The Flog – The Fabry Log

Snapshots from a Little League game. A pitcher aims at home plate. Hopes he won’t hit the batter. Prays it’s close to a strike. Just close, that’s all he wants.

My son has made it to first because the pitches were only close. Blue helmet. Plastic cleats. The ball hurtles toward the plate and Brandon is gone, pushing off first and running with the pent-up energy only 12-year olds know. Striding toward second. The catcher stands and rainbows the ball over the pitcher’s head. This young man with a mask and shin guards who has suffered the slings and arrows of a coach who has only seen what he’s done wrong. But now he is up and firing toward two outstretched gloves. Shortstop and second jockey for position in a competition for who will catch and tag.

My son slides between them and the ball skitters a few feet away, harmless as a kitten. He is safe. A little dirty, but safe. And he stands on second and surveys the view, brushing off his uniform.

The pitcher gets the ball and eyes home plate, more determined. Focused. He is so focused he does not see my son straying off second, walking slowly back to first. Walking like he had no right to be where he had been.

“What’s he doing?” a mother says behind me. She has lamented the frigid temperature, now in the 50s. She is from Chicago, but her blood has been conditioned by desert heat.

“I don’t know,” another mom says. “Maybe he thinks he’s out.”

My son gets half-way to first, then a look of terror strikes him as he hears a voice from his bench and he turns back as the pitcher delivers. My son scampers back to second and half of the crowd breathes a sigh of relief.

The game over, we walk to the car and talk intricacies of the past two-hours. The player hit by the pitch who had to go out of the game. The triple another teammate hit. The pitcher on the other team whose mechanics and hair looked like Tim Lincecum.

“Oh yeah, on that play where you stole second and then tried to steal first, what happened?”

A laugh. Cheeks flushed red to match his hat. "Don't bring that up again."

“But what happened?” I say. “This is all about learning from our mistakes.”

A long, winding story of what goes through a 12-year old’s mind spills from his lips. Standing on second he was unsure whether or not he was “safe.” Or if the ball had been tipped by the batter. Or if he had left first too soon.

“When you make it to second, you stand on the base and call time if you’re unsure about anything,” I said.

“But I heard someone say ‘Go back!’” he says. “I thought it was the umpire."

Many voices yell many things at many people on a baseball field. There are voices we think we hear that mix and mingle with what we hear inside.

“Go back!”

In this diamond of a metaphor, I saw myself straying off second, moving but backward, returning to the base I touched long ago. A voice, a siren, a fear, maybe guilt urges me to go where I’ve already been. It sounds real.

“You don’t deserve to be there. Go back.”

Your opponent wants you to retreat. He does not want you to stand on the base where you are and move forward. But your coach compels you home. He is urging you forward and telling you this is about learning from your mistakes and he is waving his arm so you won’t break stride. Listening to that voice is something you have to choose. Listening to that voice will help you be “safe” at home.

Just remember to slide if there’s a play at the plate.

This is the prayer, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, discussed on the program 10/8/2013 and taken from the book, Prayers for Today: A Yearlong Journey of Contemplative Prayer. The prayer is also credited to Rafael Merry del Val.

O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed, deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved, deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being praised, deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being preferred to others, deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being consulted, deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being approved, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being humiliated, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of suffering rebuke, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being criticized, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected, deliver me, Jesus.

That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.

Creating something from the heart is difficult. Letting it go is even more difficult because you know there are flaws and imperfections.

A month ago my story, Every Waking Moment, was sent into the world. The picture on the cover is a profile of Treha. Some have asked, “Is that one of your daughters?” No. I won’t reveal the identity of the cover model, but the image is one I associate now with the “girl in my head.” The creation I dreamed up over several months.

Treha is wounded. She’s marginalized. She’s not “seen,” and this is the hard thing of releasing anything you love. You long for it to be seen and there’s so much competition and glitz and glitter in the world to look at rather than a plain Jane, an ordinary, struggling young woman with an amazing gift.

In the story, two young filmmakers stumble onto her. They try to capture her story, so the tale is told in linear fashion, but with bits and pieces of the film thrown in. For some, this is jarring. It doesn’t make sense. Others get it immediately and simply jump into the flow of the story and the clues revealed by the older people in Treha’s life. Bits and pieces of their own lives that commingle with hers.

Treha, and the reader by extension, has many questions about life. Where did she come from? Why is she the way she is? What hope does she have for the future? This question of identity, if anyone will ever see the real Treha, is our own struggle, our own journey. And the characters that seem “normal” around her discover that they have these same questions as well.

How you answer the questions of life, how you choose to respond to the circumstances surrounding you, helps determine your path. And it helps if you find one or two people along the way who can put aside their own agenda and simply do life with you.

This is the hope Treha brings to each reader. It’s something I pray you’ll discover in your own life, in Every Waking Moment.