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One of the Saddest Moments of My Childhood (or, My Conflicted Relationship With Sports)

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It was one of the saddest moments of my childhood, and it happened on a warm summer evening. I was laying on the sofa with my dad and we were watching baseball. He was tired from a long day at work and was drifting in and out of sleep. The air was muggy and warm. I don’t know where everyone else was in the house.

“When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?” I asked him, staring at his face, his closed eyes, his straight mouth. I probably thought he looked old. He was probably younger than I am now.

“Dad?” I asked again.

“Yeah?” he said in a sleepy voice.

“I said, ‘What did you want to be when you grew up’?”

“I always wanted to play baseball in the Major Leagues,” he said in a quiet voice. “I wanted to play center field.”

“Really?” I asked. The thought of my father wanting to do something other than what he was doing upended me, as if I was on a boat and someone had pulled down on one side. The world tilted on its axis.

He nodded, somewhere between being awake and sleeping.

“Yeah. Always baseball.”

* * * * *

I’ve been thinking about my own conflicted past when it comes to sports, especially now that I have children old enough to want to play in some of our local community leagues. On the one hand, I love sports. I feel like sports taught me a lot about myself, a lot about perseverance and teamwork and pushing beyond surface levels of comfort. When I had to run a five-minute mile or when I got benched or when I scored a goal – all of these things changed me, gave me insight.

On the other hand, I hate sports, especially what they have become these days. What happened to just showing up and playing and having fun? These days it seems like you can’t be a 12-year-old and just play a sport unless you’re striving to be on a travel team so that you can position yourself well for a club team so that you can get a scholarship to college so that you can play professionally and hey hold on a second what happened to just playing and having fun?

I’m realizing with my oldest son right now, I have two major pitfalls when it comes to him playing sports.

First of all, I want to guard him from any disappointment. I know what it felt like to be the star of the team, and I know what it felt like to get cut, and I hated the latter. I find myself heading him off at the pass, discouraging him in subtle ways from trying certain sports or activities because I don’t want him to experience the disappointment of rejection. That’s not okay. If there’s something he wants to do, I want him to try – the possibility of failure will always be there, and I want him to come to grips with that now, when he’s young. Fail and learn about yourself and try again and fail and learn more and  try again. That’s life.

Second of all, I take his performance way too personally. I went through some challenging times playing sports, especially in college, where I got upset about not playing as much as I thought I should. Now, when he gets pulled to the sideline, I feel my blood pressure rising. It’s like I’m back there again, getting pulled off the field, or on the sideline waiting to play. I have to separate my playing experience from his playing experience.

This article put things into perspective: The Only Six Words Parents Need to Say to their Kids About Sports (Or Any Other Performance).

Here’s the spoiler. The six words we need to say to our kids?

“I love to watch you play.”

* * * * *

On that summer night when I had the saddest realization, Dad fell asleep for good, and I was left staring at the television, watching Major League players live out their dream. I was heartbroken, because that’s exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, and to think that my dad had wanted it as badly as I wanted it and hadn’t made it…I felt so sad for him in that moment. I didn’t move. I stayed there and watched the rest of the game, his arm draped over me, his steady breathing like a metronome behind me.

I think we bond together in our common failures more than we do in our uncommon successes. Maybe that’s what I have to look forward to with my son, even in his failures. We’ll get through it together, and we’ll be closer because of it. We’ll walk off a field someday, or a court, or away from a recital, and he’ll know his time in that activity has come to an end, and I’ll remember that feeling, what it felt like when something I enjoyed was over.

Maybe that will be what bonds us together. I’m okay with that.

In the mean time, I’m going to encourage him to try the things he wants to try, and when he comes off the field my first words will not be suggestions for improvement or a list of things he needs to work on. I want to always say,

“I love to watch you play.”

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What It Feels Like To Wake Up

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She creeps into our room, wheezing, barely able to breathe, but she does not come to the bedside to complain. No, I had given strict orders the night before that mom needs her sleep so if you come to our room please curl up on the floor under the blankets provided. I wait a moment, but it sounds bad, her breathing, so I slip through the darkness and stretch out on the floor beside her.

I count her breaths. Forty per minute. Her heart is racing, her throat pulling in with all its might, but the air, it won’t go in. She struggled again and again to catch her breath.

“Are you okay?” I whisper in her ear.

She nods.

“Should we go outside to see if that helps your breathing?”

She nods.

