What Did You Sign Up For?

For Kim and Carol, and for my beautiful kids…

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ah, the cold winds of January – they can mean only one thing: baseball.  Yes, that’s right, in north Texas, baseball season is in full swing.  It never fails for some, either, that during these first few weeks, once all the roster-churning from the previous season is done, and once parents, coaches and kids have all shown up for those first few practices with overwrought expectations, reality sets in.   The kids my son is playing with are not nearly up to his skill level!  Wow, I’m really gonna have to coach these kids up!  Man, my coach is a hard-case and all he does is makes us run and yells at us!  Often, especially early in each season, the response is to start looking for that next team where the other players come close to your perceived talent level, that next guru to throw money at that will help your son get to that “next level,” that next great player to replace the one you ended up with that isn’t so talented and might require some real coaching. 

I’m very lucky.  I’ve reached a great place where I love the people my kids play for and with.  Similarly, I know that the above examples aren’t everyone’s experiences, and I also know that often some of these things are really true and produce an unproductive environment that probably is difficult to foresee.  But it seems to me that there is an excess of drama, for lack of a better term, each season that has a lot to do with out-of-whack expectations by parents, coaches and kids.  The declaration is made – “This is not what I signed up for!”

I love baseball, and Kelly loved baseball, and all my kids, even Ella (although she wouldn’t admit it), love baseball.  It has been an important part of our lives, and has helped to introduce us to many of our best friends.  We’ve been lucky to witness some pretty extraordinary moments of selfless devotion that had everything to do with ordinary everyday people and little to do with extraordinary baseball prowess.  But we’ve also sat through some pretty mediocre, and downright bad, performances on the field.  Through the years we’ve witnessed abhorrent behavior by coaches, kids, and most often parents.  I won’t generalize as to why this occurs so frequently other than to say that I think people just get frustrated over their own unrealistic, unmet expectations. 

Baseball lends itself to metaphor maybe more than any other team sport, although that may just be an old-fashioned American bias, or maybe just a personal one on my part.  But there is no doubt that athletic competition is in many ways a proxy for life, and the drama that we see unfolding in and around the playing fields, gyms, tracks, rinks and slopes tell us much about human nature, and most importantly, in my opinion, about that thing we call character.

Somewhere along the way, my kids have all been cut, failed to make the team, made the “C” team when they thought they’d make the “A” team, spent the better part of the season riding the pine as part of a right-field platoon, batted last in the order, and registered a “DNP” in the box score.  I’ve sat through tournaments and even better parts of seasons where wins were more elusive than seventy degree sunny days without wind.  It’s hard not to take these things personally, and it’s even harder to keep yourself from constantly getting in between your child and his disappointments.  Recent experiences in our lives, though, has taught us, - my kids and me - the difference between the fleeting happiness that so many think they are entitled to, and the true joy that comes from devoting yourself wholeheartedly to one another, and to shared purpose and goals.  Of course, you know who helped us to learn this – and I don’t mean through Kelly’s struggle with cancer so much as through her daily walk even before her illness. 

We all quit playing or get cut at some point.  For some, the end to their athletic careers simply comes sooner than for others.  But alas it comes, whether on our terms or no.  That next day, though, we have to get out of bed, go to work or to school, drive in traffic, clean the house, cook dinner, attend church, change diapers,– we have to do whatever it is that we do.  Disappointments abound, pleasure eludes us, and we often become jaded about our constantly unfulfilled expectations, just as in our former athletic pursuits. 

That’s it – the expectations.  It’s tricky.  We are taught the value of goals and aspirations by our parents, teachers, coaches, pastors, and employers.  We all have visions of how our lives are supposed to play out.  These things are normal, or more importantly, I think natural.  I believe we’re wired to see our existence as narrative, and narrative contains beginning and end.  There are heroes and villains, good deeds and evil, fall and redemption.  For many, though, and particularly for many of our kids, there are real expectations of fulfillment through pleasure and gain.  Success becomes defined by, and confined to, our own incremental, individual, and continual achievement to such a great degree that we assign our happiness to that achievement.  It’s not okay to work hard and fail – you’re supposed to be rewarded for hard work, right?

Well, I don’t know.  Often hard work immediately precedes failure.  Often random chance dictates that the perfectly placed bunt rolls foul, hitting the clod dug out by the cleat of the previous hitter – wrong place wrong time – and the subsequent strikeout is all that’s recorded in the scorebook.  Failure, not because we didn’t do what we’re supposed to, but because failure is part of the game.  In fact, failure so defined, in most games as in life, is often requisite for the success of others.  Similarly our wins are their losses.  The key is our unrealistic expectation of success and maybe as importantly our definition of success. 

