be-musings

For a couple years Matthew played soccer. I've never really been into sports, but the team work and activity was the ambition. In retrospect it was smart to keep the expectations low.
Matthew was the team clown. He was one of those kids who would look the other way, talking to himself while the team had run to the opposite end of the field. It was hard to watch the play and my son at the same time. He really wasn't into running and chasing. Well, he did on occasion chase some of the other kids. Especially if they were girls, I think.
Matthew was a "hopper". He would take two running steps, then hop vertically for the third. His arms would wave up at his sides a bit as he did the third movement. He loved it. I would cover my eyes from time to time. At first I thought there was something physically wrong with his hips, and talked about taking him to a physiotherapist. There must have been something wrong inside his body that made it uncomfortable to run "normally". That was until a man with a child in soccer said "Oh, so Matthew is your team's hopper". I realized from that comment that in every group there are all types of people (yeah duh) and that those people types are repeated in different groups. In other words, my son wasn't unique or weird. There were many others like him...just not on his team.
When Matthew was a baby, I hung out with two other moms. We had known each other for a few years, and our babies were the same age. During those first two years we clung to every the children did or said or ate or pooped out. We compared notes. We tried to "figure out" the kids. We each thought our child was a genius in some area - or many areas. We read the "What to Expect" books so we could be on task with the next kind of food to introduce, the next thing to teach. I was strict about some stuff. When the book said the baby should come off the bottle at year, I had an action plan with strategy that started a week or two ahead, to get him weaned by his first birthday. The book said it, so I had to make the deadline or it would be detrimental to Matthew. Somehow his teeth would rot at 1 year and 1 day or some other ridiculous thing. I don't remember what was going to happen, but it wouldn't have been good. Maybe some sick codependency on the bottle would corrupt his pure heart.
I have now realized that Matthew, though exceptional in his own areas, is "normal". Don't laugh too hard, if you know him. Some days he seems more extra-terrestrial than normal. He is no more brilliant than the other children in his class. He has areas of giftedness, but he is not a genius. Yet, I still think he is amazing.
God watches us grow from infanthood to toddlerhood to adolescence. Physically and spiritually. He knows us all, and he realizes that we are none more brilliant than the other. But as our dad, he brags about each of us because he thinks we, as individuals and as a fmaily, are amazing. He doesn't have too many kids to keep straight, because he never sleeps! He doesn't get confused like we do.
I can picture God watching over the soccer game, as Matthew hip hopped across the field. Maybe he would shake his head or maybe not. I picture him laughing at my paranoia and thinking "one day she'll understand that I made him like this because that's what she needed. She needed the humility and the protective drive and the laughter and the reminders that she doesn't have all the answers...and the incredulity that such a small person can teach her so much."
Of course, at the time all she can see is the ball coming to hit him in the head...