Ok, I am a short person. Lots of tall genes in the family, but I basically got none. While I am very blessed by how God made me exactly this way, there are circumstances where this becomes more obvious. To be more specific, my legs are short. I sat on the floor next to one of my track athletes and we were looking eye to eye. I told her to look down at our feet. Her feet were 3-4 inches past mine, which is why she was good at hurdles. I use my height and my short legs to my advantage in many ways, so I do not feel disheartened by it. I even presented statistics to my class about the normal heights of men. Once they read the chart correctly, they stated that in a room of 20 men, I am likely to be taller than 1 of them. This has proven true as I have attended a number of men’s retreats always finding another man that I could claim was slightly shorter than me.

I had flown on a plane sitting next to a woman as we spoke most of the time looking eye to eye. She got off the plane before I stood up. I saw her getting on the tram and waved. Her jaw dropped and she was paralyzed staring, because she was 4-5 inches taller than me. I should have been angry, but I laughed because height does not define us, just like any other feature about our exterior person. It is what is inside that defines us.

I got to try something new this past week, cross country skiing. I was a downhill skier learning as a youth, but gave it up once I tore my ACL. When I took my teenage children to the ski resort, I tried snowboarding with them, sticking to the bunny hills while they enjoyed the full slopes. To my surprise, the cross country skis felt totally different. For almost 15 minutes I was unbalanced and clueless as to how to keep a good motion with these on. Then a rhythm set in and I found I could glide with each slide forward. Then I was smiling. This was beautiful. Far more so than I expected. To be able to travel about 10 feet with each step forward was a momentous feeling for a guy with short legs. About as easy as a camel going through the eye of a needle. Much harder than having a Happy Friday. Remember to subscribe on the Perspectives page.

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