In November and December, I found myself as I often have in my life, at the center of prayers and well-wishes.  That’s what happens when you have great friends and family.  And of course, as the holiday season neared, the frequency and intensity of those well-wishes grew.  Along with them, though, was the constant reminder from those friends and family of how tough things were going to be on me and the kids.  After a while, I noticed the prayers and well-wishes less and thought more of the impending difficulty, and ultimate disappointment, about to beset my family.  For the first time in my life, I dreaded the holiday season.

In early December, I met with our men’s small group from our church to have breakfast, and the conversation centered on the upcoming holidays and our “Scrooge Quotient.”  After we all went around the table and made the case for our varying degrees of excitement, dread or ambivalence towards Christmas, Gary, the leader of the group, made an interesting comment.  He said he would lead us in prayer, but wanted us each to pray especially about making this Christmas the best Christmas ever.  Now at this point I was literally startled about how low my bar had been set. 

I immediately was reminded of one of my all-time favorite movie scenes, and I’m guessing most of you have seen it.  Gene Kranz, played in Apollo 13 by Ed Harris, is the NASA flight director now in charge of not only an aborted lunar landing but what has essentially become a rescue operation.  Kranz, upon overhearing the NASA Director say that this is going to be the worst disaster NASA’s ever faced, jumps in: “With all due respect sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour!”  I get chills just typing that, and thinking about what kind of character it takes to say that with conviction under the circumstances.

I witnessed some terrible things during Kelly’s sickness.  I know a lot of you did – Kim and Carol, Grand and Papaw, Nana and Pops.  I know my children did.  She and I made a decision not to keep it from them.  We always believed that letting them experience disappointment, even grave tragedy, would better prepare them for lives that will inevitably be rife with further disappointment and heartbreak.  We wanted them to know that sacrifice was required of them in ministry to their mother and to each other, as it would be all along the road they would travel without her, and ultimately without me, and for a time maybe without one another.  We even agreed that they should bear her body to its gravesite.  And it has been the case, and will continue to be, that in those most difficult labors they find their greatest joy, and a real reason to be proud of themselves. 

There are some things impossible to convey, and some things I choose not to share but to keep close to my heart.  But I will let you know that in our last hours together I watched Kelly struggle with shame for what she needed others to do for her.  I will always cherish those moments when I was able to serve her, and told her as much then.  “This is what I signed up for!”  You must stop and realize that no matter where you’re headed, everything that has happened up to this moment in your life has converged into a present that is filled with opportunity to put your hands to work making a difference in service to others.  I admitted not long ago that I struggled with James’s directive to “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds….”  My wisdom and understanding is as incomplete as ever, but a little time and distance has afforded me perspective by which I can better appreciate the difference between fleeting pleasure and lasting joy. 

Before you catch yourself or your kids saying, “I didn’t sign up for this,” decide what it is you and they are signing up for.  Recite those wedding vows in your head the next time you get frustrated with your spouse during one of those “mid-life” moments.  I don’t know about you, but sickness, health and death were real in my marriage, even though they were the farthest thing from my mind on my wedding day.  Remind your kids that sooner or later it doesn’t matter how hard they work and how talented and smart they are, they’re going to fail or be disappointed, wronged, or cheated – in school, in sports, or in life in general.  And let them know that it’s not just for their own sake that they must get back up whenever they fall down but for the sake of their teammates, or their mother, or their brothers and sisters, or their friends.  Teach them that they must embrace disasters in their lives as offering the potential for their own finest hours.   Let them know that is what they signed up for.

Story

Break, break, break,

   On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

   The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman’s boy,

   That he shouts to his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

   That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

   To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

   And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

   At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

   Will never come back to me.

                              -Tennyson

I’ve wanted so badly to write of Kelly these last several weeks.  I still have my Muse, but, alas, I haven’t Lord Tennyson’s talents.  Nothing comes so close as these four stanzas to revealing the frustration – agony – that comes from “moving on.”  It’s often difficult to avoid resentment for the ease with which those around me go about the ordinary business of their daily lives, and all the while the sun rises and sets, waves crash against imperturbable rocks as they have always. 

But I see everywhere and in everything only reminders of Kelly.  In the faces of my children, objects lying around the house, photos on the walls, the clothes still hanging in the closet.  I find scraps of paper bearing her handwriting used as bookmarks in old books, their messages now unintelligible, just incomplete checklists from Saturdays past. 

