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Confirmation into Church

Mentoring Swimmers

Horseback Tournament

Confirmation Day with Family!

The pool where I taught the little swimmers

Me Horseback Riding !

My Family!<3

At my church, which is located down at the beach on 36th Street, we become members at the ripe old age of 11. Yes, we totally know everything we need to know about the world at this age. Not, I personally have no idea why the church wants us to take a class to become members when we barely even know algebra. It seems like simple math to me to wait until we’re older to become confirmed into the church, but that’s just my opinion. Anyway, I became confirmed when I was 11 and it was an interesting religious experience. My favorite pastor in the whole entire world was in charge of teaching us about God and guiding us to the light of realization that God is who we want to be the center of our life. We had to find our realization with God in only 6 short Sunday sessions. Every Sunday that we went to class we had a little yellow book that taught us supposedly all that we needed to learn. From the yellow book we were assigned homework questions of passages we could look up and then analyze. I was pretty skeptical about this class and it really teaching me everything I needed to know. I needed what I thought was impossible, Faith. I figured that I would stay in the class and try to find the true meaning of Christianity which is a hard thing to do when you are only 11 years old. I went to class religiously every Sunday. Even when I didn’t feel well on those frigid January mornings at 7am, I made it a point of mine to go. I listened to my pastor Stephen and everything that he had to say. I worked harder on my religion homework than I did on regular homework. It seemed like those 6 Sundays and all the time that they involved were a waste until we got assigned our last homework assignment. We were assigned to write a paper to the elders of our church explaining to them why we should be confirmed. I figured that if I didn’t write the paper that I could just take the class again after I had grown more as a person. I told my mom about this decision and she said that it wasn’t a good idea because I could still come closer to God through the paper. I sat at my desk night after night for 3 days straight for hours on end. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, how I was going to say it, or anything of the sort. Then on the 4th night, Wednesday I realized what I had been missing the whole time. One scripture lesson taught me that God will always be mysterious that as long as you yourself believe in him he will always be with you. I felt so relieved after reading that. I felt that all of the Sunday lessons, all of the homework, all of the time I spent on finding God paid off. Everything just clicked, it was the feeling you get when you learn how to ride your bike for the first time ever without training wheels. The feeling was that of a surprised, at peace girl. Patience really does pay off and this helped me to realize the mysterious ways in which God operates.