I wrap her in a blanket and lift her, light as a blossom, and carry her down the stairs, out the front door and on to the porch that looks over James Street. It’s strange to be there in the middle of the night without any cars, without any people. The street lights shine steadily, the wind rises in a clatter of leaves and paper in the gutter, then dies down. It’s cold for a May night. We sit on the chair and I wonder where the time goes.

The cool air does not help like I hoped it would, like it did when she had the croup and we sat on the back deck in the dead of winter, our breath rising in one steaming cloud. The spring air does not help, so after five minutes or ten – it’s so hard to tell in the middle of the night, when sleep is heavy – I carry her back up to the room and soon it’s 6am and Maile is leaving for work and Abra is in the bed with me, sitting up, still struggling to catch her breath.

The urgent care clinic doesn’t open until 8 so we try to wait it out but I can see she is beginning to panic, such a slow drowning, so we get in the truck and Maile comes back from work and I drop the two of them off at the ER two blocks away. I watch Maile carry her in through the doors that open automatically, like a sea. I watch and I take a deep breath.

* * * * *

It’s always the breathing isn’t it? It all comes back to the rising and falling of a chest, the drawing in of air, the expanding of lungs. It’s the first sign of life when we’re born and the last thing to go. I remember when each of our five children was born, and we waited the agonizing second to hear their scream, their breathing. I remember when my grandmother was dying. Her eyes were closed, her body still, and yet the breathing went on. Sometimes she wouldn’t breathe for 30 seconds, 60, 90, then her lungs would open up one more time, sip it in, take only what was needed. She carried on for days that way, the bare minimum. Only breathing.

Life is in the breath.

I’m breathing again. It comes with waking up. My eyes are open again, and the air. Oh, the air! I take it in and look around, eyes wide, and it feels like I’m seeing the world for the first time in a long time. It feels like I’m in the middle of a new life.

Friends have asked me, Are you really going overseas? and I laugh. Not that I know of. Not yet. Not today. I don’t know where this new wakefulness will take us, what it will show us. But I do know that there’s an African-American man who lives across the street, a man I’ve waved to for the last year since we moved here. He’s a kind man, and he always waves back.

For the first time, yesterday, I walked across the street and offered him my hand, and he shook it.

“My name is Shawn,” I said, “and I see you over here all the time, but I don’t even know your name.”

He smiled.

“I’m Eric,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

This is what it looks like, to wake up.

This is what it feels like, to breathe again.

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The Boy Who Woke Up (or, How Ann Voskamp Ruined My Evening)

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Last night, I woke up.

Not literally. Maile and I had just left a graduation party for my wonderful sister where we stuffed ourselves with delicious food and arrived home with four fewer children than usual. My parents had graciously swept in and offered to keep the older four overnight, so the home we came back to was quieter than normal, less scattered. Normally, if we arrive home after eight o’clock, I’m shouting “Brush your teeth!” and “Get your pj’s on!” and “Sammy, seriously, brush your teeth!” Last night it was just silence, and there was a spirit of peace. I felt like I had walked into Saint James Episcopal Church, alone.

I opened the windows and put a fan in one of them. Cool, muggy air swept through the house, along with the sounds from James Street, the sound of cars swishing along wet roads, the sound of a world where rain had just fallen. It was a welcomed respite. A reprieve from this life that has somehow spiraled out of control lately with busy-ness and running here and there and chasing something, always chasing something crucial. I can’t always remember what we’re chasing, but we keep at it because that’s the Responsible thing to do.

Those things, that busy-ness, it will do to you what you least expect – it will put you to sleep. It will close your eyes to the things that are most important in the world. It will put you on a track of ever-shrinking concentric circles until all you’re doing is turning inside of yourself, like Gollum turning his ring over and over.

I sat on the sofa and sighed, tired from all the chasing. Maile took Leo upstairs and fed him, put him in his crib. She came downstairs in her pajamas and went to the kitchen for something to drink. Finally, a night where we could breathe. Watch a movie. Zone out.

I turned my eyes to my phone, as I tend to do these days in an ever-increasing search for distraction. It’s the cycle: Chase, Chase, Chase, Distract, Distract, Distract. Ann Voskamp posted something, something about those trying to survive ISIS, something with “Please read this!” attached, and because I was in distraction mode, I read it.

And it woke me up.

