Glorifying God on a Diving Board

I became a Christian when I was real young—about 8 years old—but I wandered away in high school. I just got distracted, really, and thought I could take the reins into my own hands.

I made a mess of things, and actually realized in the middle of a diving meet that I was hitting rock bottom. My grades were slipping, I'd lost a lot of people close to me, and I thought diving was all I had left. I began to get disoriented in the air, and this one thing I thought was keeping my life in check was now slipping through my fingers.

It was in the middle of this meet that I realized I had taken control back. I knew that it was God I needed to give my life back to—and I did that right in the middle of a diving meet. This has made diving more special to me because God used something I loved so much—something He’s given me a talent for—to bring me back to Him. Now I can use diving to glorify Him, and when I dive I get to worship Him.

That is what the Olympic experience embodies for me—I get to worship God in front of the world, doing what He made me to do. There’s just no better feeling than that.