Action, Grace, Hope, Human Dignity, Humility, Joy, Leadership, Life, Love

Going the Distance: On Heartbreak, Hope, and Love

My kids, ages 8 and 9 1/2, were registered to do their third Kids-Triathlon.

First Tri in 2014

Second Tri in 2015

And then three weeks before the race this year, my youngest, Max, broke his arm (for the second time in 8 months–this time while playing the-floor-is-lava).

He was disappointed that he couldn’t do the tri, but understood. There were tears, but Max has a positive, fun, jovial disposition. While others might sulk, he had a moment of sad, then moved on to joking and cheering… until the night before the race, when he started to cry. Overcome with disappointment, he cried, “I weally wanted to do this twiathlon…”

I had a choice: I could tell him to simply chin-up and deal with the consequences of his broken arm, I could join him in his devastation and call off his brother’s tri, or I could meet him with compassion and find a way to help him work through it.

It was heart-breaking. But Max embraced his role, cheering his brother and their friends on. We prayed. Others prayed, and he cheered his friends on. You never would have known Max was the least bit upset.

Alex, my oldest, started his race as expected: confident, nervous, excited.

His 100 yard breast stroke was steady through the cold waters of the freshly drawn pool.

He ran through transition with a double dimpled smile, blowing a kiss as he ran by.

He sped out of transition on his bike with confidence.

And we eagerly waited his return…

After a while I knew something was wrong; it was taking too long.

Finally Max spotted him off in the distance.

As Alex got closer, he was going too slow. My Mom-Spidey-Senses were going off and I ran towards him.

Tears streaming, Alex wailed that his chain had been broken for the whole, entire 3 mile bike. It had fallen off three times; a volunteer helped fix it the first two, but not the third time. So he had to walk/scoot it in, incredibly frustrating and costing him buckets of time.

Crying, he ran his bike through the end of the course, into transition.

Disappointed, Alex started his run strong… but the frustration overcame him and he began to just walk, crying.

Tingling Spidey-Mom-Senses, I see my son. He hasn’t given up. He’s discouraged, but he hasn’t given up.

All he can see is the failure. The failure to accomplish the bike as he knew he could.

He couldn’t see the tenacity. He couldn’t see the determination. He couldn’t see the strength.

He could only feel the pain and disappointment, which were real… which were huge.

I saw my son cross the finish line against all odds. But I couldn’t cry with pride, because he was simply devastated.

So I took him by the hand and walked him over to his coach. A multiple Ironman, multiple ultra-marathon (100 mile) finisher, who coached kids at the YMCA for free, just to share his love of the sport. A grandfather, who loves kids as much as he loves the sport… who is one of the best examples of coaching that this professional educator has ever witnessed in her life.

And this Ironman Coach Grandpa explains to Alex that his determination to finish–that he didn’t just give up–was one of the most inspirational things he had ever seen.

Still, Alex couldn’t understand. Still, Alex couldn’t comprehend. So Coach Grandpa asked if he could take a picture and post his story on Facebook. Because he was certain that there were other Triathletes that would find inspiration from this 9 year old.

We packed up and headed home. And I insisted that Alex read the comments on Coach Grandpa and my own Facebook posts. For some reason, when he started to read the comments of strangers who were moved by the fact that he still finished the race, things started to shift for him. “Wow.”

Why is it that we doubt the words of those who love us, but accept the words of those we don’t know?

Regardless, those words were heard. The affirmations of strangers were heard. The encouragement of his Coach was heard. And Alex started to look at his Triathlon in a new light.

Where he once saw failure, he started to see determination.

Where he once saw frustration, he started to see success.

And I finally let myself cry, but not for hurt, or pain, or disappointment. Rather for pride.

What may have been my son’s worst experience ever may have been the proudest Mom-moment of my life.

Because he finished.

Not because he won, but because he didn’t give up. He finished.

My son faced adversity, felt the full brunt of it, and said to himself, “I could quit, but it’s only another 1/2 mile. I can make it.”

And he did. He finished.

There are so many lessons I take from this experience.

From Max who at 8 years old allowed himself to feel intense disappointment, yet didn’t let it consume him… rather, he chose to cheer on his friends.
From Alex, my tenacious 9 1/2 year old, who didn’t give up.
From perfect strangers who not only found inspiration from Alex’s story, but who took the time to applaud his tenacity.
From a man who volunteers his time, talent, and treasure to help kids find success with and develop a love of his sport.
From my husband who sees the moments of real, in-the-trenches-mothering, applauds them, and captures them on film.

When Jesus said to love one another as I have loved you… this is what he meant. Yes, my kid did a great job at overcoming adversity, but he wouldn’t have been able to do it without you and me. When Jesus said “whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me,” this is part of that.

As a Mom, when I love my kid in his time of need, I’m being Christ to him. As a community, when you reach out to someone with encouragement and love, you’re being Christ to him. You are loving one another as Christ loved us.

This is it. Right here, right now. And we did it. He finished. And he’s proud because of you. So thank you.

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Read More Julie Dienno-Demarest Apr 24,2016

Action, Calling, Love

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Give Some Love

You know how timing is everything?

