While reading an online article about handicap accessible cruise ships that aren't truly handicap accessible, it set my mind wandering about the very nature of our lives.
The ability to do for one's self and to be self-determinant in activity is a privilege and blessing that we totally take for granted. Even a cane added to the life of an otherwise normal person means 'slow down' in unmistakable language.
Sometimes it isn't handicaps of a physical nature that limit our scope. There are times the circumstances of the ebb and flow of our lives takes care of our accessibility to life fairly well.
It's hard to see the movement of everyone and everything around you and know that for whatever reason, that flow doesn't apply to you.
Frustration is a permanent issue then.
I remember when Jared was just a little shaver and we would devote hours of time to going to baseball practices, baseball games and baseball tournaments that Thomas was participating in while we sat elsewhere. At first, Jared enjoyed being out and about but then the sense of deep and painful frustration set in.
He wanted to play, too.
That wasn't possible then and, even with the Challenger league, it truly isn't possible now. He can't do for himself what he sees other players doing. Jared can't grip the bat by himself or take a couple of whacks at his cleats with the fat end of the bat. Jared can't take a well seasoned glove onto his hand and know that satisfying smack of catching a ball that could have gotten away - but it didn't.
There is no running of the bases and hugging up close to the bag as the defensive player sweeps you with his glove long after you have been called safe before the dust could completely settle.
Sometimes, there just isn't a substitute for living life as a 'normal person'. And that just sucks.
In those times where I am personally overcome by my own shallow and petty concerns of what I might be missing, I try to diligently remember that someone much more pure, worthy and most certainly more humble and gentle than I suffers under a much greater burden than I carry or ever will.
Not only does Jared see most of life from the sidelines and just watch the parade as it passes by him, he does so cheerfully.
I don't think I can honestly say that about myself in anything. I am a whiner by nature. I want things my way and I want them now, if not sooner. It is something that sickens me in my character and which I am trying to correct.
But Jared doesn't spend hours agonizing over things he can't control. He doesn't try to analyze all of the ramifications of why something didn't go his way. He accepts. And, when things become too stressful for him to absorb and deal with, he just takes a nap until the bedlam in his mind is quiet once again.
By contrast, I stew, fret, worry and generally make everyone around me miserable because I am miserable. Satan couldn't do a much better (or is that worse?) job of making everyone "feel my pain", real or imagined.
The sad reality of it all is that Jared's only need for patience is in putting up with the rest of us who are so filled with our own sense of what is important that we forget WHO is important.
I just hope that someday, when the situation is reversed, as I am all too afraid that it will be, that Jared is kinder than I have been.
He deserves so much more than I have given him. And he most certainly deserves to be called up from the bench to join the game of life while I sit and take a few of the splinters he has endured for so very long.
Just a few thoughts as I try to sort things out tonight.
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