Gabe. 10 years old. He’s amazing. That’s how the pain and hardship begin, when someone besides mom utters the seemingly innocuous words: You’re amazing. My amazing boy practices swimming with kids a minimum of three years his senior. When he was with kids his age, swimming practice started at 10AM. But his amazing asserted itself, and he was asked to move to the 9AM slot. Then, more amazing, the 8AM slot. Now I shake him awake at 7:15 every weekday of his summer.

On the way to swimming Gabe said, “I’m tired. I hope we don’t swim for distance today. I hope we do the short work.”

As I turned to leave, I heard the coach say, “Ok, we’re going to warm up with a thousand SKIPS… two hundred of this, two hundred of that, two hundred blah blah…” I don’t understand the intricate details of swimming yet because we’re new to it.

Just one year ago I bribed Gabe with an ice cream cone to jump in without holding his nose. Gabe was amazing last year too, when in his first-ever swimming class, they moved him up three levels in two days and recommended we search out a more serious swimming venue. His coach mentioned the Olympics, and Gabe’s eyes glazed over. Anyway, I think he’s swimming distance today. There’s not much rest when you’re amazing.

That got me thinking about being “amazing.”

For starters, there’s no time to worship the trophy case.

It looks like Gabe, shoving down a piece of broccoli at 7:25 AM, so that he listened to Coach’s directive to “eat before swimming.” It looks like the polar plunge for Gabe and the few blue-lipped crazies who show up to swim when it’s freezing cold outside. It looks like pushing harder than he wanted because the hulking guy behind him keeps hitting his feet. It looks like tomorrow he’s going to be afraid to come, he’s going to get a bellyache and want to stay home, but mom’s going to drag his mewling self there either way, so might as well suck in his teary snot and just get it over with. Again. Day in and day out is what amazing looks like. Mom promises it will get easier. Mom is often a liar. When one is amazing, it is not a result or a trophy or a tag, but a string of choices that becomes a groove we fall into automatically, a philosophy we embrace with white knuckles, panting.

This is what we give up in order to get “amazing.”

Give #1. Big frog. IF there is a choice, we always chose to be the small frog in the big pond, rather than vice versa. In this decision we often give up the friends, comfort, and accolades. We put ourselves in the company of people who push us, hard. It usually hurts for a while. Or forever.

Give #2. Sleep. One can’t sleep and be amazing at the same time. Like one can’t be wet and dry at the same time. This is hardest for me. I love sleep. Amazing kids have moms with puffy eyes, who find things to do in the car because going home isn’t worth it.

Give #3. Comfort. See the second Give. But besides the discomfort of exhaustion, we must put ourselves in environments no one else dares to go. Again, friends, normalcy, watching the grass grow… all gone.

Give #4. The Gold. Never spend time standing in front of your trophy case. It’s the fastest way to slip out of God’s blessing and into arrogance or pride. Whatever amazing one was born with, is from God. Whatever toil you’ve thrown at your natural-born-amazing is from God as well. I believe that’s why Paul tells us to “forget what is behind and strain toward what is ahead.”

Give #5. The broad road and the friends who travel it. Get comfortable being weird or misunderstood.

So we give, we sacrifice if we want to be amazing. And, like anything coveted, amazing grows wings and flies to higher and higher nests, requiring ever more effort to reach it. What was amazing last week is the status quo today. My job as mom is to counteract that dynamic and  be amazed, always.

All week Gabe has been looking forward to today, Fun Friday at swimming. As I write this (in my car) Gabe is playing water polo with kids twice his size and weight. It looks like a scene from JAWS.

That he can hang with kids that big and not shrink or complain or cling to the side of the pool in wide-eyed paralysis of terror– amazing. Today, anyway.