We praise Him when we win, and we praise Him when we lose.

Small side note before we begin: This is my second year of Speech and Debate.  Now, moving on.

At the beginning of this competition season I really only had one goal, and that was to make it to Regionals in something.  With this is mind, I began preparation.  Over the summer I had read "Do Hard Things" and from this book came my inspiration for my next Persuasive speech.  I wrote the very first draft this summer in a speech and debate camp, and presented it there.  After getting a lot of good compliments and feedback on this speech I decided it was a keeper.  I competed with it in the first STOA tournament of the year in New Braunfels. I ended up placing 8th with it and this is when I knew that this.. was the speech for me. 

At the beginning of the new year we had the first NCFCA tournament.  Most commonly referred to as the Houston January Warm- Up.  Here I actually qualified for Regionals, and I was totally amazed and completely grateful.  To be honest, I thought my qualifying for Regionals would be much harder than this, so you can imagine my surprise.  Over the course of the next few tournaments I found that I continued being successful with my speech.  This is when I realized that this speech had been for a reason, the Lord had given me this initial idea for a reason.  I haven't gotten 1st place with it, 2nd place or even third place but that's not what I'm concerned with. The Lord helped me to achieve my goal, and that's all I asked for.  I know that there are people who need to hear it, and to be the person who gets to present it to them is incredible.  I feel so very blessed.

But I wasn't just gonna give up.  Yes, I had reached my goal but now I was going to try to make it in other things. More specifically,  original oratory.  I had an okay topic,  and I wanted to advance in this speech too.  Well before we continue let me just point out something to you, this will aid in understanding of the story as we continue.  I like to procrastinate.  Well I guess I shouldn't say like, because I don't like too, but I do have a terrible habit of doing so.  I would compete with my speech, and I would get a lot of great feedback and every time I would get soooo close to making it, but not quite.  I knew I needed to make some changes but I kept putting it off because, frankly, I just have a lot of stuff to do.  Now this is where it gets really stupid, I finally decided to work on it 3 days before the last qualifier of the year.  I realized that this tournament was my last chance with this speech and so I got to work.  This is the sad part.. I attempted to memorize it on the way there.  Now, let me just say that It was basically down.  Parts that I didn't know, well, I just acted like I did know them and no one suspected a thing.  But the last round,  I wanted to break so badly that I became really nervous, in turn making me totally blank out.  Fortunately I was able to get back on track and finish out strong.  But I knew that I wasn't gonna break now, there were a lot of OO's and although mine was not a bad speech there were probably other people who also had good speeches and also had them memorized!! I was upset over not breaking, but I can't say I was surprised.

Afterward, I really couldn't do anything but praise God.  This had been an amazing year and he had given me the strength and the perseverance to achieve my goal.  Not only did I qualify for Regionals, but I also qualified for STOA Nationals.  And that is amazing!  I can give no one credit but the Lord, He is awesome! And now I can't wait for regionals!