In addition, God has His own project for me, a form of homework that is even more taxing. I got home tonight just grateful that tomorrow is Friday and I get to sleep in on Saturday (though Sunday morning its back to early morning sound duty… woohoo!)

I’ve been watching my favorite sport, women’s figure skating. It’s kind of anti-climatic since my counselor (or should I start call him my "life coach"?) revealed who won the gold without realizing I didn’t want to know. Grr…. Anyway….

Sasha Cohen had a rough night. She kept missing her triples in the practices and she missed them again in the long program. She still placed first and got good scores, but it was obvious all Shizuka Arakawa of Japan had to do was skate a clean program and she’d beat Sasha’s scores. So that’s what she did.

And that’s all she did. It was obvious that even though she could do the triples, she chose to do doubles in order to keep it clean. She played it safe. And she still won the gold medal. It was a flawless performance. And a beautiful one. She deserves the medal, but the whole thing bothers me.

I guess my problem is that she chose to play it safe, rather than risk the gold in order to go all out, to just attack it full on and suck the marrow out of it. To me, if it were me, it would feel like a rather hollow victory. Because I’d played it safe.

Yeah. Right.

Except I live on the safe side of life. I always have. Oh, I walk on the risky sidewalk. Most of the time. But I’m on the safest side of that sidewalk that I can find. I’m like Shizuka. I’ve done the work, so I deserve the recognition for that. And I skate a clean program. But I don’t take the risks needed to be truly great. I don’t go for the triples and risk "deductions" or even a fall when the doubles will get the points I need to claim the prize.

But that’s changing. Because I’m changing. That homework God’s got for me? It’s the triple; well, a triple, one of many yet to come. And I’m gonna do it. Even if I fall and fall and fall again; even if I get all bruised up or injured, even if it takes me the rest of my life (and it probably will) to stick the landing, I’m gonna do it. I’d rather attempt the triples, fall and get a silver than stick the easy doubles and take home the gold.

I’m so done playing it safe.