Does he speak Spanish, do you speak Spanish to him, or does he understand you when speaking English? To which we began replying, no, do you speak Spanish to your 13 month old?
The second question would typically be, are you going to enroll him in soccer? Again to which we began replying, we don't know, are you or did you decide to enroll your child in soccer at 13 months?
The above responses generally resulted in that quizzical dog like look of head slightly tilted sideways and an expression that said, huh? Of course no one really meant anything by these innocent questions but they were pretty funny given E's age at the time and misplaced, yet somewhat funny, stereotypes.
Given E's inability to throw anything without hurting himself and continued view of anything coming toward his upper body, balls included, must be avoided, we decided to let him attempt futbol. So the first day of soccer for any of the Freeman children finally arrived for child number 4 and as you can see, he was certainly looking the part. This is one of those under 6 leagues where they simply "practice" for about 30 minutes before the real "game" each Sunday afternoon, just our speed. It's also the one sports league in our community where you finally get to see all of our international families show up in one place, it was great! If you want so see how many nationalities are actually in our community, show up for the kids soccer on Sunday, you'll be shocked by all of the countries represented. Anywho... All was well until it was time for E to actually play. He'd already practiced with his new friends and watched from the side as the first wave started off. This means he'd already received some basic instructions, met all of his teammates and the coach, and even watched for a while as to what the "real" action was supposed to look like.
Alright, it's E's turn for his wave of 4 or 5 to sub in. Here we go, watch out, the Guatemalan is on the field and ready... There's a phrase in college sports called the all american bus player, meaning getting off the bus a player looks like an all american but just doesn't produce to the all american level on the field. Well as you can see from E's pic, he was all american bus material! Shortly after (and I mean short, like 1 minute in) the first scrum for the ball enveloped E and quickly dispersed, to which he simply walked over to the sideline where we were standing and burst into tears and stated he wanted to go home. Well there was no way I was going to have drug everyone out there, waited, and watched, to have him stand there and bawl like that, no way! He was going to have to explain himself and get back in there. So when we were home about 10 minutes later (yes, we finally just left because he wouldn't stop crying and wouldn't even stop long enough to tell us what was actually wrong), I began to think how often do we as adults do this with God?
How often does God prepare us, get us ready, spend time training us to be ready for certain things, and then when it's time to come off the sideline we just stand there, lost, and eventually in defiance (and sometimes crying depending on who you are)? I know occasionally I'll just not even speak about why I'm not about to do what I think God has asked of me, just like E was standing there, crying, and not saying a word.
E did apologize to me later that afternoon and we hugged. He still has yet to verbalize what got him so out of whack, but he did say he's ready to go back this Sunday and give it another try. Yes, that's my non Spanish speaking, I can't run in a straight line, soccer playing Guatemalan boy!
What was the last thing you stood there and stared blankly at God about and didn't want to do it?
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