For the Love of the Game???

My mama-bear instincts are at full throttle.  I’m feeling so sad for our Kate as she had such an amazing weekend of soccer and her team went all the way to the championship game by playing so, so well.  It even ended the way she would hope with her team winning a hard-fought match to win 2-1.  What didn’t go so well was the shove she took from behind from an opposing player with less than 10 minutes left in the game.  This type of behavior had gone all during the duration of the game and went unchecked.  If I said it once, I said it 10 times that I didn’t care who won that game, I was just praying we could walk away from it with none of our girls injured.  Fast forward the the last 10 minutes and Kate being shoved down…she went down hard on her knee and didn’t get up.  Naturally I was sick, praying she hadn’t hit her head.  She did get up, but she was wobbly.  She tried to play through it, but after just a couple minutes, she knew she couldn’t and she signaled her coach that she needed to be pulled out.  That’s when I knew it was bad.  When the game was over, she hobbled over and shared that it was her knee.  She said it popped when she went down and it just didn’t “feel right.”  We iced it for a bit as we drove the many miles home and sent her to bed with prayers that a restful night’s sleep would be all the healing she would need.  We weren’t so lucky.  An appointment at the Orthopedic Clinic today revealed that she does, indeed, have an ACL injury.  The extent of that injury remains to be seen.  We will know more once the doctor has read the results of the MRI and she is seen again on Thursday morning.  Whatever it is, she will be okay.  It will all be okay.  Life is so much more than soccer.  She is sad and we are sad for her at the thought of her missing out on something she loves so much.  It is such a shame.  But it is more than a shame.

We went through this a few short weeks ago with Nick with his wrist, and now here we are with Kate's knee.  Neither injury needed to happen...both were the result of dirty playing that went unchecked by officials on the field and that was supported by coaches on the sideline.  I am under no illusion that our kids do not run the risk of getting hurt when they choose to play sports.  That is reality.  And if they get hurt in the normal course of play, then we accept that as part of their path.  When they get hurt because someone has been taught not to follow the rules and plays with an utter lack of sportsmanship, then that is another story altogether.  I just feel sad about the state of athletics for our children anymore...so much pressure put on so many kids to win at all costs.  I refuse to believe that children would intentionally hurt other children for the sake of a win for them...but when they have been taught that they only have value if they win, they will do that in whatever fashion they need to.  It is so sad, and not just for the sake of the kids who get hurt….it is sad for the sake of the kids doing the hurting, too.  

I have to wonder how we got here.  How did we get to a place where our children’s endeavors became more about us and what WE want and less about them and WHO they are?  I spent the weekend listening to parents say some pretty horrible things…expecting perfection out of children, criticizing choices the girls were making on the field, screaming at the officials, shouting directions to the girls on the field.  It was actually more than I could take a few different times and I found myself strategically placing my chair at a distance from everyone, just to try to avoid hearing it all.  It’s not right…and it is happening more and more and more.  I have never understood people’s belief that they have the right to critique, condemn, and criticize kids who are playing sports.  How is it that all of these people, most of whom never played a minute of the sport they are evaluating, believe they have all the answers and anything less than total compliance with their vision of play is a failure and they then have the right to judge and shout?  And how is it that all of these people do not understand that when they do this, they send the message to their children that anything less than winning makes them a failure?  That’s what is happening to our children…they must cheat, they must play with no sportsmanship, and they must do whatever it takes.  All for the sake of the win.   I feel sorry for the girl who did this to my Kate, just like I feel sorry for the boy who hurt my Nick.  Because my kids got hurt but they had parents who told them it would be okay and that they are not what they do.  My guess is those other kids don’t have that.  And that is sad.  I’m praying for a revolution…something that causes us all to stop and take stock of the messages we are sending our kids.  Something that makes us rock back on our heels and realize that this is not how God intends for our children’s lives to be…they are not meant to be pushed this hard and they are not meant to have so  much expected of them.  They are meant to follow the path God has laid out for them, and I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news for all those parents, but God does not have a path of Olympic athleticism or professional sports careers in store for all these kids.  Not even a little bit.

