Toby made the baseball AllStar team this year.
Actually, he’s been on an AllStar team every year since he was 8. That first year we were practically forced to let him join. Up to that point we had not mentioned to anyone in our community that we had a child with catastrophic epilepsy. Though Trevy was at most of the games, because his seizures are not grand mal most people never even knew he was seizing through whole games. No one but our family. It was heart-breaking but we were committed to trying to live as “normally” as possible. We knew there would be times when loving Trevy would interfere with normal, but baseball was something that Toby passionately wanted. So we did the regular season. But there was NO way we were going to do post season play. That was where we had to draw our special needs family line. The coach persisted, though. He practically begged us until we finally had to tell him why we were insisting no. He was not to be deterred – and so he offered rides and whatever support we needed for Toby to be on the team. Coach Bob will always be one of our favorites.
Once your child tastes the awesome-ness of wearing a jersey with his name on the back…
Well, how could we ever say no again?
Oh, sure, every year we’ll tell him this is the last year. That’s it. We can’t do this anymore. It’s too much money. It’s too much time. Too much to ask of our family. Trevy isn’t getting any easier to care for.
And every Spring we cave.
The thing is…we’ve never even taken him to try-outs because we really mean it. We really believe that the last year was the last year.
And then whoever happens to be the AllStar coach of the season will find us on the sidelines and tell us when practices start. We’ll look at each other, sigh and know that we’re caving when we say he’ll be there.
I guess in a way it’s our one thing for Toby. The one thing we sacrifice to give him. For Bristel, it’s letting her paint my nails crazy glitter colors even though I have an IEP meeting later in the day. Glitter nails don’t give the “I’m serious” vibe I’m looking for. But it’s her thing. She loves to glitter me up. So I give that to her. For Trevy, it’s therapy and doctors appointments and researching meds and everything else (which is a lot) that goes into loving a special needs child.
For Toby…it’s Sports.
Part of the reason we cave is that the competition isn’t getting any less fierce. Even though Tobin has never been to a try-out, he’s not what you would call a top tier player. He’s solid but he’s not flashy. And at any point, he could lose his spot on the team. So we keep caving to yes because we’re thinking it will naturally end for him soon enough.
It hasn’t ended yet.
His first AllStar game is tonight. He’s a mess. He’s the kid that had canker soars when he was 2! Anxiety is his Achilles heel and he doesn’t handle it well.
Already this morning we’ve had fighting, tears, attitude. Like I said, he’s a mess.
He came to me, tears in eyes, saying he was just so stressed out about tonight. How he doesn’t want to be the one to make the mistake that loses the game. And so on.
He learned how to stay in his own ugly head from the best. I know that turmoil all too well. And I know what flows out of me when I let myself fester on the “what ifs”. So in a desire to help him reject the poison and dwell on the promises…I searched out Scripture on anxiety.
I found a WONDERFUL site with some really great tools! They have premade index box sized memory cards. How great is that?!
I printed them up for him and told him every time he felt himself getting anxious he should read through them. To try his best to push out the ugly and let the beautiful saturate his heart and mind instead.
He’ll be using them a lot today.
But guess who else will?
Hopefully, it’ll help my frame of mind for this afternoon’s IEP.
…danielle
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