Are you enough without the gold?

In the last day I learned three important things that totally lifted my spirits.
1)The rest of my class also failed yesterday's exam, so at least I'm not the only stupid one.
2)Coffee makes the world go around. I don't know how I survived 5 days without it.
3)Last night I watched parts of 'cool runnings' with Alpha and learned something important. The Jamaican bobsled team was preparing for their Olympic run, and the night before their big race, the sled driver had a chat with the coach. He asked the coach why he had cheated, many years past, while competing. The coach said that even though he had already won a gold medal, winning was so important to him that he would do whatever it took to win another one, including cheating. He told him, if you're not enough without the gold, you'll never be enough with the gold. How will I know if I'm enough without the gold, coach? The driver asked. You'll know when you cross the finish line tomorrow, the coach told him. And the next day while on their run the bobsled crashed with the world watching. Instead of walking away in despair, that driver got up, and told his teammates they had to finish anyway, and they picked up that bobsled and carried it across the finish line. He was enough without the gold.
I thought about that last night while I studied for my microbiology exam today. Am I enough without the gold? Or does doing well matter so much to me, that I'll cheat, or spazz out, or give up, or become one of those obsessive-compulsive people that no-one wants to live with?
Isaiah 49:4- But I said, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”...Yet what is due me is in the Lord's hand, and my reward is with my God.

The coach was right, you know. I studied like a braniac most of the night and when I crossed the finish line this morning and found I also did badly on my microbiology exam, I thought, it's okay. I'm enough without the gold.
I'm sorry to be exposing my emotions like this to everyone. It's a hard lesson to learn. I have one more exam tomorrow and then I can lick my wounds for a few days before heading back to Antigua. But I want to share it with you because I think we are all on the same journey, just in different ways, and we can learn from each other and encourage each other. It's a glorious thing to fight for something and to win, but it's an even more amazing thing to fail at something and still have the grace to pick yourself up and keep going on.