Round Two

Well, I did it.  Sort of.  I survived round two of this whole sending-my-child-off-to-college thing.  I feel a bit shell-shocked at this point.  It doesn't actually seem possible that this is actually my life.  You see, I didn't mean to, but somewhere along the way, I began to take my identity as "mom" to my kids.  I saw myself as the person who took care of these little people who needed me.  When they were small, that meant feeding them, bathing them, reading to them, loving them.  As they got older, it meant feeding them (always feeding them), reminding them to shower, reminding them to read, driving them (DRIVING THEM) everywhere, and as always loving them.  But the thing that is significant to me is that no matter how busy they were, no matter how crazy my life was as I played taxi driver, chef, laundress, errand-runner, and more, they were always there.  Even if they weren't here, they were THERE.  I always knew where they were, always knew who they were with, always knew that at the end of the day, I could peek in their rooms and listen to their breaths as they slept, knowing they were safe and, as always, loving them.  But college changes that.  Now, I still feed her, but it is different...now I send care packages with her favorite tea, her favorite dried fruit, her favorite granola bars.  I still remind her to take care of herself, to do her homework, to be careful, but I do it over the phone or by text.  I would give anything to go back to driving her everywhere, but I can't.  Now, she has to take planes, buses, trains, and cabs to get to school.  I still love her fiercely, but I have to do it from a distance, and it is different.  It is certainly less trauma-inducing the second time around (I haven't found myself in full-on sob mode yet anyway), but the "different" is sad to me.  I have always been Megan's mom, Kate's mom, Jake's mom, Nick's mom, Emma's mom, and I certainly always will be, but the reality of what that means in my life is changing every day...I can feel it.  The universe is tipping in our house...just the simple fact that it was easier to send Megan off to school is one sign.  Sending two to high school this year is another.  Attending our LAST elementary school open house last week is another.  Finding our house quiet more and more often as all the kids are off at soccer practice, work, football practice, friends' houses...it's unsettling.  I want nothing more than for my children to be healthy, happy, strong, independent, and I pray every day that God will guide them and lead them and protect them.  I know He will, I know I've done what I can and will keep doing what I can for as long as the universe doesn't fall off its axis, but the tipping...it's hard.  I will probably never know myself more fully than I have as a mom, and I will never stop being their mom, but what that means every day in my life, and in theirs, is changing, and I would give anything to go back to the me that I knew 19 years ago when I held my tiny 5 pound baby girl in my arms...I'd tell that mom to hang on and to never forget that the universe will tip someday. To hang on to every breath, every second, to drink it all in and savor it.  To love that baby girl, to love the others that would come later, and to know that being their mom is an honor, a privilege, a gift...to know that the hard work and crazy busy will be so worth it, but it won't last...someday the workload will lighten and she will long to have it back.  I would tell her to love those kids fiercely every single day and to memorize the moments, and I would tell her that she will be blessed beyond measure for all the days of her life, simply because God chose her to be their mom.  I know these things now, but I didn't know them then, and so as the universe tips, I find new footing, I take deep breaths, and I drink it all in because this time, too, will slip away as I go through round three, round four, and more.  Life is good, but it is different, and I am learning to let go of the old and embrace the new...and to hang on.

The Faith of a Child

Last night, my heart stopped.  I don’t know for how long…time was unimportant to me.  We had just finished dinner and the kids were so excited about how beautiful the weather was, so Jake, Nick, and Emma decided to go for a bike ride.  We did the standard reminders to wear bike helmets and stay together, and off they went.  Awhile later, Jake came back inside, and I didn’t ask questions.  I assumed they were back from their ride and that Nick and Emma were playing on the driveway.  It turns out I was wrong.  

The front door was open, with the breeze coming in through the screen door to let fresh air in the house.  The next thing I knew, someone was banging on our front door and ringing the doorbell.  I could hear a woman’s voice, our neighbor, yelling as I was rushing to the door, “Your little girl fell on her bike!!  It’s really bad!!”  I took off running, rushing past her on the front stoop as she ran after me, saying something about her daughter seeing my little girl fall and that she hit her head pretty bad.  I paid no attention to her…her words just ran together to me as I raced to the corner where I could see my Emma lying in the street with Nick standing over her.  What I saw when I got there will never, ever leave my mind. 

