This weekend I had the opportunity to watch my nephew, Brady, play in the MAYB national basketball tournament in El Dorado. He will be in the 4th grade this fall.  Seeing Brady and his teammates play brought back a lot of memories of watching Dalton on the court.  To rub salt in the wound, there was a boy in the division that looked very similar to DD when he was that age.  Same build.  Same run.  Same style of play.  The hair was identical right down to the cowlick on the left side of his head.  Troy and I found ourselves mesmerized.  For a little while, I let my mind drift and I pretended I was watching him play again.  It is an invigorating and sickening feeling at the same time.

Due to some games going into overtime, the schedule was running a bit behind by Saturday afternoon.  Brady’s team sat patiently watching the heated game being played before their own.  I stood at one end of the court watching it while talking to my dad and grandpa.  Standing near us was presumably a father of one of the little boys on the court.  He had been pacing and screaming at his son’s 3rd grade team the whole first half.  His face was so red I wondered if his blood vessels had burst.  Halftime came and he motioned angrily for his kid to come over to him.  I watched as this grown man standing about 15 feet from me yelled inches away from the face of an 8 year old boy telling him he needed to learn what it meant to rebound.  The father’s hand motions were all over the place, poking the boy in the chest more than once.  The young boys face looked as though he had borne witness to his father’s tirade many times before.  The yelling went on for another couple seconds and then the father twisted him around abruptly and pushed him back towards the coach’s huddle.  I never stopped watching the boy’s dejected face.  Finally, when he saw his dad was no longer watching, he wiped away the tears that streaked down his flushed face in a hurry.  It made me feel desolate for the boy but fortunate that we weren’t that type of parent.  Don’t misunderstand, we are far from perfect.  But we never, ever did that to our kids.  Fear shouldn’t drive a child athlete to succeed.  It comes from within.  It is an inner strength that he or she must find on their own. Discipline has its place and time, but not like that.  I remember a baseball game that Dalton’s team needed to win badly.  After a series of very questionable calls, our fans started to get upset.  Several vocal ones were kicked out of the ballpark, my husband being one of them.  Troy had been angry that the ump was throwing all of the fans out of the ballpark for saying ANYTHING.  The coach decided to put Dalton on the mound to close the game.  I still remember DD’s face as he watched his dad leave.  He told his teammates before coming out of the dugout, “No one throws out my dad.”  Under pressure and knowing it was all on him to strike three batters out, he did just that. Before my very eyes, I saw that day what kind of determination it takes a kid to want to succeed.  I am not saying that I think anything less of the screaming parent.  I am just so thankful I wasn’t.  Most likely that parent hasn’t any idea what a parent like me would trade to get to simply look into the eyes of her son again.  Just once.

I will say that the tragedy of losing my son has made me keenly aware of what a bizarre world we live in.  We give courage awards to people who have decided to play God with their bodies.  I, myself, happen to think courage awards should go to people like my grandfather who made 124 combat missions in WWII in 1944-45 while serving in the United States Air Corps.  But what do I know?  He only put his life on the line flying over the dangerous 530 mile stretch of the Himalayan Mountains day after day in order to protect this little thing we call freedom.  But I guess trading in your track cleats for a new set of breasts trumps things like that today.  Or how about all the public outrage of the killing of the lion, Cecil?  I don’t like how the lion was killed in any way, shape, or form.  But where is the outrage over the selling of body parts of aborted babies by a company that has been accused of doing this for decades?  There is now proof for everyone to see this disgusting business, and yet the public outcry is grossly overshadowed by the lion lovers of the world.  News headlines like these make me confused.  You have to wonder if God sees all this and ever thinks maybe He should have reconsidered that whole “free will” gift we all received in the creation of the world.

Vince Lombardi once said, “The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the great things that endure.  These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.”  Man, I love that.  Let me be the first to second that perspective.