We have had the BEST day!
Remember 2 weeks ago, I posted about how we drove alllllthewayyyy up to Fayetteville for a Special Olympics Powerlifting meet, only to discover that it had been rescheduled?
Yeah. Good times.
Well, today was THE day. No, promise...it was. And we drove alllllthewayyyy up to Fayetteville for a Special Olympics Powerlifting meet, and LOW AND BEHOLD, people were there!
I was a little concerned when I saw all of the other athletes...they all looked huge! Most of them, anyway. And then there was my little Joshua.
Small and mighty, is what I call him.
"Travel-sized," is what he calls himself.
I posted pictures on my IG: martythemoose, and on my Facebook wall.
Today, for some reason, Joshua decided to wear a gray v-neck under his weight-lifting suit...and, instead of wearing black shorts over it, LIKE HE ALWAYS DOES, he wore black warm-ups. I thought he was just keeping the warm-ups on during the, well, warm-up time, and would take them off during the actual competition. But when I asked him, he said that he wasn't wearing any shorts under his warm-ups. I asked if he had shorts in his bag, that he could change into. He said, "no, ma'am." When I asked him WHY he only brought warm-ups on a day when it's supposed to be 88 degrees, and he said, "because it's windy."
And then I may have slow-blinked him in my mind, because he doesn't understand slow-blinking.
So I said, "WHAT?" He said, "it's kind of windy." I said, "JOSHUA WE ARE IN A BUILDING."
And then I dropped the subject. The last thing I wanted to do was to get him all out-of-sorts before his competition.
Y'all, Joshua did GREAT! Each athlete gets 3 tries at bench-press. They do one round first, and if they "make" that lift, then they can raise the weight for the 2nd round. Same for the 3rd round. Then, they typically have a 15 minute break to let the athletes potty and warm-up before the dead-lift competition begins. Same type of thing...each athlete gets 3 attempts...1 attempt per round. Then, they add each athlete's top bench-press weight, and top dead-lift weight, to get a "combination" award.
My 3 younger kids all went to a Kamp in the summers called Kanakuk Kamps. Kanakuk is a Christian sports camp. They went for 1 week every summer up until they were in about the 11th grade. Every year on the last day of their kamp, the Kamp staff gives all kinds of awards. One of the last things they do is tell the story of the bumblebee. They make a huge deal about how scientists have determined that, because of the body size of the bumblebee...and the size of their wings...they should not be able to fly.
Well, we all know that bees DO fly. In fact, it's one of the top 3 things they do: 1) fly, 2) pollinate, 3) sting.
I made up that list all by myself.
How does something FLY when it has been told, based on tests and FACTS, it cannot fly?
GOD. That's how. We have a big God who doesn't put limits on us...who equips us for His work...and who helps us overcome our challenges.
Anyway, when the Kamp staffers get done talking about how the bee is not supposed to fly, they all start buzzing, and a person in a bee costume comes running in...and they call out someone's name who was an over-comer during the week of kamp. Maybe it was their first time away from home, maybe they were afraid to jump on the blob in the pool, maybe they were afraid to go down the big slide...but they over-came and conquered their fears. The kids all chant and cheer, as one boy and one girl from each Kamp get the Overcomer award.
That's what I thought of today when my Joshua was standing up in the front of the room with all of these really big boys and men. He couldn't do what the bigger guys could do, but he COULD do what HE could do.
He bench-pressed 145 lbs, and he dead-lifted 200 pounds. This gave him a combination weight of 345 lbs, and allowed him to win THREE GOLD MEDALS for his efforts. Impressive, right?
Even more impressive? He weighed in this morning at a whopping 117 lbs.
JOSHUA GARLAND, come get your bumblebee...what, what?
"Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." Ephesians 3:20
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