My prayers escape as brief utterances - hardly a litany. However, I do pray to be saved .... from bad days, from scary thoughts, from stark memories, from myself. I pray for others - "God, they need you.."
My friend Sheryl asked me Sunday if Taylor and Wade had broken any bones. The list of what Taylor Renee broke in her short 20 years can fill your phone screen. She and I celebrated in middle school because she was injury free; however injuries filled her elementary and high school years. . As the text back and forth to Sheryl about the nuances of raising two kids continued, I related a story to her about Tay playing softball in elementary school.
Our high school softball coach has a daughter just a year younger than Taylor. So Taylor played for Coach Randall for a few years. In elementary school, Taylor was petite, but solid, and definitely competitive. She usually held the lead-off position in the batting order as she was a sure thing to get on base. Since she was so small, the opposing teams' pitchers had a hard time getting the ball in her strike zone. Nine times out of ten she walked, but on that tenth time she took are hard, fast-pitched softball to the hip, or the ribs or the back. Many times she iced red marks with the laces of a softball embedded in the center of them. She'd run down to first base and try to act mad if Coach Randall tried to check on her too much. Crying in public was just not something Taylor Renee did even that young. She was on base. She won; the pitcher lost; no need to cry about that - and there was no way she would give that pitcher any kind of satisfaction. Her fierce will would not be denied.
Lessons about leadership continue to challenge Wade as do lessons about learning - especially when he doesn''t value or like the methods being used. Since we don't run to rescue our children in life's little battles, we listen and ask questions. These challenges won't be his last, and as he has already learned, we can't fix everything. Tonight's question was, "Do you need to go talk to...."
"I already did," he said.
I try not to be the dude that didn't see the boat or recognize the boat as the "saving" part of the prayer.
Sheryl's text was random. Ya know, we were just comparing kids and stories and braces, but there's a lesson.
My kids stay in the box; even if they are gonna get hit by the pitch, they stay in the box.
I don't always praise God from the box in the midst of the storm, and I am not always [JUST] grateful for the 20 years Taylor loved on this earth. Much of the time I am angry, and when I am not angry, I am tremendously sad. Quite frankly, when I see her smiling face in a picture, I have no idea how 422 days have come and gone since this world held our Taylor Renee. Unless I am standing in the midst of Wade Garrett's life, I often find myself quite foreign to every surrounding and uncertain that I belong.
So I say this with all transparency, I wouldn't know a strike from a ball right now. There are days or moments when I don't care if I'm even ready to swing the bat. Nevertheless, I see the boat.
I'm just supposed to stay in the box.
"LET US HOLD UNSWERVINGLY TO THE HOPE WE PROFESS, FOR HE WHO PROMISED IS FAITHFUL." [even when we are not] insert mine. Hebrews 10:23
#golighttheworld
#bestrongandcourageous
#knw