One night last week I was working on Sacrament prep with my younger son, Max. The lesson, “God Loves Us,” asked him to identify some of the ways different people in his life help and love him. Then, it asked him to identify some of the ways he offers help and love to others. It was a good, simple 2nd Grade exercise, but it didn’t make that explicit connection back to the lesson title. So we talked about it:

“Do you see what’s happening here? God expresses his love for us through other people. When you feel loved by someone, they’re helping God out by delivering that love. When you offer love and help to others, you’re helping God out by delivering that love. Sometimes God tugs on your heart and fills you with love, or care, or concern for someone… and you have a choice to either help God out and give some love or just ignore it. Did you know that’s how God works?”

Max scrunched up his face as he thought for a moment, and then smiled and said, “Well, I didn’t know it, but it makes a lot of sense.”

It turns out that our Sacrament prep conversation occurred on the evening of St. Teresa of Avila’s Feast Day. The prayer attributed to St. Teresa, “Christ Has No Body But Yours,” touches upon this theme of God relying upon us to help and love others.

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Making that connection between the idea of God’s love for us and our role in making that happen is important at any age.

Fast forward a couple of hours, and later that night, instead of making the kids’ lunches, I sat on the floor of my office and packed up 70 copies of Continuing the Journey to ship out to 35 different parishes in the Houston area. (Yay book sales!) So I went to bed promising to do lunches in the morning, even though I know that’s never a good idea. When I awoke with a viscous head cold, I decided to sleep in a little later, drop the kids at school, and then make and deliver those lunches by 11:30. Plenty of time!

Except before I went over to school, I stopped at the Post Office. Turns out it takes a lot longer to mail 35 packages than I expected. Turns out that I really should have either pre-paid or made an appointment.

All this to say that I was a little late in delivering the lunches… so late that I needed to walk them up to the boys’ classroom. When I entered, I saw that my 8 year old son, Alex was sitting next to his teacher (never a good sign), who tells me, “We’re working on calming down.”

I take one look at Alex’s face and see the swollen, puffy red splotches around his eyes. It was one of those “one-too-many-things-went-wrong” situations, but all he could focus on was this little plastic shoe lace lock thing that broke.

“Honey, I’m about to run some errands; do you want me to stop at Academy and pick you up a new shoe lace thing?”

A very sad, but relieved “Yeah…” came out.

“Actually, Alex, would you want to come with me?” (I look at his teacher and she nods in agreement.) “You could eat your lunch in the car, take some time to calm down, and you can come back to school later.”

“Okay.” And he put his little hand in mine as we walked out.

We have an expression in our male-dominated, engineer-brain, intense-personality house, which is simply “I need some love.” Whether a person is sad or frustrated or feeling down or lonely or simply feeling cuddley, “I need some love“ is a request that is always honored. It’s a stop-what-you’re-doing and be fully present to a full-body hug. Thus far it has also involved the boys crawling into my lap. This expression gets adapted to question form: “Do you need some love?” as well as a statement that accompanies a bear hug: “I just want to give you some love.”

So as we walked out of the school building towards the car, I picked him up into a bear hug so I could give him some love. We got into the car and pulled out of the parking lot.

“Alex, I want you to know that if you’re ever having a difficult day, it’s always ok to call me and tell me that you just need some love. I will always do my best to be there for you.”

This made him cry even more, so I pulled the car over, he climbed into the front seat, and I just gave him some more love.

“Aside from your shoe, can you tell me some of the other things that happened to make it such a frustrating day?”

Alex is not the most verbally expressive kid, so I only got a few garbled pieces in a very high pitched voice, but one tidbit stood out. When he had started to get emotional at school, one of the younger children in their mixed aged class called Alex a cry-baby, and then denied doing so when confronted. Alex was most upset by the injustice of it all: Together, the students had created, agreed to, and and signed a Class Constitution that explicitly stated they are to show compassion to one another (not make fun of each other).

He was too upset to talk about it any more, so I gave some love and we went about running errands, fixing shoe lace locks, and stopping by a Starbucks to pick up a kid-hot-chocolate (which is a super-small serving at a kid-friendly “warm-chocolate” temperature).

Later in the afternoon, I told him about why I was so late to drop off the lunches–it took a lot longer to mail 35 packages than I thought. But instead of the Post Office being a thorn, it turned out to be my rose. If it wasn’t for this unexpected delay, I wouldn’t have been so late in dropping off the lunches that I needed to walk into his classroom at that moment and see him. I wouldn’t have been there at exactly the right moment to give some love.

“You know Alex, last night when Max and I did Sacrament prep, we talked about something that relates to this. You know that God loves us, right? Well, the way God helps us experience that love is through one another. God knew you really needed some love today, so He took advantage of my delay and put me in the right place at the right time. God sent you love through me. God gave me the opportunity to love you, and of course I said yes!

That’s how God works. When someone is upset or in need of help (or could just use some love), God tugs at your heart and asks you to help. You have three choices:

You can ignore it, which kinda hurts God’s feelings.
You can be mean to the person, which really hurts God’s feelings.
Or you can give love, which really helps God out.

