I've got your back!!

I recently played goalie in my very first soccer game EVER.  I have watched my children's soccer games for 8 years but as far as getting out on the field and really getting in there not so much, so I am not ashamed to tell you that I was quite a bit intimidated.  We had quite the cross section of players and I am pretty sure I had the least experience.  I think the only reason they put me in the goal was that A. I don't look like I could run very far without dying and B. I'm a pretty big girl that blocks most of the goal naturally.

I was excited about this new opportunity and my team mates were not judgmental at all but rather quite supportive.  One girl in particular who is probably half my age would be the reason that I am even writing this post.  Most of the game the action was at the other end of the field and I was quite happy to be bored.  However, at one point the ball was coming straight for me and sheer panic set in.  All of my school day fears of letting my peers down were flashing before me as the ball got closer and closer, and then she appeared.  Out of nowhere she gets in front of me and says I will be your sweeper.

I had heard that term before in my 8 years of sideline experience.  Pretty much what I can assess that a sweeper is is someone who doesn't allow the ball to get anywhere near the goal and this girl was good at it!!  She yelled back don't worry, I have your back.  There it is.  The phrase that made me want to write this entry.

Before that point my blood pressure was through the roof of being worried that I would let others down by being inadequate.  After knowing that someone was there to help me my mind was at ease.  I am proud to tell you that I even stopped two balls from going in.

What is it about knowing that someone is on your side that is so comforting?  Some one is watching out for you, they want to help you achieve your goal.  You are not alone.

I want to be a better friend.  I want my friends to know that I have their back.  I want to be a comfort to my friends that they know that whatever they need I am there.

( Does it make this post any less poignant to tell you that the soccer game was a parents vs. kids game and that we were playing 10 year old girls?  Or that the parents won and were a bit obnoxious in their celebrating?)

Gracemont

Gracemont is a tree.  I named a tree because it is to remind me of something.  My husband and I were married in August of 98, by the fall of the next year we had bought a house in the Gracemont subdivision.  We loved that house.  We brought home our two babies from the hospital there, we started our lives there.  We lived there for 11 years.
Gracemont is the kind of neighborhood where you meet neighbors in the backyard to talk while your kids play outside untethered by electronics.  Gracemont is the kind of neighborhood where you hook a trailer to the back of your SUV and give "hayrides".  There are so many positive memories from Gracemont.
One day while I was working in the backyard at our Gracemont home I found a young silver maple sapling.  It wasn't very tall but it was big enough so I moved it over to where some day it would shade our deck.
Well, as we all know life happens and once the kids were in school we figured out that our Gracemont home was about 30 to 45 minutes away from everything we did and the commute was getting really old really fast.  So, we found a new home that is 5 minutes from work, school and church.  It is a nice home with lots of room.  We brought several of our plants from the old house mainly because I have this thing that I like to plant things to remind me of events that have happened in our lives.  I have plants from my parents, I have plants from my grandparents, plants to me mean life and growth and hope.
So, of course Gracemont came.  The only problem is that when I planted Gracemont I got the property line wrong and Gracemont was on the empty lot beside us by about 6 inches.  The empty lot was purchased a few months ago and the first time I understood that Gracemont was not on my property I felt sick to my stomach.  By this point, Gracemont had been growing for almost 5 years, we are not talking a tiny sapling anymore.  There was no budging the minds of the new homeowners they wanted it off of their property...GONE.  My husband looked into it and you could buy a new tree for less than what you could move this one and there really wasn't anywhere in our yard for a tree that was going to grow to the size that this one would so the future for my little tree was bleak.
The morning that I figured out that I had to pull all of my plants over to my side of the line (even though these plants were covering a very ugly power box and were contained in a professionally done stone surround flowerbed) my sweet neighbor came to help me move everything over, and then another neighbor came and another neighbor.  We were able to move all of the bulbs and plants and heavy stone over to my side and to be honest it looks better now than it did before.  The only thing that we weren't able to move was Gracemont.  At this point it was much to large for me to move and I had resigned myself to the fact that it was going to be chopped down.
Ok.  In your mind I want you to start playing some super hero music because to me that is what is about to happen.  The sweet neighbor that helped me move all that heavy stone?  Well, she talked to her husband and he talked to our other neighbor who owns a lot of heavy equipment and guess what?!  Yesterday our three families spent a beautiful fall afternoon moving my precious tree across the street to a new home where it will have much more room to grow and I can still see it very clearly if not better than I ever did before.
My mom has this saying, "It takes a heap of living in a house to make it a home."  Our Gracemont house had so many precious memories of life events and neighbors that sometimes I would question why we had moved.  Yesterday was such a beautiful reminder that I have excellent neighbors right here and the future is bright.