A Sacrifice

It’s always hard to sacrifice something, even for someone you genuinely care for. It was no exception for me when I made a sacrifice for my family. A few years ago, I had a huge swim meet that I desperately wanted to attend because it was the last chance I had to qualify for divisionals in our area of the state. The only problem with it was that it fell on one of the few times of the year that the entire family gathers together. My parents told me that they really wanted all of us to be able to go since we do not see most of our family very often, even though they both knew the meet was extremely important to me. They never directly told me to miss the meet, but the implications were all over the place. For awhile, I had my mind set on skipping the family get-together and go to the meet. I knew subconsciously that it would disappoint my parents is we missed the family time, but I never really thought about it. In the week before the meet, it finally clicked that I should not go to the meet, even if it meant I would not qualify for divisionals that year. I knew my parents were glad that I sacrificed my goal of going to divisionals because they wanted me to spend time with my family.