Obtaining The Latter

I constantly remind myself of the belief, “the latter will be greater than the former.”

There are few words to truly describe my final season of indoor track and field as a member and co-captain of the Purdue University Women’s Track & Field Team in 1999.  If I had to assign a label to the physical and mental rigors of being a student-athlete while balancing personal issues, my description would be a culmination of inconsistency, exacerbation, being humbled, pain and stress. Literally, my emotions were all over the place. I recall a period of over three months when I oftentimes found myself sad, angry, and disgusted.  A number of other seemingly gloomy adjectives could easily describe the myriad of emotions that I felt at any given moment.   As a young woman, I held on to a firm belief that I should not physically wear my emotions, so I chose to conceal them.  By my senior year in college, I had become an expert in concealment and a specialist in functioning through my mental dysfunction. There were days that I wanted to “check out” of the reality. I wanted to drink that pain away, isolate myself, and not be responsible for being responsible. But, because I am a woman of faith, I know that God continues to cause my tenacity to increase; and my ability to tactically and tactfully handle, negotiate and commit to the process of obtaining my latter to intensify. Read more