Kim Anthony: My Story

For 18 or 19 years of my life up until that point, I was told that I was a mistake, I was treated like I was a mistake, and I had believed it. So now, here I am learning about this God who loves me and who created me on purpose for a purpose.

And I'm realizing that, you know what, my value is not based on my athletic accomplishments or anything else, the fact that God loves me and created me on purpose. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. Okay, Ann, I got a question.

I don't think I've ever asked you, and I have no idea what you're going to say, but I hope you say the right thing. And it's unrelated to anything, but of the toughest position in all sports, what would you say is the most difficult position to play? It could be a team sport. It could be an individual sport.

Hands down, gymnastics. No. Yes. No, I thought you were going to say quarterback. Way harder than any position in football, basketball.

I really thought you were going to give me some props and say it's good. There was an article, I read an article. It's the quarterback position. Yeah.

A couple of years ago, I read an article and that was the title. Toughest position in all of sport. It said, is it a goalie in hockey?

Is it a hitting a curve ball in a major league baseball? Is it... They concluded the toughest position, scariest position was quarterback because you're leading a team. You have to deal with the media. If you win, you're the greatest. If you lose, you're... And I remember sitting there and, you know, as a college quarterback, I'm like, yes. You know, it takes a man to play that. But here's why I ask you that. Because I think what you said has got to be scarier.

I cannot imagine. I think it's a woman gymnast on the balance beam. Oh, you're saying even I was going to say someone that competes in the all around because you have to be good in four different events. So, but yes, if you're going to the specific... Well, I've stood on a balance beam before and I'm like, there's no way you're flipping and landing on this, what, six inches? No.

Four inches. It's even better. Well, you might've heard that voice over there. Kim Anthony is with us today. And first of all, let me say welcome to Family Life Today, Kim. Thank you.

It's great to be here with you both. Our audience doesn't know this, but they're going to know now. You are a six time All-American woman gymnast at UCLA back in the day. Yes. So, you know, you've got to be thinking the balance beam or all around, right?

You agree with that. Ann was a gymnast as well. I'm sitting here with two women gymnasts. I mean, would you say it is one of the most difficult? I would think so.

Yes. Why? The sport in general is so dangerous.

Oh my goodness. You have to start when you're little, when you don't realize how dangerous it is. But gymnastics is a sport where even just being slightly off can cause severe injury. And people don't realize that.

A lot of people were talking about Simone Biles and what happened at the Olympics and how she needed to toughen it up. And I'm thinking, you know what? Do you realize this woman's life is in danger? She did the wisest thing she could by saying, you know what? I'm not ready. I need to step away. I don't think people realized how critical that was because it could have literally saved her life.

Yeah. Well, I once was preaching at church on a Sunday and I wanted to use a balance beam illustration, you know, type deal. And so I get a balance beam. They got me one and they put it in front of the stage, which is, you know, elevated about four or five feet. And in rehearsal, I walked out on this beam and I'm like, I can't do this.

So I had to move it right beside the stage so I could put one foot on the stage. I mean, I'm thinking how in the world did you women get on a four inch wide piece of wood and not just walk, flip, right? Well, Kim is pretty remarkable because she was also a four-time national champion.

Yeah. And I do have to ask you, didn't you win the all-around as a freshman in UCLA in the NCAA? I won floor exercise as a freshman. So I won a floor exercise three years in a row and I was injured my senior year.

So I didn't get to, so it would have been four years. Perhaps. And you've been inducted into the Hall of Fame at UCLA. That's remarkable.

Yes. And not only that, but you're married to an athlete as well. What do you think your husband Corwin, you've been married 30 years.

30 years. Would he say he's a football player? What sport would he say? He would say gymnastics. He would. He tells people to this day how he would come in and watch me train. And he said, I lost all respect for every other sport because gymnastics is wild. And I don't understand.

I've read your bio. I don't understand how you can be a six-time All-American if you're in college four or five years. Okay. Is it yearly or how does it work? I competed all around. So that's four events each year.

So you have an opportunity to earn four All-American titles each year. All right. Yes.

Okay. So that was years ago. We're talking UCLA.

I mean, it's not Ball State where I went, but you know, it's up there, you know. So walk us through your story a little bit. How did you end up there? Were you a gymnast your whole life?

Tell us about your family. How did, where did this all start? Well, gymnastics for me started when I was watching the 76 Olympics. Nadia was competing and I was sitting on the floor of my grandmother's house. And at the time we lived with my grandmother. Oftentimes we didn't have the ability to afford to live in our own place.

