Perseverance

I dont think I knew the meaning of perseverance until today. I just wanted to share our day so far. This morning my husband and son got up early and went to play basketball at the church. So I got up went and got in a short run and met up with the family to go to my son's big belt rank advancement test in karate. I was expecting it to be much like the testing they did in utah. About 1/2 to 1hr test. Minimal effort. Basically showing the forms and sparring, self defence and be done. Wow was I wrong!!!!
This ended up being a 3 hr test which was very rigorous, and difficult. They were split up in 3 groups of 6-7 kids. 1 group would go in front of the judges and pass off their kicks while the other 2 groups were doing either crunches, push ups, running in place or jumping jacks. Then they would rotate. It was a continouse rotation the whole 3 hrs. After oassing of the moves they went to passing off their forms. They would pass off 1 form at a time then rotate. The most omount of forms soe of them had to pass off was 7 so it took a very long time. Austin had to pass off his forms 1-4... He did great and was so sharp and crisp in his moves.
Once everyone had a chance to pass off their forms it went to passing off self defence and then 40 minutes of sparring. 3 rounds with 1 partner then switching partners and going another 3 rounds. 3 diffrent partners with 3 rounds and a minute to two break in between. It was so tense. And the pushups they did were men pushups. crunches had to be with the shoulders coming off the matt and with running in place knee's had to be high. They would literally do these push ups and crunches or running for 4 or 5 mins at a time until they rotated. I think i would have killed over. I couldnt believe the stamina and perseverence these kids had to have to pass. There were some who did not pass and get their belts because of laziness or lack of knowledge of their forms. It was so strict and hard. Back in utah when they would test to become a blackbelt they would have to spar for like 5 or 10 minutes or something like that and it was called sudden death and i thought that was crazy but it didnt compare to what these kids had to do and they are not even testing for their black belts.
I could see my son throughout these 3 hrs give up and shake his head and mouth to me i'm done and he kept saying he failed because there was a kick he just had learned this week and had to pass it off for the test. He did not do it very well and the master was yelling come on austin get your leg up jump. It's called a jupmping spin cresent kick. Its difficult. And he tried real hard to do it but assumed he failed because of it. He was so tired and exhausted and the sweat was just pouring from him. I kept trying to reassure him and say keep going you will do it.
This master was hard on them i am not sure that I could perform like he wanted them to after doing pushups and crunches and running for 3 hrs. He would say some of you have already failed and you would have to go through all the test wondering if you were that one who failed.
Well Austin was so shocked when they called his name to get his belt. He couldnt believe it. He was on cloud 9 for hours. So excited.
I dont think I have ever been more proud of my son for accomplishing something then I am today. He worked so hard and persevered. I just cried when they called his name. I'm so proud of him.. And to find out he did all this on an empty stomach because he skipped breakfast this morning to go play basketball with his dad and had to come home and hurry off to karate. How he went through all that without passing out is incredible. And he didnt even tell me until after the test because he knew i would have been freaking out... I was on the end of my chair the whole time...
Today is his day.... We are going for icecream a little later then having pizza for dinner and watching a movie as a family. This was his special request..... What a little man I have...
Steve flies out tomorrow to florida for a week with work. It will be the longest he has been away since we moved here. It will be a hard week. It seems we have alot of things going on as well. It will be run run for me. We will make this night with the kids great and memorable to get us through the week. Gotta go get some grocery shopping in before Steve leaves so I wont have to go do it while he is gone. So i better be off. I am including some picts of austins test. I had a hard time with the camera so I apologize for the quality of the picts... If it is just showing words and asking for email and stuff just click the x in top right corner and it should start showing the pictures.....