An Owly Observation

For the longest time I thought the intro song to CSI went something like “Ooooo Wally---Ooo Ooo. Ooo ooo.”

What a day when I learned it was actually “Who are you—who who? Who who?”

That made so much more sense.

So lately I’ve had that line in my head. Who are you?

Last spring I suffered a bit of an injury. Enough of one that I invested a lot of money into getting better and actually stopped playing sports. I think 1986 may have been the last time I went this long without playing sports.

Recently I had an appointment where the doctor told me she believed I would need a surgery to get back to activity and that since it was such a specialized surgery I would need to wait a couple of years to get it.

It rocked my foundation a little bit. Who am I if not an athlete? That’s basically been the centre of my universe for as long as I can remember.

In high school when it came down to choosing between seminary and early morning practices I made the easy choice---morning practices. Confession: I slightly regret that because I feel like I missed out not attending seminary. Alas, sports were my priority. And have been all along I suppose.

As a kid I collected hockey cards—off Kraft Dinner and Jell-O boxes even. I watched the Blue Jays win the World Series. Twice. I rollerbladed around my garage, hockey stick in hand as I listened to the heartache of Game 7 during the Canucks ’94 run to the Stanley Cup. I fell in love with field hockey and dribbled around my living room night after night. I shot hundreds of baskets every day on my younger siblings’ Fisherprice basketball hoop. I’m sure if I asked my mom, she’d say my first word was “win”. Because I love to win and love even more the pursuit of becoming a winner.

When my grandma said I needed to stop watching Sportcentre and start focusing on getting a real job I made a job in sports my focus. And then it happened. The stars aligned and sports remained the centre of my universe.

Then in an innocent basketball game, in a local women’s league, I took a hard foul courtesy of a couple of ‘ladies’ and knew something was wrong the second I tried to stand up. For the first time in a long time I couldn’t play through it. Not like the broken toes, shin splints and countless aches and pains I’d shrugged off so many times.

So four months later it’s still lingering and I get this new possibility. No sports for two years? Now what?

Could I forge a new identity after 28 years of the same old, same old?

 Are sports my identity anyways? Are we identified by what we love? Who we love? How we love?

Am I a writer, guitar player, drummer, camper, and occasional Nintendo player? Or a wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend? Am I loyal, ambitious, tenacious, stubborn, fair and creative?

What makes us who we are? What changes who we are?

I may not be an athlete right now and may have to reel it in moving forward but I’ll find new ways and new things to define my identity. For now, I am in limbo. At least that’s a start.

So, Sally Can Wait

She could have been anyone. Anyone’s sister, daughter, aunt, friend. She didn’t tell me her name but she did tell me she was a child of God. Hearing that warmed my heart. The rest broke it a little. Maybe a lot.

When she sat down on the couch across from me in the church foyer I figured she must have been visiting. She wore black sweatpant capris, an Old Navy hoodie and a gray beanie on a cool summer day. Maybe she just came from a camp site. She cleared that notion with the next twenty minutes of heart-pulling conversation.

Her biological mom was a unicorn, she told me. She preferred that term over ‘stripper’—what her mom actually was.

Without skipping a beat she shared how her adoptive father had molested then raped her as she grew up. When the truth came out, her adoptive mother thankfully left her husband but according to this girl, checked out in the meantime. So there this young girl was. For whatever reason, given up by her biological parents. Then abused by one new adoptive parent and essentially left to her own devices by the remaining adoptive parent. In her teenage years she said she turned to alcohol and weed for solace and eventually became a regular in ‘the system’. In and out of foster home after foster home she said she saw more ‘messed up stuff’ than she cared to share.

More messed up than the ‘stuff’ she’d already shared?

So now she’s at the point where she seeks peace in a church building and wants nothing more than to just live in the woods with a dog—a black lab or a Siberian husky.

But then what? She has enough wherewithal to think there would be consequences to just up and leaving for the woods. What would she eat? How would she survive. You see, she explained, she is a survivor. And a child of God. That much she knew. And she knew none of this was her fault. The stuff she’s experienced. The things she’s done. Has had done to her. She said it’s all her parents’ fault.

Then she asked me if I thought she was going to Heaven or Hell. Before I could open my mouth she decided out loud she deserved Heaven because all the bad stuff she’s done is her parents’ fault.

And it got me thinking. Whose fault is it? At the surface she seemed clean, well cared for, well adjusted. But a step closer and the cracks at her seams come through. The black lining her teeth from years of alcohol abuse and who knows what else. The voices she says are telling her everyone around her is a whore. Her jittery energy she says is from ingesting too many calories.

Whose fault is it that her mortality has come to this. Is it her parents' for making a baby they didn’t want? Is it her adoptive parents' for taking a baby they couldn’t love the way a child deserves to be loved? Is it ‘the system’ for letting her fall through the cracks? Is it our fault, as a larger whole, for turning a blind eye to it all?

I love that we have agency. It bothers me to no end when my agency—or anyone’s for that matter—is jeopardized. I may choose poorly but that is my choice to make. Did this girl have agency? Did she choose this path? I don’t know anyone who would outright choose a life of calamities, abuse and neglect. Or do I?

This girl did. She knew someone who chose that life. And she clung to the idea of Him. In her despair, I think she, much more than I, could relate to our Savior. He had suffered tremendously in His walk in mortality. At such a young age, this girl had clearly suffered much as well. And still she had hope. That she could learn more about Jesus. That she knew she was a daughter of God and deserved more than this.

Today gave me a dose of perspective. In a world of suffering and sin and scary, scary ‘stuff’ there is hope. There is peace. There is a Savior we can all turn to. He might not fix everything now. He might not fix many things now. But in time, the ultimate physician will right the wrongs. That young girl knew this. I hope, for now, that’s enough. But I know she deserves more than enough. She is, after all, a child of God. Aren't we all?