And that’s the thing that’s so upsetting about [your younger classmate]. He saw that you were upset and instead of offering love or compassion, he chose to be hurtful.

I hope that the next time you see someone who is upset, you’ll remember how important it is to offer love.”

The reality is that this dynamic of giving and needing love presents itself to us every day. Sometimes it’s obvious: your child is visibly upset and you have a unique opportunity to respond. Sometimes it’s more subtle: a friend crosses your mind while you shower and you find yourself suddenly filled with gratitude for their presence in your life.

It’s at these times–both the obvious and the subtle–that God is tugging on our hearts and asking us to help Him shower His people with love.

How do we respond to this tug? By ignoring it? By lashing out against it? Or by offering love?

Free hugs by Hien Nguyen licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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Read More Julie Dienno-Demarest Oct 21,2014

Human Dignity, Joy

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Daring to Try

I am amazed at the things I will do for my kids.

And I’m not talking about the maternal-instinct so-they-will-survive stuff (like sleep deprivation and all those things I blocked out of selective memory).

I’m talking about Daring to Try.

For my son’s 5th birthday, we had a dance party for 17 kids ages 3-8. Two months prior to Max’s birthday, we attended a cousin’s wedding, which is where we introduced my kids to the dance floor.

This would probably be a good time to mention that I really can’t dance. I try. I have fun. But to be honest, I’m not very good at it. I’m a big ball of uncoordinated, awkward self-consciousness.

But what I’ve come to understand about my kids is: They. Don’t. Care. They just want me. Having fun. With them.

I see the way my kids look at me with awe and love. It’s like they take my own awe and love of them, multiply it and thrust it back upon me.

My kids see me with God’s eyes. With God’s love. And with all my humanness, imperfections, and limitations, they still see awesomeness.

I have two choices here:

I can correct them: tell them why I’m not-quite-good-enough and effectively model self-doubt
Or I can make an effort. I can try. I can model humility and try, and try, and try again…

It’s not all that easy to try… In her book, Daring Greatly, Brené Brown explains how putting yourself out there requires quite a bit of vulnerability and courage. It doesn’t come naturally. It’s a choice. A choice I want my kids to make. So I force myself to model it.

So for Max’s 5th birthday, I gathered 2 hours of kid-friendly dance music, including lots of line dancing stuff apropos for weddings, and burned the playlist to a 2-cd set as the party favor. Then we cleared the furniture out of the living room, set up some dance lights, and effectively turned the living room into a dance floor.

That was the easy stuff. At a certain point, it became necessary to actually lead the line dances. In case I wasn’t clear on this, let me lay it out: I would rather have crawled under a rock and died than get up in front of people and lead the Electric Slide.

Except that’s not true. Not when I look into the eyes of my kids and see their joyful desire.

So I threw caution to the wind and I Dared to Try. And the kids Loved. It. Everyone had a blast. Including me.

There’s a post I found through Pinterest called “Waking Up Full of Awesome.” The author, Melissa, posts an appropriately absolutely awesome picture of her 5 year old and reflects on the phenomenon of how we once – when we were 5 – “woke up full of awesome.” And at some point most of us lose that.

I don’t want that for my boys. And I don’t want that for me. And neither does God.

I want them to see their awesomeness as clearly as I do. And I want to see my own awesomeness as clearly as they do.

Because that–with all that awesomeness–is how God sees me. So that’s where I’d like to be. For now, my next step is focusing on Daring to Try.

Dance! by Scott Robinson licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Read More Julie Dienno-Demarest Dec 30,2012

Just for Fun

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Silly Mommy

While I was working on the post on Dependency (I Need You To Need Me), my 3 1/2 yr old comes in to my office and spots my uber-sophisticated drawings of stick figures, which I was in the process of scanning. Max flips through them and asks, “Mommy, can I help you wif deese pictuwes?”

Sure, Sweat-Pea.

I had hoped he’d be content to play with Little People while I finished writing, but I quickly discovered that was not meant to be.

LOVE, I have discovered, is always rewarding, but not always convenient. Especially when it comes to kids.

Please allow me to “illustrate” (Or, rather, allow Max to illustrate):

“Look, Mommy, dese hafe yous favowite color gween. Dey has gween eyes AND a gween mowff! I made a mistake on the mouff of dat one and colowed it but it didn’t come off.”

“I gave dese ones blue eyes wike you and me. And smiles. Because they is happy. Wike us.”

“I gave dese guys wots and wots of eyes. Dey can see ev-wey-fing!”

“Dat is me, under da table. I is hiding. I pwaying hide and seek.”

“And dat is wots and wots of eyes! Dey can see even mowe of evewyfing!!”

So I guess unhealthy patterns of dependency isn’t the only “fing” to open ourselves to… Silly Mommy!

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Read More Julie Dienno-Demarest Aug 26,2011

Tag Archives: kids

Going the Distance: On Heartbreak, Hope, and Love

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Give Some Love

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Daring to Try

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Silly Mommy

LOVE, I have discovered, is always rewarding, but not always convenient. Especially when it comes to kids.

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