Sophia stands beside me as I lounge in the patio chair beneath the setting sun.
"So Dad, can I pleeease stay up to watch my show?" Blink, blink. Puppy dog eyes. Smile.
I let loose an exaggerated sigh. "Okay."
She turns to bolt away before I can change my mind. "Hold on a second!" I shout out to her. She freezes, then turns around. "Yah Dad?"
"First I need a kiss. Riiiiiight here," I say, pointing at my right cheek.
She smiles and her smile is a force. When she is older it will freeze people in their tracks, break some hearts and teach more than a few poor souls who dare to treat her lightly not to.
She bounces over like Tigger and, standing tippy-toe, stretches up to kiss me on my stubbly cheek. I look down and see that her toe knuckles are white with the effort. Then her little feet are scampering off again towards the back door.
"Hey!" I cry out.
She stops again, perplexed. "Yah?"
"My other cheek feels very sad that it didn't get a kiss too," I say.
She tries to hide her joy at being fawned over by rolling her eyes at me, but it's no use. Girlfriend loves the spotlight. So over she comes again and plants a wet one on the other cheek and, for good measure, kisses the back of my head too, her little arms wrapping around my neck from behind, her fingernails with chipped red nail polish looking like tiny berries.
"Thanks baby!" I exclaim.
"J-Welcome Dad," she giggles, double timing it to the back door before I can make another request.
Those of you who read this blog know that I joke that my daughter has a mild speech impediment. She loves to take words and make them her own. I can respect that. I'm good with "J-Welcome", "Biznaztics" and "How time is it?" for as long as I can have them, which won't be long now with kindergarten right around the corner.
I sip at my soda and wonder at this little person, about her life ahead, and that kindergarten teacher who will correct her to say "WHAT time is it?", and of her first prom and the first boy I will have to beat with my Steeler's helmet when he hurts her feelings someday. Ahhh life. Not unlike a windmill turning slowly on a sunny day; mostly noise with only a little motion and a lot of waiting.
Someday I will have to share her with the whole world. But not yet. Right now she's still all mine.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Dukes Up
I recently asked a man how things were going. "Taking a beating," he replied. His eyes were weary and the tone of his voice was sad. You could tell he was stirring a week's worth of worries into his first cup of coffee. I looked at him and smiled, "Sometimes all we can do is give it right back, punch for punch." He laughed. It was a good laugh. A "Yeah, I forgot about that part!" laugh.
Here's the thing about the "fight of life": you will not win it. None of us will. We all end up on our backs in the final round. That's not what matters.
What matters is how much you care. Like boxers who are outmatched in the ring, it's not about victory so much as it is about the size of the fight in them, the amount of heart they put into the effort and the relentlessness in which they come off the stool round after round after round. A winning boxer who hardly breaks a sweat never gets the cheers, it's the guy who breathing heavy around his mouthpiece, with fixed eyes and hunched shoulders, who circles and circles and occasionally lands a few punches and then...cracks a tiny grin. That's the guy we cheer for. That's why we all love the underdog; because deep down we know that he is us.
So as you face a new week, face another round, do so with your dukes up and your heart on your sleeve. And remember to grin, because God's in your corner. Always.
.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Limitations
Last night Anthony graduated from Cub Scouts. It was a special moment but bittersweet, as he had to face up to his decision not to bridge to Boy Scouts. One by one he watched his buddies go through the bridging ceremony and on to the next phase of scouting and the feeling of being left behind overwhelmed him.
It's tough being stuck between wanting to be included and yet not wanting to be accommodated for. I think this is especially true for those with special needs. It's not about being ungrateful for the love and effort that people all around you are putting in on your behalf to make you feel included in things, but rather more about wanting to be independent, self-sufficient and proud enough to stand on your own without the help.
What I tried to explain to my son was this: we all have limitations. I may be able to throw a football well but I am laughable on roller blades. I may be able to write but I cannot help him with his fifth grade math homework each night. He MAY never scale a mountain, or hike six miles to a fishing pond, or swim in a lake. That will all depend on two things initially: how hard he is willing to work on himself physically (stretching, yoga, swim lessons and the treadmill at the gym) and mentally (being willing to push himself beyond his fears of injury, wheel chair time at school or another surgery).
After that? What's left will depend on God, who makes us all, in outline form, sketches as it were, before allowing us to fill in all the details and colors of who we will be. In the Lord we must respect the boundaries of that initial sketch and trust in Him that we are drawn a certain way for a reason and for a purpose. There are innumerable examples of men and women who conquered their limitations. Einstein, Edison and DaVinci all overcame dyslexia. Keller was blind. Lincoln suffered his entire life with chronic depression. Newton, Dickens and Alexander the Great all struggled with epilepsy. Even one of the doctor's who helped bring Anthony into the world is handicapped and now runs the entire NICU at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, watching, like an angel, over all those at-risk babies and helping to shepherd them through their crisis.
