Relentless Spirit

by Missy Franklin

  Looking back, we should have expected that this decision would get a lot of media attention. The headline was almost too obvious: OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST RETURNS TO COMPETE FOR ALL-GIRLS CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL SWIM TEAM. But it never occurred to me that people might think I should sit out the season. In truth, the only people I’d even thought to ask were the other girls on the team and my coaches, and they were all completely fine with it—they were great with it, actually. But a few parents from our opponents’ schools, as well as some opposing coaches and athletes, seemed to have something to say about it. A lot of journalists and commentators had their own opinions, too. The bottom line was that people felt I’d already had my moment in the sun, and that by continuing to swim I was taking a similar moment away from these other kids. Another worry was that the attendance levels would spike at these meets, as they had the previous year, making it difficult for many parents to get tickets to watch their own children swim. I could absolutely understand the concern, because news crews would show up at these meets and point all those cameras at me, but I chose to put the burden for that one on the media, not me. It would have been so much easier, I think, if people didn’t think I was trying to take something away from these other girls, from these other programs. I was just doing what I thought was right, in a way that honored the swimming program at Regis Jesuit and my wonderfully supportive teammates there.

  We even received a package of homemade cookies at our front door just before Christmas, just as our season was getting under way, from a mother of one of the swimmers at a rival high school. Keep in mind, we’d known this family for years—the Colorado swimming community can be a tight-knit bunch, and I’d been on a club team with this woman’s daughter. The cookies came with a card addressed to my mother that said Merry Christmas in a saccharine-sweet way and then read, “We hope you’ll convince Missy NOT to swim with the team so that the other girls will have their chance to shine.”

  Those cookies went right in the garbage, of course.

  In the end, I tuned out all the criticism and found a way to enjoy my senior season with my friends. Together, we swam our way to another state championship, which was a great way for us seniors to end our high school careers. I even managed to set state records in my off-events, like the 200 IM and the 50 free, but that wasn’t the reason I was swimming. I wanted to be with my friends, to finish the journey we’d started together as freshmen. Nothing was more important. And to watch my best friends as captains, and to step to their roles as leaders, was amazing.

  Why was it so important to me to finish out my high school career in this way?

  Why was I so reluctant to give up my final high school season swimming with my friends, after I’d just competed on the biggest stage in sports, at the London Olympics?

  What was I out to prove?

  The answer was simple. I wasn’t out to prove anything. It’s just that I loved high school. I loved my friends. And I knew we’d all be headed off in different directions after graduation. This time in our lives was coming to an end and I wanted to hold on to it for as long as I could, in whatever ways I could.

  You see, Regis was a godsend for me—literally.

  Before high school, I’d never really thought about faith or religion. We didn’t belong to a church. We celebrated Christmas and Easter, but not in any kind of spiritual way. God wasn’t a part of my parents’ lives, and so it followed that he wasn’t a part of mine. And the thing of it is, I didn’t even know that part of my life was missing, at least not on any kind of conscious level. It’s hard to say you’re missing something when you don’t even know what that thing is, right?

  As I hope I’ve made clear, my parents always encouraged me to be my own person, to fight for whatever I believed in, whatever mattered most. Here I had to think that once they signed me up to attend an all-girls Jesuit high school, they must have known God would be there waiting for me. On some level, they must have known. Oh, they knew I’d be taking theology classes, and going to mass, and learning more and more about Christ and Christianity, but even more than that they had to know that I might respond to all of this, in a fundamental way.

  I did—thank God, I did—and in the process, I became my own person.

  It happened almost immediately. Gradually, but immediately. There was just a different feeling that came over me, the moment I walked through the doors at Regis. It’s like a light had found me, but it was only dim at first. I felt safe, comforted. I felt like I belonged. I have a specific memory of coming home from school on my very first day, and my mom asking me how things had gone, and me answering excitedly about a song I’d learned in our welcoming mass. It was the most uplifting thing, the most surprising thing.

  The most blessed thing.

  Of course, I didn’t have the first idea what I was doing, what it all meant. Freshman year, I was just kind of figuring things out. It was a little intimidating, actually. Some of the girls in my class had come from a private, Catholic school background. Others had been raised Catholic and went to mass every week. They knew the language, the routines. They’d been taking these theology classes their whole lives—singing the hymns, participating in the service. It was second nature to them. For me, it was almost like I was taking a God-as-a-second-language course. I was wide-eyed and enthralled, taking it all in. I had so much to learn.

  Those first few weeks in mass, I had no idea what to say. The priest would say something and the other girls would answer back. It was a beautiful call-and-response, and I couldn’t really participate. I could only nod, and mouth what I thought were the right words. But—curiously, wonderfully—nobody ever made me feel like I didn’t belong. I might have been on the outside looking in for the first while, but I was always made to feel welcome. These other girls knew how to go down and receive Communion. They knew how and when to cross themselves. Me, I didn’t know anything, but I paid attention. I took notes. I figured it out, and before long it was a part of me.