 

I have never been so scared…my baby girl was covered in blood.  It was running into her eyes and down her cheeks.  She was crying and screaming, and Nick was sobbing.  Rob was right behind me (he had stopped to put his shoes on, which was a very good thing since he had to carry Emma home) and so he asked her some questions, and then scooped her up to run home with her.  We grabbed ice packs and washcloths and raced to the hospital.  The whole way there as I held her in the back seat, she was in a state of panic.  She kept asking me, “Why was I on my bike? What was I doing? I thought I was having a dream!” It scared her that she couldn’t remember, so she just kept chanting what she did remember…her name, where she goes to school, her birthday, the names of her sisters and brothers, the names of her friends.  I kept telling her it was fine, and she didn’t need to be scared…but I was scared.  I was more scared than I ever have been.  I kept telling myself to calm down, to trust God and just to pray.  But trying to keep my focus on that was so hard.  I kept giving in to the panic…kept feeling like I was drowning in fear.  As we spent the next 5 hours in the ER as they did x-rays and CT scans, cleaned and stitched her wounds, and dealt with her nausea and vomiting, fear kept taking hold.  Feeling anxious, I called on some of my girlfriends, begging for prayers for peace, for healing, and of gratitude that she was wearing her helmet.  I would love to say that once I did that, I was able to remain perfectly calm, but that wouldn’t be true.  It was still such a struggle for me. 

 

After what seemed like an eternity, they finally came in and told us the CT scan looked perfect and that our focus would now just be on healing the cuts and scrapes.  Emma perked up shortly after that, and started to remember things…she remembered that Nick took off to go around the block and she decided to go, too, but chose to go the opposite way and was going to “meet him halfway.”  I know my Emma, and my guess is she decided to beat him to the halfway point, and so was riding fast.  She remembers turning the corner (which was covered in gravel), but that is it.  Clearly, the loose gravel sucked her bicycle tire over and that is how the accident happened.  Poor Nicholas came around the corner and found her like that.  He was so upset, and so worried about her.  He is such an amazing big brother and stayed right with her while the neighbors came to get us.  I am so, so proud of how much my children love each other, and that was never clearer to me than last night.  From Nick’s devotion to her on the corner to Kate’s jump-into-action attitude, thinking to grab Emma’s American Girl magazine to distract her and running to get her water at the hospital or to get the nurse to help when Emma was getting sick, to Jake’s concern and compassion, and Megan’s panic when she learned of the accident and felt helpless being so far away and anxiously waited to be able to talk to Emma on the phone…those five little people of mine are amazing individually, and amazing together.  They love one another with a fierce devotion and they stick together, no matter what.  When the ER doctor came to tell us the CT scan showed nothing, he said, “Well, it didn’t show nothing.  It showed you have a brain.  I know how sisters can be, so I don’t want to give her something to give you a hard time about.”  My girls just stared blankly at him.  I said, “I bet your sister wouldn’t do that to you.”  Kate said, “Maybe the boys would,” and smiled at Emma.  Emma just looked at her and said, “Not about something like this.  They would tease me about other things, but they wouldn’t tease me about this.”  She’s so right.  She knows how much she is loved.  She knows how scared we all were.  And she knows that she is not alone.  What she really knows about not being alone, though, is the true lesson in this story for me. 

 

As I sat holding Emma’s hand after they had finished the stitches, she said, “Well, that sermon was really good for me today!  God really IS with us always, even in the pits!”  Wow.  Just wow.  My children teach me something every day.  Today, my Emma taught me to have faith.  To trust.  To believe.  Because He is, and He was, and He always will be with us, in the good and in the not-so-good.  “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28  And that is a very good thing. 

Busy

Busy.  The one-word answer to so many questions I get asked anymore.  

“How are you?”

“How are the kids?”

“How’s your hubby?”

“How was your weekend?”

“What does your week look like?”

The answer is always the same.  Busy.  How did we end up here?  Why are we always so busy?  I’ve made excuses for it for years, saying that it is because there are so many of us…of course we’re busy!  How could we not be as we try to juggle 7 different schedules?!?!?  And yet, something about that excuse doesn’t resonate well with me.  I think there is another answer.

We are busy because our world tells us we should be.  Everyone around us is busy doing this, running there…just busy.  Your kids will fall behind if they aren’t involved in activities by age five.  If they ever want to excel at an activity, they must do it, and do it big.  And early.  They should be on traveling teams, and they certainly should plan to play several sports in school, too.  They should go to camps, and clinics, and trainings.  They should go to organized workouts and they should have a trainer.  They should have private lessons and tutors and coaches for everything from piano to academics.  They should have voice coaches and acting coaches and music teachers.  They should have a staff, for crying out loud!  They are sure to miss out if they don’t.  

But, I have to wonder, have any of us stopped to ask the question, miss out on what?!?!?  What are our children going to miss out on if we buck this system and just say no?   What happens if we raise our children to believe there is more to life than being on the team, more to life than nailing the audition, more to life than being “the best?”  Because, have any of us ever stopped to think about the fact that we cannot ALL raise “the best?”  You see, the world of average has become a myth.  None of us want our child to be average, and so we have erased average.  We tell ALL our children they are the best, and if they aren’t, then they feel like the worst, but there is no middle.  No average.  We push our children’s teachers to award grades that they really didn’t earn because we ALL want 4.0 students.  We ALL want valedictorians and class presidents and all-star athletes.  We expect our children to be handed things, whether they deserve those things or not, because we just KNOW they will miss out if they are not.  But, still, the question remains, miss out on what?

