one. But NO ONE has ever achieved anything big without taking a risk. Look at any high achiever and you’ll see their road to success littered with failures.

I put this quote from Teddy Roosevelt in my blog a few weeks ago and I think it’s worth repeating here because it perfectly illustrates the heights that can be achieved when “in the arena”:

“It is not the critic who counts;

Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,

Who strives valiantly;
Who errs and comes short again and again;

Because there is not effort without error and shortcomings;

But who does actually strive to do the deed;

Who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion,
Who spends himself in a worthy cause,
Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and
Who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly.

So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

No one goes through life without experiencing adversity and for me training and racing teaches me (in a smaller capsule of time) how to suffer, endure, overcome, and emerge stronger. Inevitably it spills over to other areas of my life and the reminder that I’ve overcome other or bigger obstacles is always there when some new problem comes along.

How I wish I could teach my kids this important life lesson, but time and experience will be the best teachers for them I’m sure :).

Best Friends

My stepmom is #1. Aside from the term of endearment implied in that statement, it is also an inside joke shared between the two of us. You see, we are both stepmoms and for some time we’ve referred to each other (though she started it :)) as “Wicked Stepmother” #1 and #2. We’ve even shortened the term to WSM1 and WSM2, taking the abbreviation yet further in email to just “1” or “2” at times. The “Wicked” moniker is a great icebreaker when introducing myself to my kids’ friends, who seem a bit taken aback at first and then relax, smiling, when they see my wink and corresponding grin.

My stepmom (her name is Ann) is downright funny – I mean hilarious. Her sense of humor and quick wit are unmatched, and conversations with her are NEVER boring or routine. She is always happy to hear from me, whether by phone or the miracle of technology on the Internet called Instant Messaging. Whenever she includes an “emoticon” (one of those animated smiley faces), I can almost “see” her in my mind’s eye in perfect reproduction of what she sent, and I always laugh. Once as a teenager when I was visiting, I arrived at their house in the morning to find her brushing her teeth. She looked up at me with huge eyes, toothpaste foaming from her mouth – and rolled her head just like a zombie from Dawn of the Dead. To use Mastercard’s tagline – PRICELESS. Nearly 30 years later, her gift for spontaneous humor still permeates my behavior towards my own stepkids today.



I’ve never lived with my stepmom. She is in New Jersey and I’ve lived most of my life in St. Louis, nearly 1,000 miles away. But I cannot remember a time when we haven’t been close. My parents were divorced when I was only 2 and my father stayed in New Jersey while my mother moved to St. Louis (with me in tow) to live with her parents. Sometime later, my father married Ann, and I would one day “meet” them both, shortly before my mother’s death in 1980. (After my parents’ divorce, I did not see my father again for another 13 years).

I was a mouthy kid, a serious “back-talker” who didn’t give nearly any adult any respect, mostly because I grew up in a very traditional environment where respect was not given at all but unconditionally demanded – why in the world would I give what I didn’t have? This seemed perfectly rational and justified to me at the time.

I remember when I was 16 and got into a fight with my Dad when I was visiting them. My father was not shy about expressing his true feelings in any matter (what is it with Hungarian temperament?? The same tendency also runs in my undiluted Hungarian blood). My mother had been gone less than one year and I was not doing well emotionally. I was angry at everyone, experiencing unspeakable pain, and taking just about every rebellious detour a teenager could find. My father plainly said I was throwing my life away. In characteristic fashion, I mouthed off to him; he strode up the stairs and – there is no easy way to say it – he beat me up. To be honest I deserved his anger, and to his credit he later apologized and I appreciated it very much. It wasn’t until later I realized that it must’ve been hard for him to say he was sorry, though I thought I was much more at fault for disrespecting him than he was for punishing me.

I remember sitting on my bed that day in the guest room, stunned and wounded by Dad’s outburst, crying and feeling sorry for myself, and WAY too stubborn to admit I was wrong. But the thing that stands out the most was that Ann came into my room and rubbed my face with a warm washcloth. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t judge or heap on her two cents, though she would’ve been justified. She simply embraced and comforted me and it was just the thing I needed. She gave me unmerited favor, or grace, when what I really deserved was justice. It seemed she could see the big picture of my situation altogether, instead of just the fight between Dad and me.

It meant a lot to me because her gesture that day held more significance for me than one may realize. It was a great lesson for me in how to react to my own kids when they take a detour. Steve and I have always treated the kids with love and respect, and we’ve focused on guiding their actions and celebrating their character. My stepdaughter Rachel has said she’s appreciative we talk to her as a “person” (her words). Though they don’t always agree with our decisions, our kids do know in the ocean depths of their hearts that we have their best interests in mind. It is a formidable responsibility given to us by God to raise godly children who become responsible adults as they make their own contributions to society.

We often quarrel with our parents when we’re children (sometimes even as adults), wondering how in the world they come up with their decisions, or how they could seem so “unloving” at the time. We think we infallibly know what is best for ourselves, and we often realize too late what they’ve tried to show us all along.

While I would never have explicitly wished for my parents’ divorce, I would not have come to understand the exceptional gift a stepmother can be if my father had not married Ann. Out of the worst situations, God can bring good; He uses everything – good and bad – to enrich our character. Looking back on my own life, it’s impossible to not see where He’s been at work all along.

Ann has been the biggest influence in my relationship with my own stepkids and I am grateful for her countless examples of how to be a great friend and leader.



WSM2 :)