  Of course, I wasn’t Catholic, so even if I’d known the rituals I would have missed out on Communion. I couldn’t perform the sign of the cross. But it was all so beautiful to witness.

  One of the great things about coming to God and religion in this way was that it was on my own terms. It wasn’t an “inherited” sense of faith, passed down to me by osmosis or routine. It wasn’t expected of me. No, it was genuine. It was truly something I found for myself, and my parents couldn’t have been happier for me. They were even happy to make room for it at home, to open up their lives to make room for what had opened up in my mind. It was important to me, so it was important to them.

  At school, it was the most natural thing to pursue this new relationship with God. It wasn’t forced on us. It was just there. We could build on it or set it aside. Our teachers and the priests left it to us to think things through for ourselves. We could live our lives in the name of God. Or not. It was up to us. They just taught us what it meant, to be in his light.

  Like I said, it was a gradual awakening for me. I felt him right away, as soon as I walked through those doors on the first day of school, but it took a while for me to get comfortable. A lot of people have what they call an “I said yes” moment. Like, “I said yes to God.” “I said yes to him being my savior.” “I said yes to letting him into my life.” But for me it wasn’t like that. It was a relationship that grew over time, like any other relationship. When I meet someone new and explain to them how I came to God and faith, I tell them it was like meeting a stranger, and then becoming friends with him, and then becoming best friends with him, and the next thing you know you catch yourself thinking, How on earth did I live my life without him? The more time you spend together, the more you learn about each other. So there was no one moment where he appeared before me and I welcomed him into my life, into my heart. It was just a collection of experiences and classes and books and discussions, through which he revealed himself to me, and before I knew it he was a
n integral part of my daily life.

  Instead of an “I said yes” moment, I had what I would call an “Oh, there he is!” moment. Sophomore year, one of the first masses of the year, we went through the entire service and at the other end I realized I’d hit all the right notes, said everything at the right time, moved about in all the right ways. Somehow, the service had become a part of me and I no longer felt like I was finding my way. From there, I just kept growing.

  I wasn’t alone on this journey, of course. I already had a lot of great friends at Regis from swimming. And as soon as school started, I had a whole bunch more. It was the kind of place where you were close with everyone. I started going to church with my closest friend Abby and her family. Sophomore and junior year, I joined them almost every week. If it worked out that the Cutlers were out of town, or couldn’t go to church for some other reason, my mom would go with me. She didn’t want me to go to church alone. We even managed to drag my dad a few times, for Christmas Eve services, even though he got annoyed with all the sitting and standing he had to do—typical Richard!

  DAD: Missy was really committed to her faith, so of course D.A. and I did whatever we could to support her. But at the same time I couldn’t change my stripes entirely. Missy knew who I was. She knew that wasn’t me. I’d go to church to support her, but that was where it ended for me. We’d say grace with her at home, because it was important to her, but when it was my turn to say a few words I’d just say, “Grace.” I couldn’t help myself. I wasn’t being disrespectful, and Missy knew I wasn’t being disrespectful. I was just being me. If you must know, I admired Missy enormously, for opening herself up in just this way. I believe it took a tremendous amount of courage for her to sign on so wholeheartedly to God and religion, coming from a background like hers, a family like ours. I’d say we were a faith-based family, but our faith was always in doing the right thing, in pushing one another to be our best selves. But here Missy had embraced a whole new kind of faith, a faith in something much bigger. I wanted to honor that, but at the same time I had to honor the ways we’d always interacted as a family. I had to be true to who I was, because ultimately that was the great lesson I wanted to share with my daughter. Be yourself. Be true to yourself. Missy wouldn’t have bought it if I’d shed my old skin and jumped in right alongside her. To me, that wouldn’t have been respectful. She would have seen right through me. We’d always joked and teased with each other, so the way I looked at it was that this was just something new to joke and tease each other about. The few times I did go to church with her, Missy would catch me napping or complaining and jab me with an elbow. That was just her way of teasing me back, giving as good as she got. Somehow, D.A. and I found a way to stay true to who we were and still be there to support Missy as she went down this new path. It was so very exciting for her, and I was so enormously proud of her growth in this way, but I could only be myself.

  With Mom, it wasn’t even a question. She would go to church just to support me, keep me company. With Dad, it was more of an ask. In any other family, it would have been a big ask, but my father would do anything for me, so it was more of a small ask. Only, he couldn’t change who he was, and I wouldn’t have wanted him to. He could go through the motions, keep me company, but that was where it ended for him. My mother, too. They couldn’t possibly have the same intense feelings that I was developing on my own, and that was okay. Absolutely, that was okay. In fact, it was kind of great, because going to church became my thing. Saying grace became my thing. My parents could see that there was this fire inside of me now, and it was beautiful, and they wanted to help me stoke that fire in whatever ways they could.

