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  “What do you like to eat?” Missy asked.

  I listed a bunch of items, like fruit.

  “Do you love strawberries?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “especially chocolate-covered ones!” We laughed. I was already getting along so well with Missy that I actually thought, Aw man, why can’t Missy be a single parent? What if her husband doesn’t like me?

  We finally pulled into the driveway of a purplish, two-story house with a big, grassy front yard. Inside, things were a bit wild at first: the Partons’ daughters were running all over the place! In addition to six-year-old Leah and her twin sister, Lexi, there was the oldest daughter, Hailey, then eight; and the youngest, Elissa, then three. Travis was in the kitchen preparing dinner: grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and fruit. When he heard us come through the front door, he met us there.

  “Hi, Gabby, I’m Travis!” he said cheerfully and with a bit of a laugh.

  “I’m Gabrielle,” I said, suddenly feeling almost as shy has Leah had seemed. Travis called in the other girls, who also turned bashful when they saw me — but trust me, that timidity didn’t take long to wear off!

  We all sat down around a long table that Travis crafted (he builds beautiful furniture!), held hands, and prayed. “Lord, thank you for bringing Gabrielle into our home,” Travis said. I peeked through one eye to have a closer look at everyone’s faces around the table; I quickly closed that eye again when I saw that the other four girls were peeking too. “And God, please bless our food,” Travis continued. “In your name we pray, amen.”

  After we’d devoured the chicken (delish!), Travis placed dessert on the table: a bowl of fresh strawberries, grapes, and apples. Once the fruit was on my plate, I picked up a strawberry and casually popped it into my mouth.

  “Ooh, that’s gross!” one of the girls said. “You’re eating with your hands!”

  I froze. Travis could tell I was embarrassed, and I think he and Missy were too. So he broke the tension by saying, “Girls, come on! We eat strawberries with our hands all the time.” I’d later discover that was completely true — but on that first night, I thought, If I have to be super polite around this family, this is going to be very awkward.

  Before bedtime, Travis turned to me and said, “Welcome to our home, Gabby. Let us know if you need anything at all. What’s ours is yours.” I was starting to see that Travis and I would get along just fine. The girls all hugged me before Missy showed me the rooms where I could sleep.

  Compared to our small town house back in Virginia Beach, this house seemed huge. On the main level, where I’d entered that evening, there was the living room, a dining room, and a kitchen; the family’s four bedrooms were upstairs. And then there was the basement. “You can have the whole basement to yourself,” Missy told me, “or we can give you a bedroom upstairs.” At first, having a space of my own seemed heavenly, but after a couple nights down there, I felt too lonely; I wasn’t used to having my own room or even my own bed! So one morning over breakfast, I asked Missy, “Can I move upstairs with the rest of the family?” The answer was yes. So the twins shared a room; Missy and Travis had the master bedroom; and Hailey and Elissa shared a room right across from mine.

  In my new room upstairs, the queen bed was on the left of the doorway; the bed was neatly dressed with a set of crisp, cotton sheets. Once I pulled back the covers and climbed in wearing my PJs, I just lay there for several minutes staring straight up at the ceiling. I wondered what TV show John and Joy were watching that night. I thought about what it would feel like to curl up with Zoway. I remembered the words Mom had left me with at the airport — her reassurance that no matter where I was, God was right there with me. I then turned off the light, pulled my whale, Willy, up close to my neck, and fell right to sleep.

  The Letter

  My father came home from Afghanistan in October 2011. Joy and John gathered at the military base with Dad’s parents to greet him and welcome him home. When my father and his family hadn’t asked about me by the time he and my siblings were preparing to leave, Joy finally said to everyone, “Brie’s doing good in Iowa, just in case you want to know.”