Someday Anthony will see that, viewed in the proper way, every limitation is really just an opportunity of transcendence.
It's tough being stuck between wanting to be included and yet not wanting to be accommodated for. I think this is especially true for those with special needs. It's not about being ungrateful for the love and effort that people all around you are putting in on your behalf to make you feel included in things, but rather more about wanting to be independent, self-sufficient and proud enough to stand on your own without the help.
What I tried to explain to my son was this: we all have limitations. I may be able to throw a football well but I am laughable on roller blades. I may be able to write but I cannot help him with his fifth grade math homework each night. He MAY never scale a mountain, or hike six miles to a fishing pond, or swim in a lake. That will all depend on two things initially: how hard he is willing to work on himself physically (stretching, yoga, swim lessons and the treadmill at the gym) and mentally (being willing to push himself beyond his fears of injury, wheel chair time at school or another surgery).
After that? What's left will depend on God, who makes us all, in outline form, sketches as it were, before allowing us to fill in all the details and colors of who we will be. In the Lord we must respect the boundaries of that initial sketch and trust in Him that we are drawn a certain way for a reason and for a purpose. There are innumerable examples of men and women who conquered their limitations. Einstein, Edison and DaVinci all overcame dyslexia. Keller was blind. Lincoln suffered his entire life with chronic depression. Newton, Dickens and Alexander the Great all struggled with epilepsy. Even one of the doctor's who helped bring Anthony into the world is handicapped and now runs the entire NICU at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, watching, like an angel, over all those at-risk babies and helping to shepherd them through their crisis.
Someday Anthony will see that, viewed in the proper way, every limitation is really just an opportunity of transcendence.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The Calm, The Silence, The Roar
If you study each day very carefully you will notice that a pattern develops, a carefully crafted series of events that fall into one of three categories; the calm, the silence and the roar.
The calm is where you want to be. We all know the feeling, even if it is fleeting. We are at ease, free from fear and worry, not bothered by guilt or regret. You feel "right" somehow, as if your soul has managed to align itself with the universe. You are aware, but beyond the "bewares". It's a cool place, like the rocky shoreline beside a slow moving river on a spring day, when the currents in your mind are not unlike the eddies in the water before you; fluid.
Then there are moments of silence. These can break either way. They can lead to a place of calm but just as likely they can lead to a place of creeping unease. Many of us avoid silence because within it we think too much. Silence can provide us with a time of reflection or deflection. We choose. Choose wrong and the gears in our heads lock up. Even in the movies we are taught this "vibe". There's always the scene where one of the characters says, "It's quiet...too quiet."
The roar is the place you want to avoid. There is no calm there. No peace. This is where you do the forensic accounting of your life; debits to one side, credits to other. In this place your sole pursuit is the metric of pain. There is a reason why the Apostle Paul said the devil "prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1Peter 5:8). The evil that is out there wants to attack you, blot out your calm, fill your silence with pain and roar in your face.
In the calm moments remember to talk with God. In the silent moments? Seek Him. And in those moments that roar at you? Remember...nothing is louder than a prayer.
The calm is where you want to be. We all know the feeling, even if it is fleeting. We are at ease, free from fear and worry, not bothered by guilt or regret. You feel "right" somehow, as if your soul has managed to align itself with the universe. You are aware, but beyond the "bewares". It's a cool place, like the rocky shoreline beside a slow moving river on a spring day, when the currents in your mind are not unlike the eddies in the water before you; fluid.
Then there are moments of silence. These can break either way. They can lead to a place of calm but just as likely they can lead to a place of creeping unease. Many of us avoid silence because within it we think too much. Silence can provide us with a time of reflection or deflection. We choose. Choose wrong and the gears in our heads lock up. Even in the movies we are taught this "vibe". There's always the scene where one of the characters says, "It's quiet...too quiet."
The roar is the place you want to avoid. There is no calm there. No peace. This is where you do the forensic accounting of your life; debits to one side, credits to other. In this place your sole pursuit is the metric of pain. There is a reason why the Apostle Paul said the devil "prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour" (1Peter 5:8). The evil that is out there wants to attack you, blot out your calm, fill your silence with pain and roar in your face.
In the calm moments remember to talk with God. In the silent moments? Seek Him. And in those moments that roar at you? Remember...nothing is louder than a prayer.
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