So we would live with family members, my mom and I. And I was watching Nadia and I said, Hey, I can do that. And so I went into the living room and started doing front flips, you know, landing on my back, knocking over tables and lamps and got sent outside and tried to take the pillows outside with me. But my grandmother's like, Oh no, no, no, you, you go out there. So I went outside to these brick sidewalks and started flipping around, taught myself several skills. My mother thought I was going to seriously injure myself. And then she took me to a rec class at a gym across town. So we had to take two buses to get there. And I get to this rec class and I see all of these mats and this equipment.

And it was like the heavens opened up, the angels started singing. And so I'm flipping around and I got to I got in trouble several times during, during this class, because when we were supposed to be on the low beam, I was on the high beam. When we're supposed to swing on the little low bar, I was climbing up on the high bar and the coach had to keep reprimanding me. So after the class was over, the coach calls me over and I, and I thought to myself, he's going to tell me to never come back.

I'm going to get in so much trouble. So I sheepishly walk over to him. And then he asked me, so where have you trained before? And I said, you know, I just flip outside of my grandma's house on the sidewalk, on the brick sidewalk.

And he says, well, show me what you've taught yourself. And so I started doing side aerials and just flipping around and he invited me to join the team that day. How old were you? I was nine, almost 10. Wow. So that's late in gymnastics.

Well, take us back. I mean, you said real quickly, you know, we lived in different houses and with different families. What was going on as you grew up and where did you grow up? I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and my mother was a teenager when she got pregnant with me. And one of the things, I don't know if you know this, but because she was living in poverty, her family was living in a two bedroom house, 10 to 13 people at a time.

And there wasn't enough room for another. And because of that situation of poverty, my mother was counseled to do a self-induced abortion to prevent me from being born into a set of dire circumstances. How old was she? She was 17.

I think she was 17 at the time. And she did what she was told. She tried. She tried several times. She tried because that advice came from someone she loved and respected. So she thought a self-induced abortion was the only way. And after several failed attempts, she refused to keep trying. And she told me that she really wanted to keep me, but she just didn't know what to do.

She was doing what she was told. How old were you when you found out that she tried? I don't think I knew until I was an adult, for sure.

And it could have been when I was writing my story, putting my story into a book form. By the way, we can mention that, Unfavorable Odds. And we have it here at Family Life today.

You can get it from our resource center. And you have a podcast with the Family Life Podcast Network, and that's called Unfavorable Odds. And so you interview people that really overcome and go through.

Anyway, that's something you can listen to. And I'm sitting here, we're looking at a person that overcame. Kim, I didn't know that about your story.

I mean, I look at you and think, look at all God has done in and through you. That's remarkable. Thank you. So did she end up having to leave that house and give birth to you?

How'd that go? So they allowed her to stay in the home. I was born, and even just, it was a struggle for me to get into this world, to enter into this world, because my mother had been hit by a car when she was little. She was like a five-year-old, was hit by a drunk driver, and that driver, the car dragged her down the street, and it crushed her pelvic bone. So when it came time for her to deliver me, the doctors ran into major complications, and they told her, either you are going to die or your child will not live, but one of you will not survive.

So they gave her a choice. And when I think about it, she was this teenage girl who had a second chance of opting out of motherhood. But instead of allowing the doctors to, you know, take the life of the child, she said, no, you do whatever you can to save my baby, even if it costs me my own life. So as she was giving birth, my head was caught beneath her pelvic bone. They thought they would have to break my neck in order to free me, which would, of course, cost my life. And then out of nowhere, this doctor, this other doctor comes in, and he believed that he could save us both, and that's exactly what he did. So a second time, my life was spared.

And I was born into this situation where my parents ended up getting married shortly after I was born. I gotta stop right there. I mean, who's this other doctor? Sounds like an angel.

I have no idea. I mean, God sent a man, or was it a man or a woman, came in and spared both your lives. And I'm thinking, a 17-year-old girl, you're in one of the most selfish stages of your life, basically. And she chooses life for you. That's remarkable. So your mom and your dad get married.

Yes. And things don't turn out so good. You know, it's not one of those happily ever after type stories. He was in the military, and he had experienced some difficult things, and he began to use drugs, and he became abusive. When I look into the eyes of my mother, I knew that I was loved, and she cherished me, and she told me she loved me. She was always there for me. But when it came to my father, I didn't feel like I had much value or worth in his eyes at all, because he would disappear for days and weeks on end, and there were times when he wouldn't show up for holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

And I never understood what was going on. But my mom and I just continued to live life, and we struggled. What was hard?

