Throwback from: April 20, 2024
Watching Them Grow
I’m feeling nostalgic. I’m watching girls dance and play while a sideshow plays and I hear music my Daddy used to play.
Not just my girls but they all feel like mine. I’ve watched them grow in our gym. Some I’ve coached, some I’ve watched at competitions, for all of them I have prayed. Safe travels to meets, no injuries at practice, healing from sicknesses… I’ve watched them grow in confidence and strength.
My mind sees “the dab” Jillian’s bronze team did years ago as a team thing – memorialized on the picture on our wal at home. Those little girls three years ago. That’s how they are all saved in my mind. But they grow.
At the team banquet every year, the girls dress up – the older ones look like they are doing prom. And that makes me notice that I’m missing Becky.
This is our annual team banquet where Lucas first stared at everyone in their gorgeous dresses two years ago and whispered about three friends, “mom, they are princesses.” But they grow.
I see those three, taller, more confident, and now unknowingly mentoring younger siblings and friends.
I’m looking at my youngest girl, who confidently informed me the day she turned 5, “I’m five and now I want Coach Thea, Coach Edythe, and Coach Sam like my friends (whom she named) when they turned 5.” (We had a discussion about team being by invitation only and if she wanted to be there, she had to listen to her current coaches and work hard.) There may be a team banquet someday where she won’t be the tag-along dreamily looking up at her older friends and sisters. Because they grow.
I whisper a prayer of thanks for these wonderful coworkers and friends whose example and children inspire me and my littles. I’m so thankful for my WGV family. For team sister’s moms, for coaches, for team sisters, for our amazing “boss lady” and Miss Candi; for the honor of being a tiny part of these beautiful young ladies’ lives. They are princesses, as Lucas says, beautiful inside and out; strong, confident, wonderful overcomers.
And I’m so thankful to get to watch them grow!
Thank you for reading!
Type at you later!
~Nancy Tart
