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Do Anything You Put Your Mind To

I hope those of you who read the last email regarding the 5K were inspired and motivated to make this a goal for yourself. It isn't about how fast you are, it is about finishing a race, a mental race and proving to yourself that you can do anything you put your mind to!

Speaking of proving you can do anything you put your mind to, it brings me to the Olympic events last night.

Michael Phelps is an incredible man and I am in awe at his achievements, but there is one woman that I have even more admiration for - Oksana Chusovitina.

I want to share this LA article with you:

In a gymnastics meet that has been littered with controversy about allegedly underage gymnasts, a 33-year-old woman, the oldest by a decade in the Olympics, won a medal Sunday.

Oksana Chusovitina, a veteran of five Olympics who won a team gold medal in 1992 with the Unified Team of athletes from the former Soviet Union, earned an individual silver medal Sunday when she did two sturdy vaults.

Her 9-year-old son, Alisher, is in recovery from leukemia, the illness that brought Chusovitina to Germany six years ago. It is because of that illness that Chusovitina competes for Germany instead of her native Uzbekistan. And gymnastics helped save Alisher's life.

Chusovitina is unusual among the ponytailed sprites who dominate the sport. She has short hair and straight bangs. Her leotards aren't sparkly or in pastel pinks or purples; she prefers darker colors.

And she is not finished, not according to what she said Sunday, silver medal in hand. "I could go to London in 2012," she said. "I will only be 37."

She feels like an 18-year-old, Chusovitina said, and the silver medal felt wonderful.

"I won it for my son," she said of Alisher, who's back home attending school. "That makes me happy."

Although 33 years seems quite young to most of us, in gymnastics, that is ancient. Not only is she "old" she is a mother. Once you become pregnant and give birth, to get into Olympic, gymnastic, flexible shape, is a miracle.

But what was her motivation? It was an eternal motivation. For her son. Had she not continued competing at her age, she could not have gotten the care her son needed to live. Wow. To me, that is powerful. To put aside yourself like that and to make yourself do the impossible for the love of someone else is the most incredible gift in the world. I know someone else who did that for me and all of you, Jesus Christ!

Let me go back to the start of this devotion: Proving to yourself that you can do ANYTHING you put your mind to.

You have that ability, power and spirit, but what it all comes down to, is your motivation. Is your motivation a deep rooted spiritual one that comes from the inside out, or is it an outside fleshy motivation? Anything that involves flesh can just have a big fat FAILURE stamped on it. You can tell if you are fleshy or not by what is coming out of your mouth, what you are saying about yourself and others around you. The only way to succeed and remain successful is to have Godly motivation. To change from the inside out. Once you do that, there are no limits to what you can accomplish in this life!