Happy Father's Day (2012)

Several decades ago the sports' community grimaced as I donned a tie-dyed t-shirt, laced up whatever athletic shoes I owned, and began dribbling a ball.  Thus began my dismal three year stint of playing middle school basketball.  There is no way to sugar coat it:  I was terrible.  The technical act of dribbling a ball while moving down a court was coordination far too advanced for my lanky, clumsy self.  Zone defense, man-on-man, setting a pick--these terms were lost on me and just couldn't replace my narrow view of basketball as one of awkwardly working the ball to the end of the court and chucking it somewhere in the vicinity of the basket.

Sadly, my team was no better.  We were a rag tag bunch of girls from a small parochial school who had been recruited mainly because our school wanted a girls' basketball team and we were the few who fell into the category of "girl".  Technically, the team was supposed to be comprised of seventh and eighth graders, but because our numbers were shy we enlisted the help of our fifth and sixth grade friends.  The combination of youth and inexperience, together with a large degree of unathleticism, rendered us winless for my entire career.  Wins: zero.  Win average: zero.  Talent:  not quite zero, but pretty darn close.

Found in the middle of this gaggle of ineptitude was our coach, who just so happened to be my dad.  I don't know why he decided to coach the girls' basketball team.  Very likely he was the only one willing to take on the challenge (humility?) of coaching a Lutheran middle school girls' team.  Perhaps he saw it as a chance to spend some time with his two oldest daughters, who were quickly slipping away into adolescence and all the comes with it.  Whatever the reason, our coach he became and our coach he remained.

And remain he did.  Through the musty old armory practices he remained.  Through the cheerlessness that losing over and over again brings he remained.  Through the petty eighth grade girl squabbles he remained.  Through the drills that we repeated over and over in practice only to be forgotten the second the referee's whistle blew he remained, yelling at us from the sidelines, throwing his hands in the air at the debacle that was occuring on the court, but remaining, always, throughout.

And despite the dolorous activity that was happening on the court, my dad could always be counted on to point out the positive.  "I saw some good playing out there."  "You guys showed great sportsmanship on the court today."  "We didn't lose by as much as we did the last time we played that team."  There weren't many highlights to be found in our Immanual team, but the ones that existed my dad always managed to uncover and lay bare for us to see, so that no matter how discouraged we were or how much we (ok, I) hated the sport of basketball, for my dad's sake we were always determined to get back on the court and give it our all, even if our all didn't amount to a whole lot. 

Because we were his daughters, my sister and I had the privilege of riding home with the coach following practice and games.  Mostly we'd sit in silence, listening to whatever classic rock was playing on the radio at the time.  Occasionally, however, my dad would use the time to flesh out what happened in practice or during the game.  Despite my total lack of basketball ability, my dad still believed in me and told me as much.  He expressed his confidence in me as a leader and reminded me to never give up.  He didn't get too involved with my adolescent life away from the court (and I really can't blame him), but I think he used basketball as a means to teach me lessons that could be applied to every day life.  I remember a particularly difficult period in eighth grade when school events left me questioning my worth as a person.  My dad took advantage of the quiet car ride before returning to the chaos that is life in a family of six to remind me to stay true to who I was, that I was valuable no matter what other people thought.  He followed up by giving me a big hug and telling me he loved me. 

He can still be counted on for those hugs and "I love you"s.

Dad, I've thanked you for many things (although probably not enough), but this time I want to thank you for being my basketball coach throughout those middle school years, for the time you spent in practices and at games, for the pride it cost you to coach such an unsuccessful team, for the patience it requires to bear with large numbers of hormonal pre-teens, and for the lessons and love you dished out along the way.  Along with being a #1 dad, you were definitely a #1 coach.

Be still

Be still, and know that I am God.

Be still?  I've been doing that quite a bit these days but lately I've been struggling with it, God.  You know me so you know things are going pretty well, but my tendency has always been to look to the next thing...

Be still, and know that I am God.

...like when my freaking hydrangeas are going to bloom.  Everyone else's have and although I give mine water and food and didn't overprune them and planted them in part shade, they just sit there with that outside ring of flowers while the inside cluster obstinately refuses to do anything which, now that you remind me, sounds a lot like my children...

Be still, and know that I am God.

...who aren't really listening to me these days, either.  The little one just looks at me when I tell him to do something and laughs and says that he's a baby dolphin which he might as well be because at least then I wouldn't have to deal with the problem of getting the child to poop IN THE POTTY and the big one continues to have his meltdowns and probably will  never learn to write or color in the lines like his teacher wants him to and there always seems to be some issue to deal with...

Be still, and know that I am God.

