Tag Archives: parenthood

Go for the Gold?

Mikaela Shiffrin capped a stellar year by winning the women’s slalom at the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia yesterday. Already the reigning World Cup and World Champion in the event she added Olympic gold to her collection. Her star is going nowhere but up in the alpine skiing community. Everyone expects her to continue on her rising path, and barring injury, she could become a star in other events as well. There’s a good article on the young lady here.

But what if she made a different choice? What if she said, “You know what, I’ve hit the pinnacle of slalom skiing. Its been amazing! I’m still young, healthy and my life is ahead of me. I want to give back by becoming a teacher and coach.” She certainly has the credentials to do that. Any ski academy would love to have her. I wonder how the press would react. Social Media? I honestly don’t know. It would shock a lot of folks. Someone willingly laying aside the adulation of thousands, a career and endorsement deals and seeking to lift others up.

What if she said this, “I’m retiring. I want to get married, settle down and raise a family. I’ve become the best in the sport, now I want my children to have that same opportunity. I want to be there for them. I want to coach them and nurture them and give them every opportunity to reach their dreams.” Can you imagine the reaction?

Yet isn’t that exactly what her mother has done for her? She has traveled with Mikaela for the last two years on the World Cup, defying the circuit officials in the process, so her daughter had the full support and care she needed as a young teen on the road. Her father was weeping when she won. He’s no doubt been busting his behind to pay the piper for the world cup tours. A prodigious amount of commitment, self sacrifice and love had gone into achieving that win. In fact the article linked above notes how both her father and mother were very deliberate in guiding her to this success.

How would her own parents respond to Mikaela stepping aside to coach or raise a family? After they had labored so many years to get her to this point only to see her lay it aside in order to give back and teach others how to do what she does or pour into her own children…how would they feel?

I don’t have an answer here and I’m not pushing for Mikaela to choose one way or another. I’m simply posing the question to make us think. We love a hero. But a hero who steps aside to lift up others? We’re not sure what to with that.

I’m reminded of this passage: “Though being in very nature God, he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but relinquished that, emptying himself and taking on the form of a servant, clothed in humanity.”

It was that type of life that actually beat death. That one who had been at the pinnacle of all things and yet gave of himself to make that life available to all people. And many folks still don’t know what to with Him either.