  Dad hadn’t called or met the Partons, and he hadn’t shown much interest in my whereabouts. But I guess Joy’s comment put me back on his mind, because not long after, a letter arrived in the mail. It was from my father — and it was incorrectly addressed to “Randy and Misty Parton.” In the letter, Dad offered appreciation to the Partons for hosting me. What he didn’t offer was a cent of support. I’m not saying that my father never sent money to our family. My mother says that he did at times, and that has been acknowledged in these pages. What I am saying is this: when Dad did come through, it was often with far less than enough.

  Each time I looked down at the mistaken names on the front of that envelope, I was filled with embarrassment and sadness. My greatest heartbreak wasn’t realizing Dad didn’t know the two people who’d taken me in. It was wondering whether he cared. That’s a question I live with even now.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cast all your anxiety on him because

  he cares for you.

  —I PETER 5:7, NIV

  AS PLAYFUL, FRIENDLY, AND WARM AS CHOW IS, MAKE NO MISTAKE— he and his wife, Li, have the highest expectations and standards for every one of their gymnasts. So as I prepared for my first big meet under Chow’s guidance — the Visa National Championships in August 2011 — the intensity of our training increased. I’d promised him my full effort, and in return, he was giving me his. In just a few months, he increased the difficulty level of my routines by a full four points. I was ready.

  Or so I thought.

  Ten weeks before my make-it-or-break-it Nationals, I heard a pop in my leg while I was doing a leap in a floor exercise. The upcoming competition was one of the most critical of my career: doing well at Nationals could mean earning the chance to compete at Worlds — and if you don’t make it to Worlds, you usually don’t make it onto the Olympic team. So the timing for this injury couldn’t have been worse. My entire dream was on the line.

  Missy rushed me to an orthopedic surgeon, who confirmed our biggest fear: I had sprained my hamstring and injured my hip flexor. I Skyped Mom immediately.

  “What am I going to do?” I said, fighting back tears.

  “You’re going to do what you’ve always done — trust God to carry you through it,” she answered. “You’ve got to keep fighting, Brie.” She’d be there in person to be sure that I did: Mom had already booked a flight to come watch me perform in St. Paul, Minnesota. I hadn’t seen her since December 2010, when she, Joy, and John (Arie couldn’t get off work!) came all the way to throw a pool party for my birthday and spend the holidays with me.

  In the following weeks, Missy took me back to the surgeon so I could receive a cortisone injection — a remedy for pain and inflammation. The orthopedic surgeon was uncomfortable doing the procedure on me because I was so small — so the area where the shot was to be administered was even smaller than normal. He referred us to an anesthesiologist, who specialized in working on small children. The procedure was done in the hospital because the needle had to be guided into the small area with special equipment.

  On the day of the shot, I grabbed Willy on my way out the door and headed to the hospital. Once there, I asked the doctor, “Is this going to hurt?” Before he could answer, he’d already sunk the longest needle I’ve ever seen into my behind so he could get it into an area called my hip bursa. He then pushed the needle all the way down into the bone. Ow! I pulled Willy close and squeezed his body tightly as I squelched an audible yelp.

  In spite of my injury, Chow did everything he could to prepare me for the meet. Even as I worked through the pain, he wanted me to be safe so I wouldn’t risk reinjury. But do you think that slowed me down? I went to physical therapy twice a day and scheduled plenty of follow-up visits to the surgeon. I wanted this victory — and badly. It would take more than a hip flexor — and hamstring — injury t
o stop me.

  Yet as the championship got closer, that spirit of resilience wavered and my mood spiraled downward. “Why am I going through this?” I asked God one evening just as I was getting into bed. In the space of a response, there was deafening silence. Until one Sunday morning when I went to church with the Partons. That’s when I heard a sermon that seemed directed at me. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord,” the pastor read from Jeremiah 29:11, the Scripture on which that morning’s message was based. “‘Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” In other words, God already knew how this would turn out — and that thought really touched me. As Mom had reminded me so many times, I just had to trust Him.