...but these issues pale in comparison to the problems others are facing, like the one whose husband is traveling all the time while she sits lonely at home with her toddler and newborn baby, or the one who is trying to keep the bitterness at bay because she just wants to have a baby and can't, or the one who just wants a husband but had all hopes of that dashed with last month's breakup, or the one whose family member's pain has turned out to be cancer and the only course of action is to make every day count from here on out, and I just want to help these people but there's so little I can do...

Be still, and know that I am God.

...which puts everything in perspective, of course, but I can't help thinking about THE INJURY and about how everything was finally feeling really good so I decided to go out for a spin on my bike, which was amazing but later on in the day I again felt THE INJURY so I have no choice but to wait some more and I know you've been teaching me a lot during this time but I'm getting really impatient and just want to go out and get MOVING, for goodness's sake--

BE STILL, AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD.  I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.  And don't forget: I, the Lord Almighty, am with you; I, the God of Jacob, am your fortress.

....

Dear Facebook

First off, I have to tell you that I am definitely a fan of yours.  I love the way you give me access to the lives of people I barely know, allowing me to know where they work, letting me see pictures of their children graduating preschool, teaching me that they do not think favorably of the latest referendum taking place in their state, which is likely miles and miles from my own.  I especially like the time you save me.  In a short, often witty sentence, you quickly catch me up on the details of my actual friends' lives, so that I can be all, "I saw on FB that you went to that new restaurant," thus saving me the pain of having long-winded conversations:  "Oh hey, how are you?  So what have you been up to?  Oh, how was date night?  What new restaurant?  How did you like it?"  Such tedium.  I think Entertainment Weekly summed it up best when it said, ""How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?"

So it causes me great pain to inform you that I am going to have to take a break from you, dear friend, and from the 333 friends, relatives, and other acquaintances I can spy on--I mean, "continuously stay in touch with wherever they are in the world!"  (Whew.  Thanks, Wikipedia!)  I know others have done the same, stating "I'm taking a break from FB" on their status and going MIA for a month or so.  Their reasons vary, but when pressed they'll tell me (through FB, I don't actually talk to most of these people in real life) that they just wanted to disconnect for a while, they didn't like the time FB took from them, or they wanted to live more intentionally.   I, on the other hand, am perfectly content answering your siren's call, oh wonderful social media tool. I don't think that ooccasionally checking my neighbor's status while ignoring my kids' pleas to play with them makes me a bad mother. And who among us hasn't checked FB while going to the bathroom? It's no different than reading a book on the toilet.

No, my break stems from something else entirely and has to do, of course, with THE INJURY.  As you may know, Facebook, summer is a good time for physical activity.  As the weather warms and the days grow longer, people venture outside and start moving.  They discover that moving makes them feel good.  Before long, they decide to move toward a goal, so they sign up for different athletic events:  5ks, triathlons, fun runs, marathons.  And then the postings begin.  "Look at me!  I just signed up for the such and such triathlon!"  Or, "I'm going to run the Mud Run!  Am I crazy or what?"  Or, "Here's a picture of me having just run my longest run ever!  It was awesome!"  Nothing whatsoever wrong with this.  I used to do the same thing myself.  Except that now, of course, I can't.  THE INJURY has disqualified me from training for any such races and I'm not going to get too many "likes" with posts like this: "Just took my dog for a really slow 30 minute walk.  Got to clean up his poop.  It was awesome!" 

So I am left to read about everyone else's pursuits.  And this is when Bitterness creeps in along with his close friend, Envy.  They make themselves comfortable in my heart as I am perusing you, Facebook.  And I get mad at my friends, who (let's be honest here, FB) aren't even my friends.  But some of them are, and instead of applauding their efforts and encouraging them, I am envying them and somehow holding them responsible for my inability to do the same things they are doing. 

After a while I am forced to ask myself if this sort of behavior is healthy, which, of course, it is not.  I feel lousy enough not being able to run or do anything else without having to deal with the ugly feelings that come about every time someone mentions physical activity.  1 Corinthians 13, the Bible's golden chapter on love, states that "Love does not envy, and is not easily angered."  Rather, "Love is patient and kind."  I know the kind thing would be to write something encouraging on my friends' statuses (surely this isn't the plural form of "status") and patiently wait for the day to come when I can join them, but right now I'm not there.  So it's easier for me to just walk away, to stop checking you, to--(gasp)--DELETE YOU FROM MY PHONE.  (No, silly, I am not going to delete my account.  I enjoy our relationship too much for such nonsense as that.)  In the meantime, I will pray for healing of THE INJURY and of my heart, will spend some more time playing with my kids, and will look for different reading material for the bathroom.