Please read it. Please read it in all its horrific detail, all its everything. I had tears in my eyes from the moment I started reading it until twelve hours later when I still didn’t know what to do and so I read it again. Maile and I sat in the living room and read parts out loud to each other and cried some more. Then we woke up this morning and, because the kids were still at my parents, we read it again.

I feel suddenly awake to the world. I want to do something to help, something, anything. I don’t know what. I hope I can figure out what to do before I go back to sleep again. I’m scared about that. I’m scared that the bills and the activity and the Busy-ness will put me back to sleep. I’m awake, for one screaming day, and it hurts, you know? We don’t create these little sleeps, these little distractions, for no reason – they anesthetize us, make us feel good, help us to forget. These activities and jobs and television shows keep the days spinning by, and soon the kids are in college and the house is paid off and we’re looking into retirement packages because we’ve worked so hard, you know, and now we deserve some rest.

But every once in a while you wake up and you feel it. You get a sense, such a small sense, of the pain the world is feeling, and it scorches you, moves straight for your heart, leaves you gasping. My initial reaction is to pull away from that pain, to drown myself in this chasing, this busy-ness. I want to fade away, to binge-watch a new show on Netflix or maybe one I’ve already seen. Breaking Bad was good the first time – I could probably get another three months’ worth of distraction out of that one. I want to focus on paying the bills, working a few more hours, getting the kids to their lessons and their grandparents’ house and keeping them distracted, too. Lord knows we don’t want our children to wake up. Heaven forbid.

Now that I’m awake, part of me wants to go back to sleep.

But not now. Now I’m awake, and I want to do something. I send out a message to everyone I know who works internationally, and that’s what I say. That’s what I try to shout. “I want to do something!”

But it came out as only a whisper. It turns out I haven’t used that voice for a long time. Too long. It’s dry and parched. I drink in Ann’s article again and I try to shout.

“I want to do something!”

And I wait.

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When You’re Self-Employed Without the Employed Part

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It feels like an in-between time, and I have to be honest: I’ve never been good at these. Give me the excitement of something new, just beginning. Give me the long, hard work that comes between the start and the end. Give me the ending, the sadness, the victory, whatever.

But this time between the ending of something and the beginning of something else? This stalled-out floating down held breath, I could do without it.

We sort of saw this coming from a little ways off, when all of my existing projects started ending. I’m still wrapping up a few things, but with nothing new in sight, life feels very stalled. You know? When you’re self-employed but the employed part is sort of waning, it gives you a lot of time to wonder.

What’s next?

* * * * *

We were supposed to be on a grand book tour right now, but because of the lack of projects we’ve had to really scale it back. My wonderful friends Kristin Potler and Andi Cumbo plus the folks at The Corner Coffee Shop, the Pequea Valley Library, and Aaron’s Books have hosted some great events for The Day the Angels Fell, and I’ll be hitting Albuquerque soon, plus maybe a few other cities. I’ll be doing a two-Sunday series for our church forum at St. James on April 26th and May 3rd.

But the main question still remains. How will we make a living in the coming months?

We’ve been here before, Maile and I. We know how it feels to tighten the belts, reign in the expenses, hunker down until the next spate of work arrives. We know what it’s like to get creative in order to make money. I recently started a bakery stand and Maile’s applied for a job at a local organic market. I actually don’t feel worried at all (that’s what worries me sometimes – my lack of concern). We know it’s time to settle into this strange place of trusting God, waiting, believing that things will come around, as they always do.

* * * * *

So what have I been up to in this time of waiting? Here’s a short list:

– Listed Building a Life Out of Words for free on Noisetrade Books and gave away 750 copies in exchange for email addresses.
– Reached the 1500-copies-sold mark for The Day the Angels Fell!
– Finished painting The Bookshelf.
– Finished writing the first draft of the sequel to The Day the Angels Fell (tune in Monday to help me narrow down the title options).
– Answered a few questions over at my Goodreads Author page.
– Dropped off more copies to sell at Aaron’s Books in Lititz, PA.
– Got my first 1-star review of The Day the Angels Fell (but then I looked at the person’s profile and they gave All the Light We Cannot See 2 stars, and that was a brilliant book, so I felt better).

* * * * *

I guess what I’m trying to say in way too many words is that even though life is a little hard right now, and things aren’t clear, and I sometimes feel stuck in between…life is still good. I look at my wife and my kids and this cool house we’ve got and the mini-garden we’re trying to grow and I think I’ve been given way more than I deserve, way more than I ever could have imagined. And I know the work will come in when the work comes in. And I know the money thing will be fine.

