Integrity.

If I had been asked two years ago what integrity was, I wouldn’t have been able to give my inquirer a straight answer. I could have babbled on for a few minutes, created a thin answer supported by dictionary definitions and past literature I had read, but I would have crashed and burned all the same. A whole lot can change in two years though. A girl can go from boy obsessed to knowing that a good friend is better then a cute boy any day of the week. She can realize that the world doesn’t revolve around her and she can build up some life experiences from which to pull lessons from when tough questions are asked.
This “experience” I am referring to is just that. It was a time of trial in my life where I had to face opposition, challenge leadership and do so with integrity and respect. The issue began this fall, about halfway through the 2010 football cheerleading season. I felt bad to be doing so, but I had begun to question both the leadership and ethics of my coach. Was it really necessary for her to spout tremendously negative criticisms all practice with no positive comments to go along with? Was it really okay for my teammates and I to leave practice crying, angry, and with sour dispositions? Was it okay to stop sleeping the night before practice and to come up with reasons to stay home the next day? I asked myself these questions plus more and soon I found out that 11 out of the 14 girls that made up our squad were feeling the same way I was.
But what could we do? She was our coach, our leader, our teacher, and our supposed role model. At the time, it felt like nothing. I felt emotionally drained, stressed and my other relationships were suffering but my hands were tied. She was the coach and she made the rules. I have never been one to take things like such lying down though. I knew in my heart that something had to be done and I couldn’t just stand in the corner and act like nothing was happening.
What I, with my teammates right beside me, was about to do can best be illustrated with the notion of a prince going into a dragon’s den with no armor and a wooden sword. I was going to approach her. I knew I would feel better after, but it wasn’t going to be an easy moment. No one likes being told that they are in the wrong, it is human nature. She was going to be angry; there was no doubt about that. I didn’t want to poke the “dragon” with my poorly made, ill-qualified, wooden sword, but it had to be done. I was worried practices would become even more tense and horrid and that she wouldn’t change despite our pleas. Mostly though, I feared that I would fail. I wouldn’t just be taking myself down though. I would be hurting the girls that were so much more to me then just teammates. They were, and they are, my friends, my sisters.
I’m glad I wasn’t alone in my dilemma. Almost all of the girls on the squad felt the same way and most of them were willing to confront her about it. Prior to our meeting with her, the girls and I had an informal meeting at my house to get everything out in the open so that we could figure out how to approach this delicate subject. It was at that “mini meeting” that we was decided as a team to face the issue head on.
We decided to have a meeting with our coach and have our athletic director present and as we had all predicted, she was not happy. We tried our hardest to present our “case” in a respectful matter but she felt attacked. It was then that my realization of what integrity was occurred. We had the right to be treated fairly and the integrity to reclaim that right, but she had integrity of her own. She wasn’t going to let 11 teenage girls tell her that she, and her 20 plus years of experience, were wrong. We concluded the meeting with a compromise. We would work harder if she promised to help us make cheerleading fun again. Slowly but surely she did. So much so that the fans at football games begin to notice the reappearance of our smiles and the fact that we cheered with enthusiasm once again.
During the month or so after that, the “dragon” did reappear on occasion. But we needed her to tear us down so that we could build ourselves back up and that is exactly what we did. We built ourselves up so high that we placed 5th out of 12 very competitive teams at this year’s state cheerleading competition! It was the first time Van Meter Community High School had ever placed at state and I got to be a part of that. Though the future hadn’t always been so bright, our story had a happy ending after all.
To an outsider this whole experience might appear trivial, a silly tiff among cheerleaders, whose stereotype already paints us to be dramatic, but for myself and those involved, this experience was so much more. It taught me how important it is that I stand up for myself and that in order to achieve anything in life, obstacles have to be overcome. Most importantly though, this whole experience has taught me what integrity is. Two years ago I had no true sense of the word. Now I am able to come up with a definition all my own:

Integrity (n): The necessity in holding one self’s head high, the valuing of honesty, the respecting of another, the following the moral values instilled within ones self, the desire to right what has been wronged.

I'm Dreaming of a Guilty Christmas? :(

Christmas is exactly 23 days away. That gives me about 2.3 days to make a Christmas list and send it via text email or phone to my family. But this year I feel just too guilty to make that list. Christmas is supposed to be about spending time with family and being thankful for all the great things I have in my life but here I am making a christmas list? I am creating a list of "wants" when I really have everything that I need! I have a family who supports me in everything that I do, I have a boyfriend who makes it his business to make me happy, I have a place to call home with a furnace that I can warm my feet upon and I have an abundance of people in my life who make me happy. I am so happy and so lucky that making a list out of superficial things like a new a fuzzy black coat or a pair of dark skinny jeans seems like a slap in the face to all the things that I have. I mean is that pair of jeans going to make or break me? No, but losing someone close to would rattle me surely. Because people are what matter to me! Not things. I don't need things, I need love!

But now I am just being hypocritical. Because I am really going to open that coat and act like I am not in love? No, because knowing my stepmom's taste, I will be and I mean madly! So what do I do? Do I dedicate my Christmas to help starving kids or saving the planet? Or do I just accept my gifts knowing that people are giving them to me because they love me? Knowing myself, I will probably get past my quilt rather quickly when I stuff my feet into some boots, but until then I am just putting off the making of this list. Who knows, maybe I an come up with a bright idea by stalling. Maybe?