The book
Embrace
the hit
There are no brakes on a skeleton sled. That turned out to be the least of what the sport had to teach me.
Kindle, paperback and hardcover, all on Amazon.
About the book
At twenty-six, I was making tea in a shared office kitchen in Manhattan when a stranger told me I had the perfect body type for skeleton. I had never heard of the sport.
Six months later I was face-down on a sled, chin an inch off the ice, going eighty miles an hour toward a wall, with a coach's voice in my head saying the same three words he said every run: embrace the hit.
I thought it was technique. Don't brace. Don't deflect. Take the wall and let it push you forward — because bracing is what breaks you, and there are no brakes on a skeleton sled. It took a split chin, a broken toe, and arms bruised black and blue before I understood he had described my whole life.
Embrace the Hit is the story of the runs I didn't get to choose. Adopted at two months old. A word I read as DIVISION on my parents' bed in fifth grade, and the years of believing the divorce was my fault. Being told to take my things and not come back — and winning a national essay contest the same afternoon. A miscarriage two days before Christmas. A lawsuit, two lost jobs, and a mortgage we couldn't pay, in the month my son was born.
I write as a Latter-day Saint, and the book is anchored in scripture and in my faith in Jesus Christ. It is not a book about how to avoid the wall. It is a book about what happens when you stop bracing against it.
Ten years in the writing. Nine chapters. For anyone who has been handed a run they didn't sign up for and is deciding, right now, how to take it.
Details
- Author: Courtney Spencer
- Chapters: Nine, plus preface, introduction, works cited and index
- Pages: 116
- ISBN: 979-8993077116
- Formats: Kindle ($9.99), paperback ($16.99) and hardcover ($24.99)
- Full title: Embrace the Hit: A memoir of faith, resilience, and grace in life’s hardest hits.
I showed up humbled and left motivated. I showed up unprepared and left inspired. I showed up alone and left supported.
Chapter One
Read chapter one
When Your Faith Has Holes in It
The Lord does not require perfect faith for us to have access to His perfect power. President Russell M. Nelson
There's no shortage of things we're asked to endure in this life: sickness, unfairness, careless words, financial strain, loneliness, silence where we hoped for connection, being misjudged or misunderstood… and at times, even opposition from those who treat us like enemies.
"Enduring" was always an interesting word to me when I read it in 2 Nephi 31:15, "Yea, the words of my Beloved are true and faithful. He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved."
Of all the things our Heavenly Father could have emphasized in that moment, He chose to stress endurance. Why?
Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, "First, because God has repeatedly said He would structure mortality to be a proving and testing experience."
Every one of us, in some form or another, comes face to face with the very trials that test what we believe and who we trust.
Enduring doesn't just mean surviving. It means allowing the hard things to draw us nearer to Christ. To embrace them and use them. When we take His yoke upon us, even in our small and personal ways, we begin to learn of Him, not just about Him. And it's in that process, step by step, that we start to become like Him.
— ✦ — Later in chapter one
I think back to when I first tried out for the Winter Olympic sport of Skeleton at age twenty-six. It had been years since my college lacrosse days at Baylor University, and I felt wildly out of my depth. But I marvel at how the Lord placed the right people in my path, at exactly the right time, to extend an opportunity to me that led to choices I never imagined I would make.
I was working at a WeWork on 28th and Park Avenue when, on a day like any other, I decided I needed a brain break. A hot cup of something always gave me the motivation to power through the rest of my work. So, I wandered into the shared kitchen to make a cup of lemon ginger tea.
As I waited for the water to boil, a woman approached me. Without introducing herself, she looked me straight in the eye and said confidently, "You have the perfect body type for Skeleton."
I blinked, unsure if she was even talking to me. I glanced around the room, but her eyes stayed locked on mine. "What is Skeleton?" I asked.
Instead of answering, she countered with a question of her own: "What sport do you play?"
I told her about my background, thirteen years of gymnastics, followed by track, lacrosse, and cheerleading in high school, and most recently, collegiate lacrosse. "These days, I mostly run and do yoga," I added.
When I returned to my desk, curiosity got the better of me. I Googled it and discovered skeleton is a Winter Olympic sport where athletes race face-first down an icy track, with their chin just inches from the ice, hitting speeds of 80–90 miles per hour, with no brakes.
And without overthinking, I signed up for a combine.
My first Skeleton combine was at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, NY. The drive up was breathtaking, snow-blanketed mountains under a bright cerulean sky. My nerves tangled with awe as I pulled in, wondering what I was about to face.
I felt wildly unprepared. That very morning, I'd scrambled through upstate New York to find track spikes, and the only pair I could get was a size too small. Meanwhile, other athletes arrived looking like professionals, in spandex layers, with Tiger Balm and extra spikes in hand. I was intimidated and out of place.
When the results were posted outside the cafeteria, I scanned the list. My eyes trailed all the way to the bottom.
Courtney Webb.
Dead last.
Humiliation washed over me. My shoulders slumped as I replayed every doubt in my mind: Who did I think I was? Showing up for a sport I'd never even heard of until days ago? Learning an Olympic sport in my late twenties? This was a mistake.
I sat alone in the cafeteria, staring at my mashed potatoes and secretly praying, asking the Lord why He had led me here only to leave me feeling like a failure.
And then the young woman from WeWork appeared.
Chapter one continues in the book.