Letter from Pyeongchang: Finding beauty in the Olympic struggle

Falling is not supposed to be beautiful. 

But there was something in the way that US national champions Chris Knierim and his wife Alexa Scimeca Knierim were skating their pairs long program that I found profoundly moving, despite the fact that they were clearly struggling.

I knew that just being here at the Olympics was a victory for them, after a long illness that left Alexa wondering if she would ever skate again – a comeback she said was made possible by turning her life over to God. But I didn’t know that as they were warming up, images from the Parkland shooting – which had occurred just hours earlier – were playing on the TV