The Most Powerful Words

I remember one day a long time ago. I don't remember what year of high school it was, but it may as well have been another lifetime. I had just lost a tennis match, and I was standing in the senior parking lot a few feet away from my dad, crying a little. I wasn't even crying over the tennis match--I was crying over a boy.

It doesn't even matter what boy it was--to be honest, I can't even recall. But what I do remember is that he didn't know me. O yes, he knew my name and he spoke to me each day... but he didn't know me. Not many boys in high school did. They knew what classes I was taking, what subjects I could help them with if they had trouble with their homework, what my class rank was, and they could tell me all about my perfect GPA. I'm more than sure that's what they thought was important to me. They saw me as a person on the mission to the top--all I wanted was to win the race. But the painful truth was the race didn't matter to me. And on graduation day when the medal was around my neck and I stood in front of the crowd of my peers--I found myself hating them. Hating them for taking away one of the most powerful accomplishments of my life. Hating them for making me ashamed for something I should've cried with joy over. And after surviving four years of high school amongst countless individuals who couldn't see past my GPA--I was more than ready to leave them behind. My life would take me above them.

But this moment in the parking lot I thought about this boy whom I wanted so desperately to not be like the others. My heart had broken at this point to realize he was no different. My father, a man I'd spent the last several years of my life battling with as I breached the line of adolesence, watched me quietly for a long time. He's never been good when his women cry. But after a little while he spoke up. And I'll never--in a million years--forget what he said to me.

He told me of the times he had to give up what he wanted to be able to do what he needed. He spoke of times in his life when what he believed in was called into question by outsiders who never had the right. And most of all, he told me how in spite of it all he never gave up.

He believed in me, and he knew the boy I was crying over would be forgotten in time. Eventually a boy would come along who would love me for all the reasons the others didn't. And though it hurt so much now to be without that particular boy, Dad never feared I wouldn't find him--in the mean time he knew I didn't even need him. I was strong enough on my own.

Since that day I've carried the message with me. I've passed it along many times before, even in this blog--though I've never shared the story. But I must say this to you, as he did...

To thine ownself be true.