Podium Charging

The 5 Most Important Decisions You Will Ever Make:

1. Choose to believe in yourself. What would you try if you knew you could not fail?
2. Choose to do the work which your goals require. Remember the law of the harvest.
3. Choose to put God first in your life.
4. Choose to stay away from "avalanche zones." Don't do anything where the holy ghost couldn't be present.
5. Choose to bring others with you across the finish line. Life is a team sport

I made my debut on national television. On the Today show. In my bikini no less. On the opening credits. I'm tempted to point out to Kate Upton that even She hasn't achieved this type of fame yet. Apparently, I was filmed at the beach on the fourth of July...as stock footage. Which NBC then used as the opening for their show and for their segment on sunscreen scamming. So on the first day of my vacation in Utah I woke up at 6 am to a screen shot my friend posted of me on the Today show. To be fair, it was me and Ryan...so I guess this means we will have to share next year's SI swimsuit cover. Kidding. The whole thing was so bizarre, I still don't know how neither of us noticed a cameraman filming us. Needless to say, it was my first morning of vacation and I got no sleep as I skyrocketed out of bed and raced down the stairs to see it for myself.

Can you believe it's Monday?! I spent the past three days with some of my very best friends, how lucky am I?? Really, really lucky...and blessed. It had been a year since I had been home; I was looking forward to seeing my family, that familiar feeling of sitting on the kitchen bar stools and chatting, playing with the dogs, playing games, driving my car, and sitting in the jacuzzi staring at the stars. What I didn't anticipate was the immense amount of effort and sacrifice that everyone made on my behalf. I kind of made a list, of things that I wanted to do. Ok, not kind of....I typed a list. Down to the hour. (At first I thought I was being too OCD, until I saw Chloe's method of packing for BYU-confirmation that it runs in the family) I honestly thought we'd get maybe half of the things done. It turns out, not only are we a family with various amounts of OCD, but I get my insane amount of energy from both parents. We played tennis, picked raspberries, ate at Teriyaki, went for a run in the mountains, went paddleboarding with the dogs, played the piano, went to Chloe's concert and my dad came home early from work to take me to the gun club. Not to mention some epic scooter rides...Vespas for life. My cousins drove up to spend time with me, my grandparents took us all to dinner, my dad, after riding an insane race uphill, played doubles tennis and then still took everyone on a horseback ride, followed up by sushi, then built us a fire to roast smores. The sacrifices were endless this weekend, and to each of my family members, it meant more to me than I can express.

Saturday morning I was reminded once again, that we are missing one of us. As we stood at the top of the Snowbird hill climb, what looked like a skinny boy in his teens, with blonde hair, charged past us to claim first place. Waves of nostalgia crashed down on me, as I thought of Pete. In the summer you could find him doing laps up and down the Colony road, or hear the TV blaring from the family room as he pedaled away on his stationary bike. The snowbird hill climb was Pete's first major race. It's a grueling 10 mile, 3,500 ft of climbing, perfect for the type of person that doesn't feel pain the way normal people do. This year my dad raced it alone, no Pete. He wanted to podium, but it wasn't meant to be this year. To his credit however, he gave it his all, and I was proud of him. I expect he will break all of his records when he races again next year. As we drove down the hill, my mom told me that Pete had said the race is just one long climb of intense pain. "Euwww," I said, wrinkling my nose a bit. "That sounds....Awful." She agreed. But one of the amazing things about biking is overcoming that pain. A sport like no other.

In addition to getting to spend time with my family, I got two unexpected surprises. One was from Grandpa Glenn, a small thumb drive with over 200 talks by general authorities and church leaders, to put on my phone and listen to as I head out to work. This includes a number of talks by people such as Joseph F. Smith, Spencer W. Kimball, people that I've never heard speak before. That little thumbdrive is worth its weight in gold...and then some. My other surprise was a gift from Grandad, to help me survive in NYC, extremely generous and kind of him.

On Sunday, we played croquet on the lawn, uncovering new sides to the Johnson competitive instinct. We developed a catch-phrase to describe our efforts, using my dad's desire to podium as a reflection of our effort. "Did you podium" or the verb "podium" became every day jargon.

I have a sign that hangs in my room, listing those 5 Most Important Decisions, but my favorite one is the last, number 5: Choose to bring others with you across the finish line. Being with my family has never made that more profound. Despite our differences or the fact that we don't always share physical space, there is a unity among us that works towards helping each other reach the finish line, despite being at different points in life. It is such a strong and unique bond, and I'm so grateful to be a part of that. I see it most acutely with my parents and siblings, as they help me and I help them. We're a team. And I'd like to add, a team that's going to podium! But I also see my larger team, a team that includes grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins, great uncles; all of us working to bring each other across the finish line of life.

Charging it to the podium in NYC,

Lo