A Winner's Wounding Words

"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me."
author, a big fat liar


OK.

So as we know from my booger post, it's baseball season and Ando had a game last night. Aside from the fact that it ended an hour and a half past his bedtime and everyone involved was exhausted and freezing, his team lost. It's wasn't a huge deal, as everyone needs to experience losses in life (and Matt & I are not considered the most competitive parents on the bleachers) but last night we suffered through a wound of a different kind.

When Ando got up to bat, his team was down 11 to 2 and everyone knew it was the last inning. He was on deck by the other team's dug-out, and a kid on that team yelled to him through the fence, "You're a loser. You're the reason your team has ALREADY lost this game. LOSER!! You're gonna strike out." And that is exactly what he did. He struck out.

So he fought back tears all the way home (which is actually only about a 30 sec drive, but"all the way home" is for dramatic effect). I was smack dab in the middle of an "everyone loses some and wins some" speech when he spoke up and told me about that kid and what he said. He looked up at me with big tears in his eyes and said, "When he said that mom, my chest started hurting and I couldn't concentrate. It still hurts."

My first thought was, "Man, this kid is a feeler!"

And then I swear to you, all I could envision was rolling up my sleeves and fighting that kid's mother in defense of my child's feelings. And I wanted to whip his butt and give him a big wedgie and hang him from the nearest tree limb by his undies, so he could feel the shame that he was inflicting on my son. But while those evil sugar plums were dancing in my head, my teary-eyed child was looking at me waiting for a response...some assurance that he wasn't the reason his team lost... a reason for such hatred from that kid. He was so wounded by those words.

It was a good time for a great talk about a hard world. And Matt is so much better at it than me. He held him and talked to him about Jesus and how people were hateful to Him too. He told him how much he reminds him of Jesus sometimes. He told him he was proud of him and he was sorry that his feelings were hurt, and that those words would have hurt him too.

I, on the other hand, hold him and tell him what a jerk that kid is and that he's a rotten soul who lets evil speak right through him into other's lives and how he should be spanked and hung from a tree by a giant wedgie. Oh wait... those weren't my words... those were my thoughts. (Evil sugar plums still dancin' up there).

So in the end, there was much huggin' and kissin' on that boy and some solid assurance that the loss did not lie solely on his shoulders, and he finally drifted off to dreamland.

The one thing I couldn't take away though, was the sting of those words. Even if just a little bit, it changed him. It wounded him. It makes me sad how much he's going to hurt growing up in this world. I wish I could protect him from it and fight off everyone from every side. But that's not my job. He's got a Good Defender handling things, and He's learning to trust Him.

I think Ando is an awesome little dude.