When you say you struggled, what were you struggling with? Life. Right now, I have so many things going through my mind. Yeah, I can see. And you're trying to hold back tears.

Yeah. My mom, as you just heard, as a 17-year-old, you know, just amazing woman. And she did everything she could to provide for me.

I remember this Christmas where I think I was in middle school. My father hadn't come home. He wasn't there, and she was sitting there all alone. And I walked in to celebrate, and she was always sad on Christmas.

It was a sad time for us. And it was because she knew that she couldn't provide for me the types of presents that a child would want. And this Christmas, she had these presents under the tree, and they were beautifully wrapped. And I sat across from her, and she passed me these presents. And I pulled back the wrapping paper and the tissue paper, and all I found in those boxes were small notes. And she had written on those notes what she would have gotten me if she had the money to do so.

Wow. Give us an example. Like what would one say? So I think I was maybe in seventh or eighth grade. So mainly I wanted clothing and shoes, things like that. So it would be jean jacket, denim skirt, or white blouse, or vest, things like that.

So I had these. So what would have been this major disaster in the eyes of any child or any mother, what we did was we sat on the floor, and we took all of these pieces of paper, and we matched outfits. And she said, okay, so we have all these outfits here, but you can wear this jacket with this pair of pants, and you can wear this shirt with this skirt, and we can switch it around, and you can go for two weeks without wearing the same outfit. So that was who my mother was, such a positive woman. And living and growing up in an environment where I was surrounded by drugs, financial hardships, she was so incredibly positive.

And I think, and I know it's because of her that I even had the courage to become a gymnast. That was your dad out of the picture? Did he eventually leave? He was in and out of the picture. They were married, divorced, and then they remarried. But even when they remarried, he was only around when it was convenient or when he wanted to be. And when he was around, depending on what mood he was in, it could be very difficult. How did you feel about that, Kim?

And what did that do to your own identity and self-esteem, having your dad in and out of your life? It felt as if I was being abandoned over and over and over again. So when he wasn't there, we could relax. We would exhale. We felt safe. We felt like we would be okay. But then we never knew when he was going to come back.

There was no warning. But when the keys would jingle at the door, I would go into a panic and I would hide because I didn't know who was going to walk in that door. So that feeling of, as soon as you feel like you can relax, but then, you know, he comes back again and then there's just stress. There's fear. You just don't know what's going to happen. I was afraid for my mother. It was just difficult. Did your mom ever say, no, you're not coming back in here.

You're not going to create this chaos or to just keep going? I can't say whether or not she ever said no, not in front of me. It could be that she said no, but that just wasn't happening. But I know that she finally stood up for herself.

Let me backtrack. We talked about this as I was writing my book because I wanted to know, I said, I want to make sure I'm writing what's correct and that I remember everything correctly. And so I'm talking through these things. And she, and I asked her, I was like, why didn't you leave this abusive relationship? And she said, Kimmy, I wanted you to grow up in a home with a mother and a father. She wanted so desperately for me to have this intact household that she put up with a lot of unfortunate and dangerous things. And I told her, I said, oh, I wish you would have talked to me about that.

I would have let you off the hook. But she was just amazing. And many people in that situation who are being abused, whether it's verbal, physical abuse, will not leave because of the fear. It's a scary thing.

And most people don't even report it. So she was one of those women. That was the trip from Virginia to California to go to college. Was that an escape at the time or? Gymnastics as a whole was an escape for me. That was the only place where I could be in control of what I was doing.

Flipping through the air, twisting, landing. And as difficult as the sport was, it wasn't as difficult as my home life was at the time. So going away to UCLA was... Which we need to add to, you were the first Black American gymnast that was ever offered a scholarship. Is that correct?

Yes. How did that feel? Well, I didn't know it at the time. I had no idea. I knew that I was in a sport where I was one of very few Black gymnasts. And I almost didn't go to UCLA because I was so tired of the sport. It had taken a lot out of me. We hear about how gymnasts have been treated and it was just difficult. And I didn't think I could go through another four years of that.

But I went off to UCLA and college gymnastics was quite different from club gymnastics. It was fun. We could laugh.

We could enjoy our time. It was an escape from my background, but I would still talk with my mother and get updates on what was going on. And I'll never forget the conversation that I had with her where she finally, since I was away, she felt the strength and the power to tell my father, no, this will not continue to go on as is. And he put her out of her apartment, our apartment that had her name on it. And she came home and found all of her things in the front yard. And she was the one struggling to pay the rent for that place. And I remember talking with her and Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the first person I saw.

