My Recent Races

I went to my first race without Daylen.

Sun Valley, Idaho hosted the last stop in the Revolution Tour. The course itself was steeper than any I'd been on so far. It didn't help that my training day took place during a 40 mph windstorm. It was difficult enough trying to stand upright in the gate, let alone race down the course. Training was cancelled early and pushed over to the next day--race day.

I was accompanied by my faithful mom during this trip. I'd booked a Best Western that God turned into an Austrian get-away just for us. We arrived to scalloped wood, waving European flags, and feather beds. 

Race day was quite different from training day. No wind at all and an icy course. As we trained, I realized how much emotional support Daylen brings when he's with me. Without him, I found it harder to quell my nervousness. It rode a pogo-stick in my stomach eventually making me feel ill, but I knew even though he was in Tennessee, he was praying. His prayers were evident. I didn't have a single painful crash. God kept His protective hand around me. Other competitors went to the hospital.

I placed 17th and felt quite proud of my performance. I reached a new level of "attacking" the course (it helped that I could hear Mom rooting every time I passed her spot). Now I'm in Copper Mountain, Colorado, completing three training days a week prior to the National Championships. So far, the course is challenging, but not impossible. Daylen is back in Missouri and my dad is coaching me while I train. Dad has insight that only my dad can have--he is the man who can teach anything. As a result, I now have a strong start on the course. Two days down and much progress has been made. 

Next stop, National Championships! April 4th is the big day. Daylen will be there and I plan to race hard.

Epic God

"God's highest agenda for our lives is not that they be simply good, moral, and responsible, but that they be spiritually intriguing, even mystifying. A Christlike life is one that puzzles, attracts, disrupts, entices, enrages, comforts, rebukes, and most of all, radically loves those around it. It's a life that provokes others to a new contemplation of God. His design for us is that [we] not be merely well-adjusted, contributing members of society, but living dispensers of His spectacularness wherever He puts us on this earth." - Dwight Edwards

Two weeks felt like a year. 

As I laced my boots for my last Raging Buffalo race, I thought how fond I'd become of my ant-hill. People knew my name. They knew I'd be there. I was no longer "the older girl" racing. I was family.

 

Last week we raced in SkiBrule, Michigan. The hill was bigger and the staff treated you like the long-lost favorite relative. The weather was foggy and freezing, icing my goggles after every race, but God provided me with some surprise coaching. I learned and practiced passing during a race, I learned to perfect my line through the course, and I finished all three races without a single crash. Oh yeah, and I won a snowboard! (A Burton Blunt V-Rocker 151 if anyone's interested. I'll give a good price!)

This week, back at Raging Buffalo I was again the lone female open-class racer paired against three burly men. We were all in our own classes, so as long as each of us finished we'd all get gold medals.

In the start gate, I pictured a dreamy image of getting out of the gate first, cutting tight corners with a perfect line, and finishing ahead of all three men. The possibility looked good when I got first gate pick. I'd spent the morning surveying the short course and mentally walking myself through the difficult sections. We lined up, already bumping elbows. And this is what happened:

I'm the short one.

Guess which one's me!

Yup, I'm the one underneath the giant man-in-black.

I am now home with bruises in the shape of a Kessler snowboard edge across my swollen knee-cap and deadened muscles from neck to abs. 

And a gold medal. ;)

As I told my husband, "I'm happy as long as it's all bruising and soreness." Give me black bruises. Make me too sore to walk. Just don't tear a muscle or break a bone.

I may feel like a sodden dish rag, but I'm qualified and invited to the National Championships! Praise the Lord! 

So where am I spiritually with all this? I discovered a wonderful quote that sums it up perfectly:

Dream so big that you scare yourself into such full dependency that you need God to pull it off. - Matthew Barnett

Daylen and I have a big dream and we're "scared" (more like nervously and excitedly thrust) into total dependency. God's pulling it off and life feels thickly epic right now. We're soaking it in, but can one ever really soak in such an epic God? I don't know, but we plan to try.