Article September 12, 2011 Issue

Race and reflect

By Jessica Clark

“Green means go!” That was the advice a fellow teammate jokingly gave me before my first race in an open-wheel race car called a Focus Midget. The only expectation I had that day was to have fun and drive the car back into the pits, safely. Mission accomplished!

Now, two years later, I’m 17 years old and race two different cars for two different teams. Besides the open-wheel Focus Midget, I race a full-bodied stock car called a Limited Late Model. As a member of a top professional driver development program in the US, there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on me. There’s pressure to find funding for what many have called the most expensive sport in the world, pressure to break down gender barriers in a male-dominated sport, and even pressure to become the first female national champion. I’m grateful that I can pray and look at things from a spiritual standpoint! 

In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy only used the word pressure once. She wrote: “Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate. They must renounce aggression, oppression and the pride of power” (p. 451). That statement is so powerful! 