Five short years after swimming across Dart’s Lake at Camp Gorham in the Adirondacks of New York I was in a horseback riding tournament. This was a spur of the moment decision on my part. I had been horseback riding before plenty of times, but something happened on one early morning ride that made me never want to ride again. The summer before I had progressed from an intermediate rider to an advanced rider. Advanced trips were a lot longer and they started early in the morning. So we I got back to Camp Gorham this summer I was ready, at least I thought I was ready, for an advanced morning trip. The first day of camp I signed up with my Aunt Sally for a brisk morning trip for the next day. I left the roaring fire the night before so I could go to bed extra early and mentally walk my self through the next day. The day of the trip I woke up and got dressed with my cute newish cowboy boots. I threw on some old jeans and put on a T-shirt and a jacket just incase it got hot. We met at the stable at dark o’clock (really 5am). We all picked horses, mine being the fabulous Clover. Clover was my favorite horse of all time. She was the sweetest horse you would ever meet and was white with brown “polka-dots.” I hopped on her and was ready to go. I did a couple of warm up rounds with Clover in the stable and she seemed more energetic than ever. This day was going to be the best ride of my life or so I thought. After about ten minutes everyone was ready to go. We lined up single file behind Nelly, the horse mistress, and we were off. On our way through the woods the sun slowly awoke from its slumber and a gentle fog lifted from the dew dropped grasses. It was the most glorious sight I had ever seen in my life. Everything I saw that morning looked like it came out of a movie until we got to the Lake. We took a path which the camp hadn’t used for about 3 years. It was covered with forest green vines and limping trees. The horses had to take the path through the water. Unfortunately, what I didn’t know was that my horse, Clover, HATED water. She didn’t even drink it when she didn’t have to. So as we were walking we came to a tree that was to low for any of the horses to go under. Clover wouldn’t step in the water though. I kept pulling her reigns to make her move, but the majestic Clover was being as stubborn as a cow. She walked right through that dieing tree and forced me under it to. I literally did the limbo under the tree and scratched my whole neck from chin to chest. Blood flowed gently down my stomach and my T-Shirt was basically nonexistent. From that day forward I decided that I would never ride a horse again. That is until I became a know-it-all preteen. The summer after I turned 13 I was walking around the stables petting the horses. Even though I never was going to ride one again I still loved to brush their sleek coats and listen to their horse jabbering. Nelly and I grew to become great friends and she taught me how to tend to horses. She also decided to give me an update of some of the barn events. She told me that this summer they were going to have their first ever teen horse race. I laughed at the idea of me on a horse again, but she insisted. I said I would go and bring the horses out of the stable but that was about it for me. The day of the race I watched racer after racer go forth and conquer the stable rink. I was so envious of all of them. They all had the courage to go out on those beautiful creatures and just no that nothing bad was going to happen to them. It was during this deciding moment of my life that I decided that I was going to face my fears and live on the edge. Instead of bringing out a horse for another, I strolled out of the barn with one under me. I rode that horse into the racing circle and finished with a 23 flat. I beat nearly everyone except for Miss Perfect, Cindy Smith. O how I hated her for beating me with a 22.76 second race. The relief I felt after forcing myself to go through with this race made me realize that when you fall off the horse all you have to do is get back on again and face your fears. To be all that you can be you just have to keep trying. The smile on Nelly’s face after the race was all I needed to see to realize that she was proud of me for doing the best I could do and facing my fears.

There will always be people who get everything handed to them and others who have to work themselves up to the top. My little sister always gets everything handed to her through whining, deviation, and stubbornness. Because of my little sister’s bratty ways, I realized that I wanted to be different. Working towards becoming a better person was what I set myself to do. This was such a broad goal that I really didn’t know how to reach it. I lived my life day to day just looking for ways to be helpful. Like, I tried my hardest not to be rude to my mom or dad. One weekend I went babysitting over at our neighbor’s house, the Dyes. Mrs. Dye was talking about not having enough mentors for the summer swim league. I asked her if there was anyway I could help because I had taken a ton of clinics and I started swimming at the age of five. She literally leaped for joy and asked me to mentor the little swimmers. I told her that I would be more than happy to comply with anything that she asked me to do. She was so overwhelmed and surprised at my offer that she jumped into my arms. I was, of course, ignorant of what I was getting myself into, but I figured it couldn’t be that big of a challenge. The bare trees began to bud up as winter turned to spring and eventually the buds turned to effervescent green which meant summertime. When the summer came it meant waking up a mere our later than when on school time so that I could mentor. This was a nice change for me even though waking up whenever would have been better. The first day of mentoring started and I was the first one at the gates of the neighborhood pool. I was ready to help and serve all of the swimmers who came down. I was surprised out how many there actually were. Excitement and a kind of fear that I was going to mess up the little kids and scar them was bubbling up in my stomach, but I held my head high and jumped into the frigid early summer pool water and guided the swimmers. In the beginning of the summer there were so many little crying swimmers. I felt terrible. I was so worried that they were going to hate swimming and that I wasn’t helping them correctly. After the first week I just felt terrible about myself. I talked to my mom about quitting, but she told me to just take a few breathes because every one is scared the first couple of weeks of practice. I went back the next week and the tears seemed to subside, at least a little bit. I now slowly gained back my courage and taught them more confidently. It turned out that over the summer the little kids grew closer and closer to me. They became fearless of the water and swimming and loved listening to the advice I had to offer them. I was their go to gal when they got scared and needed some support. I felt like I really gave back to them and grew in patience and caring. We cared for each other like we were a family, and it really warmed my heart to know that the mere two hours I woke up earlier than usual gave them the strength to swim from one side of the pool to the other without crying and it was all because I stuck with them and cared.