The run

It’s the big day. James is representing his school in the cross country run today.

He’ll travel by bus to another school to be the Year 2 representative. The great news is that I know that he’ll win. I don’t know how good the other runners will be but I know that James will win. I don’t know if he’ll come first, last or somewhere in between but he told me this morning that he’s going to do his very best so no matter what position he’s in when he crosses the finish line, he’ll be a winner.

We’ve always celebrated big achievements with our kids and when they come first we make sure they know how proud we are, but we’re also careful to honour effort. If they put in the hard work and then do their very best they need to know that they’ve done all that’s required.

I don’t expect James to be the best cross country runner in the world but I do want to encourage him to be the very best that he can be.

There’s something incredibly empowering about being true to yourself and to the skills and talents that God gave you.

UPDATE: I’ve just got an SMS from Pauline to say that James crossed the line in about 20th place in a field of over 30. He got a little travel sick on the bus trip there. I’m so very proud of his efforts.

Posted by Rodney Olsen

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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He has worked in radio at Perth's media ministry Sonshine for over 25 years and has previously worked at ministries such as Compassion Australia and Bible Society.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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4 Comments

  • Good for James sticking it out! I am proud of him too. Reminds me of my son and his wrestling tournaments, sometimes he would wrestle so hard he’d throw up after. Ok, maybe that doesn’t relate. But it still reminded me!

  • The advantage of Haloscan? When I first started blogging, Blogger didn’t have it’s own commenting system.

    I first tried CommentThis but it proved to be very unreliable.

    I moved to Haloscan and have found that it’s very flexible and easy to customise. Haloscan lets me do stuff like exporting all my comments to a file and much more.

    If I was starting all over again I’d consider using Blogger commenting but I think I’d still stick with Haloscan.

  • well done James

    in sport i use the motto “it’s not whether you win or lose it’s how you play the game” to me winning is just a bonus. as long as i know i did my best and had fun thats the main thing

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