With Great Power...

I know the kids will never look up to me the way they do REAL famous people...ya know, like Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers....or Gabriella from High School Musical.
No, I'm not delusional.
I know I don't have THAT kind of rockstar status...
...but I do have great power. I can build a kid up...I can tear a kid down. And why do I do half of the things I do, anyways? Sometimes I forget the great responsibility I have.
It's a fact that I spend more time with some of these kids over the course of the week than their own parents do. So what messages am I sending them about their worth...about the origin of their significance?
Am I reinforcing what the world tells them? That they are only worth my time if they are the prettiest or the most talented or the most popular...that if they fall of the beam that they should be punished and made to feel guilty...that I'll like them better if they PERFORM to suit my liking...if their PERFORMANCE somehow strokes my ego.
Or am I reinforcing what GOD tells them and who HE says they are? That their worth does not depend on their performance or anyone else's approval...that even if they try and fail a thousand times that they matter no less...that even if they succeed every time that they matter no more.
How do I reconcile the tension? Our world is fallen...this bleeds into EVERY area of life...yes, even gymnastics. What do I do with that?
This is a tension that has me constantly checking my motives and praying that maybe...JUST MAYBE...that when they leap into my world they can be free...free to be who they are without fear of rejection...free to give it their all and fail...even free to succeed.
So while being a rockstar is cool and all...I often wonder how well I'm living up to the challenge.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

"Somebody smells like strawberries," one of my Level 6s said as we started our warm-up. The girls ran and skipped and chassed for about 5 minutes and the whole time I could hear whispers of strawberries. They went to get a drink, came back, and as they sat in their pike stretch the whispers got less like a whisper and more obnoxious. As I went around to stretch them, I smelled strawberries, too. "Now I'm curious," I said. But of course, no one thought they were the one who smelled like strawberries. I was dumbfounded that no one wanted to claim this yummy scent. I mean, it's not like we were saying they smelled like dirty socks. "It's not me," said one of the girls, "I stink." Good to know...
The strawberry smell was definately stronger on one end of the row so we pretty much narrowed it down to about 3 people. "I think it's Rolley's hair," I offered as a suggestion. The girls smelled it. "It smells like doggy shampoo," they said. I of course stopped warm-up to go and smell for myself. Sure enough, the place that they smelled was all sweaty and did, in fact, smell like doggy shampoo. "Smell back near her ponytail," I said, to which every single girl felt the need to come over and do so. They all thought it smelled good, but no one was satisfied that it was the mysterious scent of strawberries that had bugging them for the past 15 minutes. We finally got on task enough to finish that portion of our stretching and the girls started doing splits. First they had to do them with their hands forward, then with their hands back, and finally with their arms up. As they were all grimacing, doing their splits with their arm up, one of the girls started giggling and said, "It's Fiz's armpit!" I went to catch a whiff myself and sure enough, it was Fiz's armpit. A delightful smell for an armpit, I might add. "What kind of deodorant are you wearing," I asked. "I don't remember," she said. Dying to know, I went over to the bleachers to ask her mom what kind of deodorant it was. "Teen Spirit," she said. "Aha," I said as I walked back over to the girls, "you have an assignment for the weekend...go to the store and buy Teen Spirit deodorant that smells like strawberries." I added, "it would make my job a lot better to have a bunch of girls that smell like strawberries instead of dirty socks." They all giggled and said that they would go buy Teen Spirit. If I walk in the gym to day and smell a flock of strawberry-smelling deodorant clad Level 6s, I'll know they succeeded!

My Parents

We're going through Proverbs with the kids during prayer theme and this week, we talked about listening to mom and dad. So I asked the kids, "What kinds of things have your parents taught you?" Here were some of the responses:
--"How to be nice."
--"How to clean your room"
--"How to share your toys"
--"How to read"
--"How to do math"
--"My mom teaches me not to pick my nose"
--"My mom spanks my butt...cause I'm bad"
So happy belated mothers day, moms...you ARE having an impact on the world!