It was around the year 2.500 BC, that the Greeks devised sports festivals, in honor of Zeus, at the shrine of Olympia, which gave origin to the term Olympics.

The event was so important that it even interrupted the wars in progress.

The winner received a crown made of laurel or of olive leaves.

The first Olympiad of the Modern Era took place in 1896, in Athens, with the participation of fourteen countries.

The Olympics, which happen every four years, always record some remarkable fact.

It was no different at the 1984 event, in Los Angeles. For the first time, the marathon for women was included.

If the games prevailed by the organization and the opening ceremony, with parades and music performed with perfection by hundreds of participants, a woman attracted the glances of the whole world.

It is possible that a few remember who took Olympic gold medal in the women´s marathon. However, it is unforgettable the scene of the Swiss Gabriele Andersen Scheiss, arriving at the stadium, staggering, long after the winner was cheered.

Showing extreme weariness, looking bewildered, she did not run, she walked and with difficulty. She hung back and forth.

A thin woman, a strange figure in that way of walking, who was showing intense pain. Strange, but determined to achieve her purpose.

Outside the track, following her step by step, ready to support her, if she fell out, two judges.

They were there, but they could not interfere, because that would disqualify her.

The stadium went silent, before such an unusual scene. Then, with rhythmic clapping, as if to mark each step, it began to encourage Gabriele. She did not give up.

She finished the final hundred meters in five minutes and forty-four seconds and was in thirtieth-seventh place.

However, the ovation she received was enormous. When she took the last step, before falling over, she was helped by the monitors of the race.

She did not get any medals but she won the challenge she had set herself: to reach the end.

*    *    *

In life, as in the marathon, one purpose must move us: to conclude, to carry out the whole course, with honor, even if we arrive crippled, with pains in the body and in the soul.

We are all born and reborn to be winners. No one comes into the world to be a loser, to give up the fight.

Those who achieve this victory, those who pass the tests, who overcome them, even if they arrive tottering, they are called: completionist.

When, after physical death, they arrive at the spiritual world, they are cheered as Gabriele was, on that distant day of 1984.

Like her, in the final meters, we may be tired, with cramps in the soul from so many pains endured. By our side, vibrating, filling our good mood, our guardian angels, our spiritual friends.

They are there, ready to help us, if we succumb, but without directly interfering, because the merit of the defeated battle must be ours alone.

Let us think about it and just like Gabriele, let us not give up. Let us fight, let us persevere.

Let us think: if the pains are very intense, it is a sign that the end is near. Really close.

And the victory will belong to us.

Let us go. One more step. Let us be winners in the marathon of life.

Our loves expect that. The Heavenly Father is sure of that. Let us move on. Only one more step. Today. Now.

 Spiritist Moment Team.
September 30.2018.