I am more than an Athlete

Hi, I'm Jennie and I play basketball, softball, and run cross country. This is how I used to introduce myself to people when they asked me to tell something about myself. Please notice how I say USED to. I let sports be who I am and I really don't like that. I use to dress and carry myself in a way that people would look at me and say "wow she is an athlete". I wanted people to know me as the girl that plays three sports. Not only did I want other people to look at me this way but it is how  I looked at myself. I breathed sports; any decision I made, I had basketball in the back of my mind. I would skip out on fun social events to go work out or go shoot by myself. As an athlete some may think that this is the road to success, and they are correct, to be a successful athlete. I want to be more than a successful athlete. I hope one day to be a successful, wife, mother, and daughter of God. I know that a person can be all of those things and a successful athlete but the balance in my life was not healthy. I let sports run my life instead of letting Christ run my life. I wanted to go play college basketball which was going to keep me from receiving so many blessings. This would have kept me from part of girls camp which would have kept me from relationships with some very amazing people. This most likely would have kept me from going on a mission, which if everything goes the way it should I will be on in around two years. Over the course of my junior year I learned that sports do not define me. Once  I had that figured out, I still needed to figure out what did.  Through one of my teammates I learned that sports could be taken from me in a split second. In my mind that would have been the end of the world.  I watched her go through this injury and she handled it like a champ. This messed up her chance of going to college on an athletic scholarship but she went through it the best way possible.I don't wish to get an injury that will take sports away from me, but if it were to happen I know I could handle it, and I know I could find some sort of positive in the situation. As I went to girls camp I learned that sports do not define me. I am more than an athlete. I like to think I am a kind person, I like to read, recently learned that I enjoy writing, I love helping people and plan on spending my life doing just that, and most of all I am a daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves me and I love him. I love to talk about the gospel and I try to share it as often as possible. I am an athlete, but I am also a disciple of Jesus Christ. It took me a while to figure this out, but I am so glad I am figuring this out now and not entering college and figuring it out while I am sitting on the bench at some college basketball game because that would not be fun. I am more than an athlete. I am my own person, not what sports make me.  I am Jennie Anderson and I am a daughter of a King.