The truth is, according to the NCAA, about 2% of high school athletes will be offered a college scholarship to play sports.  2%.  TWO percent.  That means, if a high school class of 250 has about 100 students playing high school sports across all possible sports, 2 will actually be offered a scholarship.  Two.  Is this what we think they will miss out on?  A 1 in 50 chance of being offered an athletic scholarship???  And, let’s just assume your child really IS the best, and they are 1 in 50 and are offered a college scholarship. What then?  They play college sports, risking injury that they will deal with for a lifetime, and when their four or five years are up, they have a college degree.  Just like many of their classmates who did not receive a scholarship offer.  Maybe or maybe not with less debt, but still…is this really the thing that we covet for our children?  Surely most of us don’t operate under an illusion that our children will end up being professional athletes, because those numbers are laughable, really.  Because of those two athletes that were offered a scholarship, less than one half of one of them have any chance of being drafted professionally.  I’m taking that one off the table as a possible reason for this insanity because I just have to believe we are all a little more realistic than that.

So, assuming our motivating factor is not an expectation that our child will become a professional athlete, or even that he/she will go to college on an athletic scholarship, what’s left?  What are we pushing so hard for?  Why do we think this rabid pace we push ourselves and our children at is a good thing?  What are we so afraid they will miss out on?

I have to wonder if it isn’t a combination of things really….some are wholly focused on recreating their own high school experience.  Many more are wholly focused on creating a DIFFERENT reality for their children than they themselves experienced, even if genetics suggest that if you were not a high school athlete, it is likely your child does not have the genetic makeup for that, either.  And still others are just caught up in the current.  Caught up in thinking that if everyone else is doing it, it must be the right thing to do, right?  I mean, that many people just can’t be wrong, can they?

And so it goes.  We continue to live our lives on this treadmill that seems to go faster and steeper and longer and higher every day.  We become obsessed with what we aren’t doing for our children that we should be doing.  What are we missing?  What more is there?  We obsess and we discuss and we plan.  We center our calendars, our schedules, our lives around our children’s activities and we think we are doing the right thing.  At the end of the day, though, I think we are wrong.  I think when we send the message to our children that their activities are worthy of centering our lives around, we elevate those activities to an importance that they should never have.  We tell our children, without any words, that their achievements hold more value than the substance of their character.  We place expectations on our children that they can never live up to and we leave them feeling incompetent, unworthy, and less than.  And when they don’t make the team, they don’t get the part, they don’t win the competition, they don’t get an A, they believe they have failed.  But really, it is we who have failed.  We have failed to do the one job that really should not be negotiable for any parent.  The job of raising our children to BE who God intended them to be.  The job of teaching our children that their value, their worth comes from the work they do to grow God’s kingdom.  The job of teaching our children that being given something you do not deserve simply because your parents travel in the right social circles or because it has been purchased for you through the right camp attendance or the private coach sessions does not make you a better person.  But standing up for what you know is right, standing up for those who cannot stand up for themselves, and being a shining light for Christ does.  That, my friends, is what we need to do…we need to BE that for our children.  Stand up for ourselves, stand up for our children, and BE a shining light for Christ as we make choices for our families and choices for our children that do not succumb to the pressures of this world, but that are driven by the direction of the One who knows what we really need.  It won’t be easy.  It won’t be something we can accomplish overnight, but I believe we can do it.  One family at a time, we can jump off the treadmill.  We can take back our lives.  And we can let our children know that being a winner does not matter.  Because it doesn’t.  But being a leader, a beacon, a light…that is everything.   In our house, we have worked hard to teach our children that the content of their character is what matters to us most, but we have fallen into many traps of over-scheduling and over-doing, and my prayer today is that those traps we have fallen into have not, and will not, overpower the message we have tried to send.  We believe in the worth of each of our children as a child of God above all else, and we need to work to mold our actions, our calendars, our priorities to match that belief.  Because at the end of the day, I have always said, and I truly believe, I am not raising Olympic athletes or Rhodes scholars.  I am raising human beings.  And if I do nothing else right in this world, I want to raise human beings who see ALL others as human beings worthy of love, respect, and honor.  That is all.