  At this point, all these years later, I’m knee-deep into it, so I go to church by myself a lot of the time. I’m on solid ground, at long last—the prayers, the hymns, the rituals . . . they’ve become a part of me. But in the beginning, when I was trying all this on for the first time, it was super important for me to have the support of my parents, the support of my friends at school. Mom would even ask me back then if I remembered to say my prayers—like I needed her to remind me! But that was just my mom being a mom. She reminded me to eat a good breakfast, and to keep hydrated, and to put on sunscreen when I went outside. (We’re talking SPF 100+, folks.) It was all part of her job, she thought, and I appreciated that she stayed on top of me in this way, even with something as private, as personal, as prayer.

  I pray in my own way. Sometimes I kneel down at my bed before turning in. Sometimes I’m a little more casual about it. I’ll just clasp my hands together and have at it—wherever I am, whenever the mood strikes. Before meets, I’ll pray during the national anthem. During my warm-downs, too, no matter how things went in the pool. Win or lose, I take that time to pray, to give thanks.

  Always, I think about Jesus the same way I think about my good, good friends. I’m not going to grow in my relationship with a friend if I only see her or talk to her for five minutes at the end of each day. I like to keep connected throughout the day, either on an as-needed basis, or just as a way to check in. If I’m in the car and I hear a sad story on the radio, I might just pull over and catch myself saying, “Hey, God, please keep these good people in your prayers. Let them know there are people thinking about them.” Then I’ll switch the station, find a song I like, turn up the volume, and drive on.

  He’s with me all the time, and so I talk to him all the time. I don’t just reach out to him when I need his sure hand. No, I tell him everything. The good stuff, the bad stuff, the stuff in between. I’ll even tell him about stupid, inconsequential stuff, like an amazing new sandwich I tried at Panera Bread, just to keep connected.

  And do you know what? I hear back from him. I do. Not in the ways you see in movies or on television. I’m a firm believer in the notion that God speaks to us in a variety of ways, through our interactions with others, through the songs that find us on the radio, or the books we’re reading, or the colors of a brilliant blue sky. If I’m praying about something in particular, or if I’m stressing about a decision, I’ll catch myself in a conversation with one of my girlfriends, and all of a sudden it feels like she’s speaking directly to my heart about what’s troubling me. She might have no idea what’s going on, deep down, but she’ll offer up the perfect piece of advice, or just the right words of love or encouragement. That’s a God moment, and I thank him for putting this person in my life in just this way.

  It used to startle me, to hear from him like this, but by now I’ve gotten used to it. By now, I expect it. He doesn’t always get back to me, mind you, but I know the message is getting through. I know he’ll get back to me in his own way, in his own time. Sometimes, it can take weeks and weeks—months and months, even. Whatever had me worried or depressed, it might slink into the background, or take care of itself on its own, but then he’ll reveal himself to me in an answer and I’ll get why things are happening the way they’re happening. And those moments that go unanswered? I know they’ll become clear to me in time.

  When I meet someone new and tell them how I came to God in the halls of my high school, they often suggest that it was swimming that brought me to this place of faith and acceptance. After all, it was largely because of swimming that I’d chosen Regis when I graduated from middle school. But that’s not how I see it. How I see it is I wasn’t supposed to find God until that time in my life. This was how it was meant to be.

  I heard a sermon once that said that if you deny God 233 times it only means that he will keep after you 234 times. That idea really resonated with me, because it was my own experience. Because God was in all the little details of my life all along, and it was only later that I was open to him. I wasn’t raised with God in my life, but I came to him on my own. I hadn’t been ready, but later I was good and ready, and when you come to God you need to be good and ready. I believe that, deeply. So it wasn’t swimming that brought me to God—at least, not directly. I would have made my way to him eventually. W
hen I was good and ready.

  I wrote earlier that our state-championship win my sophomore year at Regis was what convinced me that I wanted to swim in college, and now that my time at Regis was coming to a close it meant I had to find a community of swimmers and like-minded souls where I could pursue my intercollegiate career.

  In a lot of ways, the process of looking at colleges was a lot like looking at high schools. I wanted to be at a place where I could get a great education and the best possible training. I wanted to team up with a group of girls (or women . . . now that I was passing myself off as a young adult) who shared my passion for swimming and for life in general. And I wanted to find a coach who understood the “baggage” I’d be bringing to the program, which meant that I was determined to balance my short-course training for the college season with the long-course training I needed to do to continue to compete at the international level.

  I wasn’t the first national-team swimmer to compete at these NCAA distances, so coaches expected to work with their top swimmers to achieve this balance. Every coach who recruited me said all the right things, and I went pretty far along in the process before deciding on Cal Berkeley. We were visited by coaches from USC, Florida, Cal, Texas, and Georgia. We visited only Cal, Texas, and Georgia, and the moment I walked onto the Berkeley campus, I felt like I belonged—the same way I did when I stepped into the front hall at Regis.

  Teri McKeever was a big reason for that. She’d been the head coach at Cal for more than twenty years, and she’d been the head coach for the US women’s team at the London Olympics, so we had a happy history together. (She was also my group coach when I was fourteen at that Duel in the Pool in England.) Plus, I knew a lot of the girls (er . . . women) who swam for Berkeley, and they all had terrific things to say about Teri. She’d put together a close-knit group of fun, talented, disciplined swimmers, and I wanted to be a part of that.