  On the morning of the meet, I nonetheless awakened with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach. My mind was clouded with self-doubt. Will I be able to perform my skills, even after an injury? Yes, I was physically prepared — but mentally, I wasn’t confident at all. The sprain and weeks of recovery had thrown me off. I tried to summon that same strength David once used to battle Goliath, but weakness is all I felt.

  Day one at the Visa Championship was a colossal disaster. During a single ninety-second balance beam routine, I fell completely off the beam not once, not twice, but three times! I performed so poorly that I didn’t even want to compete on the second day. “Why wasn’t God there for me?” I cried to Mom. “I prayed, I quoted Scripture — I did it all. I feel like He abandoned me.”

  Mom didn’t miss a beat before offering me another perspective. “We don’t always understand the big picture of why God allows us to have certain experiences,” she explained. “You just have to put today behind you and focus on what you’ll do tomorrow. You can do this. It’s time to persevere.”

  Day two was better — but not by much. A couple of my routines were riddled with mistakes. In the end, the best I could pull off was a bronze medal on the uneven bars and seventh place in the all-around. Not bad — but certainly less than I’d been expecting of myself. Now do you understand why I still call this one of the toughest competitions of my gymnastics career? Not only did I feel like I failed myself, I felt like I failed Chow — a coach who, despite his initial reservations, had taken me on.

  When my mother first talked to Chow about moving me to West Des Moines, she told him there was no way our family could move there with me. “I’ll check to see if there’s a family willing to take her in,” he’d told Mom. At that point, the Partons weren’t even in the picture yet. Let me explain why that became so important at this point in my life.

  When Mom and I boarded our flight from Virginia Beach to West Des Moines, neither of us had any idea about who my host family would turn out to be. Talk about a leap of faith! It was only after I’d already been in Iowa for a few days that we arranged for me to stay with a temporary host family. Then while I was living there, Chow received a surprising email. It was from Missy Parton. Here is a portion of that note:

  Chow,

  Travis wanted me to email you and tell you that we have been feeling God’s calling us to help a gymnast that may be looking and qualified to train with you from another state. Through our friendship with another family, we know that sometimes a gymnast wants to train out of state, but the family can’t move. I don’t know that this happens with you, but I assume that with the level of training you provide, and the world-class facility you have, that it may have or will in the future.

  All we are asking is that you keep us in mind if there is a gymnast who wants to train and will be an excellent addition to your team, but whose family does not have the means to get her here otherwise. We have a home with space to provide a room. We have four girls that would love another “sister.” And we live very nearby.

  I hope that you see our heart and our desire to be good stewards with what God has blessed us with. We want to provide an opportunity to someone who may not otherwise get it. If you have any questions or want to discuss this more, just let us know. Thanks for listening.

  Missy (and Travis) Parton

  Months before Missy emailed that note to Chow, she and her family had lived through a very difficult time: Missy lost her mother to ovarian cancer following a three-and-a-half-year battle. “She was one of my best friends,” Missy later told me of her mother. “She was very involved in my kids’ lives as well. After we lost her, we were just trying to figure out what life would look like without Mom.” She also remembered a comment that Missy’s father once made: “God loves us too much to let us keep living with the void created after losing your mom. He will find something to fill it with — not necessarily replace it, but fill it.”

  Around that time, Travis got an idea. One morning as he was praying, he says he felt God leading him to take in an Olympic hopeful at Chow’s gym. At first, he thought it was a crazy idea. But when the thought wouldn’t go away, he finally mentioned it to Missy. They agreed that they should indeed open up their home. Not that they needed anything extra to do.

  For about five years, they’ve owned a home-maintenance business. Together, they run the business from their house and raise their four young daughters. Yet Travis just couldn’t shake the feeling that he should contact Chow.

  Chow thanked the Partons for their offer, and a few months later, he called to take them up on it. “There’s a gymnast here who needs a host,” he explained. Enter me — an Olympic dreamer who’d appeared from a world away. Once my time with the first family ended, Mom flew back to Des Moines to meet the Partons in person and settle me in with the family. Their home and family turned out to be perfect for me.

