We didn’t really know what we were getting into when we put our five-year-old on a swim team.
But we were too deep into it when we started hearing things like, “Warm up starts at 6:30am!” and “Every parent needs to volunteer!”
This, of course, would all have been manageable stuff if our oldest son was our only child or perhaps our youngest. But he’s not; he’s got a toddler and a baby brother coming up behind him. And taking this crew to practice every day for eight weeks plus to the extremely HOT and early swim meets on Saturdays has been a challenge, to say the least.
So let me bring you to one Saturday: an away meet. My husband is working and he brings our toddler to our friend’s house (bless those friends.) I keep the baby because he’s had a snotty nose and still doesn’t want anything other than breastmilk (directly from the source). We’re late, so we have to park maybe a half mile away from the pool. I forgot the stroller in the other car (MAJOR regrets.) My volunteer job is to be a “tent parent,” so I have to haul our heavy tent, two lawn chairs, a cooler bag of food, a diaper bag, a swim bag oh and my BABY all that way. It’s 7am but the air already feels like hot soup. My son is a star athlete but the best he can do is carry one lawn chair, and he complains about it every step of the way. >>imagine a side eye emoji here<<
As I’m scampering along the half mile stretch of road with my awkwardly shaped and stupidly heavy tent rolling behind me and sweat dripping from my face, I’m thinking to myself, you know what would make all of this better? If my son would just really SEE me right now and say, “Thank you, Mommy.”
He doesn’t have to, I know. You don’t sign up for parenthood expecting gratitude for much. But man, I feel like I’m pushing a boulder up Kilimanjaro just to get these three kids out the door every day. For HIM. These meets take everything out of me. A ‘thank you’ sure would lift my feet tomorrow.
But, he’s five. That thank you isn’t coming–not anytime soon at least. And probably not in the way that I desire it. Sure, he might thank me for letting him swim, but he likely will not see what a labor of love this has been for me, what a financial and schedule sacrifice this has been for our whole family until he is much older, maybe a parent himself, or maybe he’ll never get it.
Instead of a thank you, though, I get to watch him SHINE. I see him push himself further than either of us thought he could go. I get to see him master skills and build muscle and set his mind on goals. I get to see him achieve. He’s been winning ribbons, medals, and trophies; he gets praises from his coaches and high fives from his teammates. I get to hear him thank his Creator for making his body to accomplish such wonderful feats. I mean, all I really care about is the joy and the growth, but it’s all sweet to watch him experience.
Those achievements are his to glory in, but they’re really ours. Because YES, he’s a phenomenal swimmer. I can’t swim like him! But he couldn’t have gotten to where he’s at without this force of nature MOM behind him getting him to practice every day and running heavy tents down the street. Or without his dad working hard to cover the costs.
When he achieves, we achieve. That’s what makes it worth the work for me.
So I get it now, I get it so hard.
I used to roll my eyes when my parents talked about how they “got me” through college. No, you didn’t! I did that. I attended hundreds of hours of classes, pulled all-nighters, wrote 20-page papers, and passed those nerve-wrecking exams. Me. Not you. I worked my tail off–earning good grades and paychecks to get by.
But what I missed were these force of nature PARENTS who got me to that point. The ones who fed me and clothed me and rubbed my back when I had hard days. The ones who told me I could. The ones who worked hard to pay bills and hustled me from school to practice to jobs to scholarship competitions. The ones who couldn’t do exactly what I did but did everything else that I didn’t even know needed to be done.
I get it now.
I stand tall only because I had their shoulders to stand on. And sometimes, their legs grew weak. Sometimes, they nearly dropped me; I never felt it. Usually they felt so steady, I didn’t realize I was standing on shoulders at all. Watching me shine gave them the strength they needed to stand another day, to boost me further, to do a little more. Every accomplishment, every achievement in my life–I sure can thank them for.
So, as I continue to reel from and process through the blackhole of life that was SWIM SEASON, I’m thanking my parents liberally. Maybe you need to do some thanking today, too? Maybe you are really owed a thanks as well. Maybe that thanks won’t come for 27 years. Maybe it’s never really coming. We have to come to grips with it going in any direction, letting our kids’ joy be what feeds us, and draw from the gratitude we have in our hearts for who and Who has helped us every step of our way.
If you enjoyed this post, I think you may also like…
Leave a Reply