Many of you don't know, but I used to swim in High School. It is something I wished I would have sticked with more, but I am grateful for the time that I did do it. How I got started in swimming is the swim coach came up to me one day in a fast food restraunt and said "you are really tall, and that is a big foot you got. What size do you wear?" I told him a size 16, he said "wow, you got natural flippers, you should come and try out for the swim team." It is something that I had never done before, but I loved sports so much that I just gave it a shot. I was inspired by the skill and success that Michael Phelps had in the olympics. He was the best in the world and that made me want to be a swimmer. At the tryouts my coach said "alright swim the 100 meter race for me." I said "that is really far." he said "that is the second shortest race there is." I felt overwhelmed at the point considering the most I ever swam was maybe 1 lap. I did as he said though and the result, I got dead last. The coach though said, I see alot of potential in you and put me on the team anyways.
Over the course of the season, I went to practice everyday and did a vast variety of excersises and learned the techniques I needed to become a good swimmer. At the beggining of the season I was always placing last in the last heat. Over the course of the season though I progressed and learned. I built up endurance and was able to accomplish alot more than I ever expected. Do to my body build, I naturally raced the sprints, the short fast races where there was little room for error. In swimming if you progress 1/10 of a second a month you are doing great. It is gradual improvement that can get discouraging at times. I learned to love it so much, and by the end of the season I finished 1st in my heat. I was so proud of what I was able to become and the time I put in to accomplish it made it all the more rewarding.
So now to tie this all back to the gospel. Before this life we all lived with our father in heaven as spirit children (
Heb 12:9), we were all very comfortable there and each had our different talents. Our father in heaven proposed a plan that we could come to earth and recieve a physical body. We would go through testing and trial. It was something that we didn't know anything about or how we would do here. It was new territory that many of us were probably uneasy about. But our father in heaven, Just like the swim coach, sees the great potential that we have even when we don't. At first many of us might struggle to get comfortable, we fight make mistakes and it may seem as though we will never be good enough. Our father in heaven never gives up on us though, he is always there to support us to the end.
When we go through this life we learn basic principles that enable us to improve the quality of our life. We build endurance as we go through the trials of this life. We have a great example to look up to in this life, a perfect example. That is Jesus Christ, as we model our life after his, it gives us something to aspire to, our goal is to be just like him. Just as the young swimmer desires to be like Michael phelps. Hopefully by the end of the season, or life, we will be different. It will be gradual, even unnoticable at times, we go through constant refining. As it says in the scriptures "we learn line upon line, precept upon precept" (
2 Nephi 28:30) But in the end we will be champions if you put in the effort, and do the things that the savior has asked. We will look back at our life and realize the potential our father saw in us from the beginning.