She was someone at UCLA whom I admired. And I felt that she would be the only one who would understand because my teammates, they came from a totally different lifestyle and I wasn't comfortable sharing my background and what really went on at home with them. So I talked with Jackie and she just comforted me.

I can picture it this day. I was standing in the athletic department and just telling her about this and she was giving me the best comfort she could possibly give. So I escaped, but there was still this stuff hanging over my head.

When did or how did God become a part of your story? You're listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Kim Anthony on Family Life Today. We'll hear her answer in just a minute. But first, Father's Day is coming up this weekend.

You already knew that, though, right? I hope you did. Well, we want to send you a copy of Brian Laritza's book called The Dad Difference, the four most important gifts you can give your kids. It's our gift to you when you make a donation of any amount this week to support the work of Family Life Today. You can give securely online at familylifetoday.com or you can give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. That could be a one-time gift or a recurring monthly gift. Again, the number is 800F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

All right, now back to Kim Anthony and how God became a part of her story. I went back home to Virginia after my freshman year, and I was hanging out with some of my friends. And we were walking to a fast food place, and it was late at night, probably one in the morning. And there were some words exchanged between a group of guys I was with and some others, and it was over something very silly.

So we went up to the restaurant, and we were still standing outside. And I hear this person come up from behind me screaming and yelling. And I turned around to see what was going on. And when I did, I found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. And this angry young man behind the gun, he held it point blank to my head, was telling me that he was going to kill me that night.

And all of these things rushed through my mind. It didn't matter whether my father was coming home. It didn't matter whether he loved me or not.

It didn't matter that I had just won my first NCAA national championship title just a few months before. Everything that I had looked to to give me value was all of a sudden worth absolutely nothing. And by the grace of God, I walked away from that event unharmed. But I walked away thinking there has to be more to life than this.

You live, you die, and for what purpose? And it was that fall, probably just a month or so later, I met a young football player. And he sat me down, and he pulled out this little yellow booklet called The Four Spiritual Laws. And he shared with me that God loved me and had a plan for my life, and that there was more to life than what I had been experiencing. So I had never heard the gospel before. I had never heard that God cared about me. I was one of those people who I was really hoping that God was real, but I just wasn't sure that he was because the life I was seeing around me wasn't reflecting that.

So right then and there, he had no idea that my life had been threatened just, you know, a month or so before. But right then and there, I knew that's what I had been missing. So I prayed on the spot, and I asked Jesus to come into my heart, make me the person he wanted me to be. And I just surrendered my life to Christ, and my life slowly began to change. And it wasn't that the angels sang like they did in the gym, but I started to feel a bit different.

The things that I used to do, I started to no longer feel comfortable doing. As I began to read God's word and learn more about who he was, I also began to discover who I was, that I was not a mistake. So for 18 or 19 years of my life up until that point, I was told that I was a mistake.

I was treated like I was a mistake, and I had believed it. So now here I am learning about this God who loves me and who created me on purpose for a purpose. And I'm realizing that, you know what, my value is not based on my athletic accomplishments, my popularity, or anything else, but the fact that God loves me. And created me on purpose. Yeah, it's interesting to think, you know, as you said earlier, if you go back to your birth, you know, you can see there are signs that God had a plan for your life. And then you go into your life and you're like, it doesn't seem like he's here. And yet now in college you realize, you know, it's really, I think of Ephesians 2 10, you are God's, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he prepared beforehand.

We're sitting here looking at you like this story is remarkable. And the sad thing is we haven't heard the best part yet, you know, where you have to go on a journey to forgive your mom and dad. And I think we need to talk about that, you know, in our next episode. I was just gonna say, Dave, too, I think it's important for us all to remember and to know, just as you said, Kim, that God has a plan for you. Yes.

That he wanted you, that he saw you. Even when you can't see it. Sometimes we all get to that point where we wonder like, God, do you have a plan for me? Do you love me? Do you see me? And the answer to that is yes. Absolutely.

Yes. Keep looking, because there is a God who's pursuing you that has a plan for you and he loves you no matter what. That's David Ann Wilson with Kim Anthony on Family Life Today. You can find Kim Anthony's podcast called Unfavorable Odds wherever you get your podcasts. She talks with all kinds of people who have found their strength in Christ while going through really hard times. They're deep and inspiring conversations and you won't regret subscribing, so search for Unfavorable Odds or go to Family Life Today and find the Family Life podcast network in the menu. If you know anyone who needs to hear today's conversation, be sure to share it with them from wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, it'd really help us out if you'd rate and review us. And tomorrow, Dave and Ann Wilson are going to be talking again with Kim Anthony about finding her own walk with God apart from relying on a boyfriend. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you can join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.