Small Steps Forward

Gold medals, spaghetti dinners, and notes on progress | No. 009

Photo by Bo Zhang on Unsplash

“Take the biggest step you can toward what you want. Then, from there, take another step.” - from the children’s book Finding Muchness written by Kobi Yamada

The 2024 Paris Summer Olympics wrapped up this past week. Since I have been little, I have been in love with watching the Games. I’ll watch it all: the famous Olympic faces rack up medals in Prime Time gymnastics or swimming, USA and Jamaica battling it out on the track, 6’5” volleyball players smashing spikes into the ground, the Olympic debut of breakdancing, or Igor from Uzbekistan showing off his 10m high dive at 6:30 am. I can’t even really explain my love of the Olympics, having never been super athletic myself, much to the dismay of my gold medal dreams.

I have found joy in being active for much of my life though, enjoying everything from swim team to volleyball to Zumba to hiking to CrossFit. But, for me, the grind and hard work of it all turned out to be the reward itself, as opposed to the traits marking a journey toward athletic royalty.

Oh, there were years as a kid when believed I could force my mediocre talent into submission and outwork it to become great at some sort of athletic endeavor. For some people, this does turn out to be true, and we always love those stories, don’t we? The walk-ons, the come-backs, the underdogs, the ones who just didn’t quit until they made it. The ones who did, indeed, outwork their talent until their talent finally matched their efforts.

While that wasn’t where my athletic pursuits led me, one of the many lessons I learned in all those years of trying was the value in trusting the process and striving for progress one small step at a time.

Discus athlete Valarie Allman is now a two-time gold medalist, winning back-to-back titles in the Tokyo Olympics 2021 and the Paris Olympics 2024. She stated in an interview that in high school she didn’t even compete in the throwing events. She had been a sprinter and a jumper. One day, the throwing athletes were having a spaghetti dinner and she wanted to attend. She was told she couldn’t attend because it was only for throwers. So, Valarie switched to learning to throw discus so she could attend the spaghetti dinner. Fast forward to 2024: Valarie wins her second gold medal in discus. It all started with spaghetti.

Photo by Krista Stucchio on Unsplash

Valarie’s small step of learning to throw discus to attend a high school spaghetti dinner led her to gold medals. For almost all of us though, our small steps don’t lead us to Olympic championships. Although I’m sure she was a great overall high school athlete, I would bet that Valarie didn’t know her discus-spaghetti decision would lead her to athletic greatness in years to come.

We can’t see our whole story stretched out in front of us. We don’t know where our next steps will lead. Almost 5 years ago, we turned in our foster parent application to the state. We could have never in our wildest dreams known we would be here in 2024, having just adopted two children, birthed another, and experienced parenting six other beautiful children along the way. That journey has also had a million twists and turns, and some of those twists I would have never chosen for myself had I seen them coming toward me.

Thank God I couldn’t see the whole story before I started because I may have missed out on the greatest adventures of my life.

We can plan, plan, plan, and yet, we just might get invited to a spaghetti dinner, or turn in an application, or meet a child, or take one small step of faith and entirely change our course.

Taking a single step forward, striving for progress, and trusting the process just might lead us to surprising ourselves in ways we never imagined.