My oldest loves soccer. He is blessed with the skills necessary to be who many would consider the most talented on the team, and sometimes the field. This year, he is playing in a new league with older guys and players from around the area who are involved in select teams. He has a coach who loves to build young boys into young men (in some ways, he reminds me of Perry Jones).
Watching him run down the ball, make incredible passes, take shots on goal and out sprint his opponents makes me proud to say I’m my kids dad. The fact that their season is thus far unblemished makes for long rides home in the car and negates some of the joy Aidan has for the great plays or the goals he scored. The season is, you see, unblemished with any wins.
I realize that no words I can share will take the sting out of defeat. I think back to my own, not so illustrious single-season career in high school wrestling. I wish I could have had a better than .500 average win-loss ratio. But each one of those losses (15, if I remember correctly) made the wins possible. It made them sweeter. It made them feel...earned. Winning is over-rated. I’ve learned my best stuff through defeat.
The Rev. Dan Smith, a 90 year-old plus southern preacher and delta blues musician, sang this on his last recording back in the 1990’s:
Take every knock as a boost
Make every stumbling block a stepping stone
Lift up your head and hold your own
Just keep going on
Without loss, we cannot see grace.
~KL
Saturday, October 27, 2007
It's The End of the World as We Know It...
Well Guys...
Thanks for the quick response from you all. I really am not sure what I intended this blog to be. I have most of yours, and have been encouraged and amused with seeing where your lives are right now and what kinds of things you are going through. So many times I would read about, say, Geoff’s rock-climbing adventures or Kevin & Tina’s adventures in parenthood and get a good dose of the warm fuzzies and reflect on how much I miss you all.
So, I really did not know what exactly I was supposed to use this for. It is open-ended. It might be deep, it might be shallow. I’m sure it may even be boring to you at times. I’ll try not to make it dull.
That said, I received a phone call this morning that pretty much gave me my first topic. My sister called to tell me (against my father’s wishes) that hospice care has been called to assist with my dad’s last days. Apparently the cancer has come back, and spread, and taken its toll. I say apparently because my dad and I don’t have much of a relationship. Actually, we don’t have any. I am not going to go into the nitty and the gritty, or toss accusations or defense-statements about why this is so. It just “is” the situation. And, to keep this short and avoid a misrepresentation of both my father and my own perspectives on both our distance and the silence between us, I will leave it this: I won’t be going back for any final last words or visits. This is not out of spite, nor any ill-will. It just is.
So. If you consider yourself a person of prayer, please drop a few for my mom and dad.
Sorry for the delay in posting my first “official” blog entry. As you can imagine, I’ve had a few things to sort through on the emotional level.
I guess I succeeded in avoiding dull for my first ever blog. But then that might be a matter of perspective.
~KL
Thanks for the quick response from you all. I really am not sure what I intended this blog to be. I have most of yours, and have been encouraged and amused with seeing where your lives are right now and what kinds of things you are going through. So many times I would read about, say, Geoff’s rock-climbing adventures or Kevin & Tina’s adventures in parenthood and get a good dose of the warm fuzzies and reflect on how much I miss you all.
So, I really did not know what exactly I was supposed to use this for. It is open-ended. It might be deep, it might be shallow. I’m sure it may even be boring to you at times. I’ll try not to make it dull.
That said, I received a phone call this morning that pretty much gave me my first topic. My sister called to tell me (against my father’s wishes) that hospice care has been called to assist with my dad’s last days. Apparently the cancer has come back, and spread, and taken its toll. I say apparently because my dad and I don’t have much of a relationship. Actually, we don’t have any. I am not going to go into the nitty and the gritty, or toss accusations or defense-statements about why this is so. It just “is” the situation. And, to keep this short and avoid a misrepresentation of both my father and my own perspectives on both our distance and the silence between us, I will leave it this: I won’t be going back for any final last words or visits. This is not out of spite, nor any ill-will. It just is.
So. If you consider yourself a person of prayer, please drop a few for my mom and dad.
Sorry for the delay in posting my first “official” blog entry. As you can imagine, I’ve had a few things to sort through on the emotional level.
I guess I succeeded in avoiding dull for my first ever blog. But then that might be a matter of perspective.
~KL
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)