Seriously.

Take that into your weekend with you, if you can. Know that it will be okay. Whatever it is.

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When Asked If They Were “Beautiful” or “Average”, This is How Most Respond

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When I first saw the ad for this video on Facebook, I thought, Meh. It’s for a soap company. I’m sure it’s silly.

Yet the image was of a woman standing in front of two doors, one labeled “Beautiful” and the other labeled “Average.” The main reason I clicked on the video was because I had to know which door she chose.

But as I watched, I realized this commercial for Dove was getting at something very important, something that didn’t have anything to do with soap. The central premise revolves around a question we are confronted with every single day, and the way we answer it will determine a lot about our lives.

What do you think about yourself?

In this video, women were presented with a situation where they had to very publicly say what they thought about themselves and walk through the door they believed best defined them: either “Beautiful” or “Average.”

96% chose average.

Every day we’re asked similar questions, in different ways. Every day we have to decide if we are beautiful or average, intelligent or average, creative or average, handsome or average, funny or average, a talented writer or average. Beloved or average. Every day.

How do you answer?

Take three minutes and watch this video to see how these women answered the question.

Check out the look on the faces of those who finally label themselves as beautiful – I don’t know about you, but I see relief, joy, and a childlike giddiness.

And notice how many could only walk through the “Beautiful” door with the help of a friend…

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What I Did After My First One-Star Rating (or, Creating With the Right People in Mind)

coverroughWhen I first released my book, The Day the Angels Fell, I cringed whenever I visited the Amazon or Goodreads page, as if peeking my head out of the window and waiting for gunfire. I was scared. Had someone written a review that excoriated my book, my writing ability, my humanity? Had someone absolutely despised my storytelling? Had I screwed up the plot, the characterization?

Was I a terrible human being?

But as the first three months passed, and more copies sold, the good reviews began to pile up. Mostly four- and five-star reviews with a few three-stars thrown in for good measure. It was nice. It was comforting. I started to see the review section of these pages as a friendly place.

On March 23rd, 2015, everything changed.

Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that dramatic.

But that was when The Day the Angels Fell got its first one-star rating on Goodreads. I stared at the rating with some surprise, and a little shock, the way villains always look in the movies when they’ve been stabbed in the gut and they realize it was the fatal blow.

But I never thought I would die in this movie, their face seems to say. I thought I was the protagonist.

For a moment, just a moment, all those little voices started to amplify. You suck. Your writing sucks. You should really have been an economist. Or a taxidermist. Or something with regular pay, because, you know, your writing is terrible.

After you’ve created your art, whatever it is – a service, an idea, an interaction, a performance, a meeting – it’s done. What the audience does with it is out of your control.

If you focus your angst and emotion on the people who don’t get it, you’ve destroyed part of your soul and haven’t done a thing to improve your art. Your art, if you made it properly, wasn’t for them in the first place. Worse, the next time you make art, those nonbelievers will be the ones at the front of your mind.

– Seth Godin

My friend Jason shared that quote with me the other day, and it helped me to verbalize what I experienced after that one-star rating. Because moments after seeing it, I realized.

Who cares?

I gave that book everything I had at the moment, every ounce of writing skill, every precious idea and thought I had to offer. That was the best that I could do. And you know what?

A lot of people loved it. I get messages and texts and emails from folks who loved the book! Their kids loved it. I’ve had people ask me in depth questions about the book, questions about details so minor I didn’t have answers for them. People obviously cared, and I take immense pleasure and relief in that. The next book, the sequel to The Day the Angels Fell, will be for those people, and while I’m revising it, they will be the ones at the forefront of my mind.

Not the one-star reviewer.

But that is what the one-star rating did for me. It ushered me one more small step along the road to not caring what other people think, to writing the story that needs to be written, and to enjoying my work. One-star ratings help me to build really important artistic callouses, the kind that make my work easier over time, the kind that allow me to put in the hard work without feeling the sting of rejection after every sub-par review. Worry, anxiety, and self-doubt are terrible co-creators.

What are you creating?

Who are you listening to?

(If you’d like to leave a rating or review of the book, you can do that at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads…or all three. Thank you!)

* * * * *

This coming Sunday evening Caleb Wilde and I will be at the Corner Coffee Shop to  talk about the death-positive message behind The Day the Angels Fell, as well as how we talk about death with our own children. Kids are welcome! Check out the details HERE.