Keeping your priorities straight

Great article about Annika Sorenstam, the world's record-breaking female golfer who, at 37, is in the midst of retiring from the game. I think it's clear she has a philosophy of life . . . and it has served her well.

Some key insights I found:

• "[W]hat people don't see is the huge amount of effort it requires to stay at the top [of one's game]. So, when you stand there practising and you realise that your mind is on other things, then you know that it is time to move on."

• "When you get a little older, you start having other priorities. You begin thinking about families and so forth. It's unrealistic to assume you can commit 100 per cent forever and if you can't do that, it's tough to stay at the top. It's hard to leave something you enjoy, but the youngsters ... the only thing in their lives is golf. I've moved on."

• "A few years ago, I was leading in one of the biggest tournaments and I was really trying to calm myself down and make myself feel comfortable,' she recalls. 'So, under my visor, I wrote the words, "Face the fear", and what that meant was just to go out there, embrace the challenge and enjoy it."

• Sorenstam has become a model for other women. And so "Sorenstam's heiress apparent, Lorena Ochoa, 26, has spoken of her wish to pack away her clubs in her early 30s, maintaining: 'Life's too short to do just one thing. This is my sixth year as a professional. When I get to 11 or 12, I will move on, do something else.'"

• "Her brand statement is 'Share my passion', which she brings to designing golf courses from South Carolina to South Africa, helping children reach their potential, her foundation scholarships, branching out into show-business with regular appearances on Jay Leno and David Letterman's chat shows, and throwing the first pitch of the Washington Nationals-New York Mets baseball game at the Shea Stadium."

Affirmations of life

My son pointed me in the direction of Jennifer F, a woman who says she was a contented atheist until 2005 but became a Christian and joined the Roman Catholic church in spring 2007.

I'm not Roman Catholic. I have no interest, honestly, in becoming Roman Catholic. But I sure feel a common bond with Jennifer!

I found the following links on her Jennifer's Favorite Links blog:

A video that I expect will bring you to tears from the beauty. --You'll need to read the subtitles quickly at points:



And a pro-family "public service" message from Germany. (Read quickly on this one, too!)



And then, on her thought-provoking "Et Tu?" blog: "How I became pro-life," especially her series of "four key memories that give a glimpse into how my understanding of sex was formed":

• When I was a kid, I didn't have any friends who had baby brothers or sisters in their households. One friend's mom was pregnant when we were twelve, but I moved before the baby was born. To the extent that I ever heard any of our parents talk about pregnancy and babies, it was to say that they were happy that they were "done," the impression being that they could finally start living now that that pregnancy/baby unpleasantness was over.


• In sex ed class we learned not that sex creates babies, but that unprotected sex creates babies. After we were done putting condoms on bananas, our teacher counseled us that we should carefully decide when we might be ready to have sex based on important concerns like whether or not we were in committed relationships, whether or not we had access to contraception, how our girlfriends or boyfriends treated us, whether we wanted to wait until marriage, etc. I do not recall hearing readiness to have a baby being part of a single discussion about deciding when to have sex, whether it was from teachers or parents or society in general. Not once.


• On multiple occasions when I was a young teen I recall hearing girls make the comment that they would readily risk dangerous back-alley abortions or even consider suicide if they were to face unplanned pregnancies and abortion wasn't legal. Though I was not sexually active, it sounded perfectly reasonable to me -- that is how much we desired not to have babies before we were ready. Yet the concept of just not having sex if we weren't ready to have babies was never discussed. It's not that we had considered the idea and rejected it; it simply never occurred to us.


• Even recently, before our marriage was validated in the Catholic Church my husband and I had to take a course about building good marriages. It was a video series by a nondenominational Christian group, and in the segment called "Good Sex" they did not mention children or babies once. In all the talk about bonding and back rubs and intimacy and staying in shape, the closest they came to connecting sex to the creation of life was to briefly say that couples should discuss the topic of contraception.

"Sex could not have been more disconnected from the concept of creating life," she concludes.

I'd have to say I agree with her.

Quite stunning, isn't it?