Second Place

Second place. The silver medal. Only there is no medal stand. There is no national anthem, no waving flag, no cheering friends. There is emptiness, struggle, defeat, hopelessness. What if Michael Phelps had gone to the Olympics, failed to qualify in any of his events, come back to the States empty handed. “Oh, he had so much promise.” “Well, all those magazines sure did waste their covers with his picture!” “I thought he was supposed to be one of the best?”

Tonight I got second place again. There was nothing wrong with my race, really. Everyone who was there told me so. My own coaches and supporters told me that things went really well from their vantage point. “Sure there were a couple of rough stretches, but what do you expect in this Steeple Chase like competition?” Even the other coaches said I did well. They encouraged me all the way, “You are doing great. Keep it up. I don’t think there is anything that can stop you now.”

But, then, when I could see the finish line in the near distance, something happened. I don’t really know what. It hit so fast; blindsided me. I don’t really recall what happened. After four years of intense training, second place, again. This is my third silver medal in the past five months. That doesn’t even count the number of races in which I was disqualified in the preliminary rounds. It is hard being second. I am not really used to it. I don’t know if you ever really do get used to it, or if you want to.

Tonight, I got the call again. It is an inevitable one, really. I found out that I got second place for the job in Ft. Smith. They decided to hire someone else. “It just seemed like he was the right guy. Everybody had wonderful things to say about you. None of the kids could find anything wrong with you. It just came down to the right fit, and something was just right with him. We really can’t explain it, but he is the one. But you really ministered to us when you were here. And remember, you will always have a family at West-Ark.” All the sentiment and forced niceties don’t really make it any easier.

The ironic thing is that just two hours earlier I decided to drop an event. It just wasn’t feeling right. So, I called up to St. Louis, thanked them for the time and energy they had put into talking with me, and asked them to take my name off of their candidate list. Just over an hour later, “Thanks for trying.”