  By the time I moved in with Missy and Travis, I’d noticed something around town — I could go days without seeing another black person. It was weird! When Mom came to town, she and I started to joke about it. We turned it into slug bug — an old game people play when they’re on road trips. Here’s how the game goes: whenever someone spots a Volkswagen Beetle (often called a Bug), he or she yells out, “Slug bug!” and then playfully arm-punches the other passengers. Well, Mom and I came up with our own version (though we called our game by another name, “punch buggy”), and I continued that with Travis and Missy. Each time we saw someone black, we’d arm-punch each other and say, “Black person!” Other times, if we noticed an African American at church, for instance, Missy would chuckle while saying, “Hey, you got a sister over there!” I found that hilarious. Still do.

  In September 2011, after the catastrophe at the Visa National Championship, I flew to the Károlyi ranch in Texas for something called a World Championship verification camp. You see, just because you’re on the national team doesn’t mean you automatically get to represent Team USA and compete at upcoming meets. As national team members, we have to complete our routines well and earn our spots to compete at international meets. I knew this was my chance to redeem myself by working harder than ever and demonstrating my skills on the apparatuses. That’s exactly what I did — and Márta Károlyi chose me for a spot on the 2011 World Championship team. Hallelujah.

  Many people were surprised and even a little miffed that I was selected to be a part of the 2011 World Championship team. In a way, being in the underdog position gave me fuel: I worked hard to prove myself. Among sports commentators and in gymnastics circles, many said that I couldn’t handle the pressure of elite competition on the national and international stages and that I had trouble focusing. Yes, I’d fallen off the beam — but I was also performing with a major injury. Yet Mom and my coach never allowed me to use excuses; they instead urged me to get to work. To this day when others doubt me, their uncertainty drives me to double my efforts.

  So I pushed harder in physical therapy even as Chow and Li trained me like never before. “Forget what other people are saying,” Chow told me. “I believe you’re mentally tough. You’re strong. You’re focused. And I know you can do this.” We all knew what was at stake: my chances of ever making it to London were largely contingent upon a single competition — th
e 2011 World Championships in Tokyo, Japan.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Discouragement and failure are two of the surest

  stepping stones to success.

  —DALE CARNEGIE

  AS THE BABY IN MY OWN FAMILY, I FELT WEIRD SUDDENLY BECOMING the oldest girl in the Parton house. After I’d settled into the family and gotten to know Travis, he and I were chatting one evening. “You know, you could really be a role model for these other girls,” he told me. Huh? I thought. I don’t think so, Travis. I’ve never been anyone’s role model. I’m the youngest of my siblings, remember? But the more time I spent time with the adorable Parton girls, the more clearly I could see Travis’s point.

  Leah, one of the twins, had already been training at Chow’s gym by the time I arrived; all the Parton girls started dance classes when they were three, but Missy had noticed that Leah’s personality didn’t fit dancing. She was always climbing up on Travis’s shoulders and seemed to have great balance. “Why don’t you take her to the gym?” a friend suggested. Leah had loved it immediately.

  “Wanna go on the trampoline with me?” Leah would ask. The two of us would jump forever out in the backyard, just as I had done with Beka, John, and Joyelle at home in Virginia Beach. I would sometimes show Leah new skills or help her refine the ones she’d learned at the gym. When we weren’t bounding up and down, we were lying next to each other on the trampoline and just chatting.

  “Do you ever want to go to the Olympics?” I once asked her.

  “Yes, I’d like to try,” she told me.

  “If you keep training and working hard,” I told her, “anything is possible. And one more thing: If you ever get scared of a big skill, just come talk to me. I’ve been there.” She looked over at me and smiled, then we both got up and kept flipping. I was starting to like my new role as a role model!