Hope through Adversity. Why I love the Olympics.

As I was watching Oscar Pistorius cross the finish line in the 400 meter Relay last Friday, I couldn’t help but remember the story about his family they had aired a week prior. That although he was born without his fibula bones and was a double amputee at 10 months, his parents never treated him any differently and he was a very active child.

I had a flashback of me as a child at our local city pool.  I was watching a mother and her baby intently. Her baby was in a carrier, wait, it may have been a stroller, when were baby carriers invented? Anyway, the animated mother was attentively and lovingly moving her baby’s legs and arms up and down, and massaging them.

It was an older baby and I didn't realize it had a birth defect and didn't respond or move any limbs.

An adult nearby me who knew the mother, said (and I  am not quoting verbatim as this was almost 100 years ago) but the jist was, “that child will never be able to do anything, I don't know why she is doing all that.”  




I remember thinking as a child, because she has HOPE...and love.

So many Olympic stories are of athletes and their families making it to the Olympics despite all kinds of adversity, from living in poverty to being victimized to being shot…or being born without their lower limbs in tact.

And I know, not every person who has Hope through
Adversity is going to be an Olympic “Success”. 

But in my book, if you are able to be loving and maintain HOPE through ADVERSITY, YOU ARE A SUCCESS! 

So, as I mourn the end of the Olympics, sniffle, sniffle, you let your Hope grow like a mustard seed. 

Mark Chapter 4: Verse 31-32. 
31. "It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you can plant in the ground. 32. Yet, when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”