I see the frosty toenail sliver of moon in the predawn eastern sky on an early morning jog.  I want so badly to tell her about it, knowing how she’d complain about the cold and the hour, but how much she’d love it because I loved it.  I want to tell her about the sunrise over the pond at our farm where Sam, Will, Bailey and I hunted ducks.  How that same evening Ben, Ella and I sat for hours in a deer blind, only to be foiled at the very last by dusk descending over a mesquite flat where finally the doe Ben was hunting emerged too late.  I know, too, that the kids want so badly to tell her themselves.  Such ordinary things become extraordinary, precisely because they become our story, and because that story has an enthusiastic audience, devouring every detail offered, and pulling ever more from us.  Then, for that audience and for ourselves, our story becomes an indelible part of who we are. 

So something profound disappears from us whenever we lose some part of that audience.  The significance we attach to things we experience can no longer be related as before.  Each becomes less significant in a way, or it has to be remembered precisely, stored away, awaiting a new audience.  My story was important to Kelly – in fact, my story was joined to her story, and some new and “other” story had begun.  Aside from the experiences we lived together, every new song I heard, every book I read, every new friend I made, every new place I travelled – all were made part of our story, just as each new thing she saw and experienced added another chapter.  So that longing for her is everywhere and in everything, utterly inescapable.

And I don’t want to escape from it – not yet.  I was mad with love for her and I’m mad with longing now, unsure whether to ask for healing or not.  I fear the dulling of the ache comes with a fading of the memories, and I’m ready for neither at the moment.  I love our story, as I know she did, and I’m not ready to write the end. 

On the contrary, I want to share our story, and “flesh out” that part of hers before it became ours.  Of course, there are parts of our story that must remain written only on my heart and hers, just as there are scenes from her story that lie hidden forever from us all.  I’ve thought often, though, about what my children and I, as well as Kelly’s own family and bosom friends, will miss from her story without her there to tell us.  I remember how acutely my grandmother, Mamaw Williams, in her old age could descry scenes from her own often distant past, relating tales I’d either forgotten or never heard before, in vivid detail.  And I am deeply saddened to think that Kelly, so often the central character in one ridiculous caper after another, will not be able to enliven the dinner table with remembrances from her past. 

So it has been my intention for some time now to reach out to her family and friends, particularly those friends from her childhood days before I knew her, in order to learn those details that would never otherwise emerge except from her self-deprecating recollections, now forever lost to us. 

One friend, from our Baylor days, reminded me of something I would surely never have remembered:  Allison was with Kelly immediately after delivering our firstborn, Will.  She remembers Kelly breaking down sobbing wondering what in the world was she going to do with a boy. 

Little did she know then that he was only the first of three boys, and even less did she understand at the time how perfect her instincts would be, and how she’d find herself eventually the envy and wonder of so many “boy moms” around her, as she parented seemingly without effort.  Of course, Will did lock her out of the house – twice – and both times the Frisco Fire Department was dispatched to gain entrance.  She took a pair of scissors to the seatbelt ($250 seatbelt!) in a brand new Expedition because one of them (can’t remember which one) had managed to wrap it around his neck and then lock it – all while she was in the drive-thru at a dry-cleaners.  She let Ben take a nosedive out of his baby carrier while in Target – precipitating a trip to the ER (that boy's still not right).  Seemingly without effort.

Not long after Kelly’s death, I received a letter from parents of a former student of Kelly’s.  They related how their daughter, devastated by the recent passing of her grandmother only days before school started (a victim of pancreatic cancer), showed up in tears for the first day of school.  Kelly instinctively embraced her, and along with Mrs. Cunningham helped her get through those first few days.  Later Kelly would volunteer to coach her cheerleading squad – one of two times she coached a championship team – and then later would help her with her high school drill team tryouts.  So great was her influence that this same girl, years later, would enter the teaching profession herself with Kelly as one of her inspirations, and so continues that same impact in other children’s lives like a great ripple, ever expanding.

These are the stories I and my kids need to be reminded of, or better yet, hear for the first time.  It’s not too late for them to become part of our story – all the memories woven into a patchwork to form a great and beautiful counterpane -  which will be an heirloom, a great inheritance for Will, Ben, Sam and Ella, and a fine comfort to me.

So I invite all who read this to share it with others who knew Kelly, and to share your stories with me and my children and with those closest to us.      

Please continue to pray for me and my children as we set off together in this brand new year.  Pray that we will find a way to keep Kelly’s story alive in our hearts and minds, even as we begin our own new story together without her. 

If you’d like to share a story about Kelly, you can email it to kellystewartstories@gmail.com.