Patron Saint of Baseball

There were two things my Daddy taught me as soon as I learned to walk: how to fish, and how to play baseball. Yeah, believe it or not, Daddy wanted to have a little girl. 

I've loved baseball for as long as I can remember, and it was largely because of Dad. He worked all day long, but he was never too tired to play catch with me or be the pitcher and let me hit. After I destroyed a chair with a crazy hard-hit ball, I felt like a super human. Then Dad hit the ball and busted out our neighbors window. Dad was always way more BA than me. 

Baseball wasn't the only thing Dad and I shared, but it held a special place in our hearts. We played all sorts of sports together. We collected things (Beenie-Babies, Hotwheels, baseball cards, rocks, even foreign currency as I got older) and we shared the same taste in music. Dad was an amazing guitar player and when I was 16, he started teaching me. It was awesome the first time my Dad listened to some of my music. He liked Three Days Grace's "Animal I Have Become" the best because he said the guitar went hard.  He played by ear, so he taught himself the main guitar riff! But there was something about baseball that brought me and him together in  a way that nothing else did. 

Baseball made Dad and I a team. We rooted for the same players, loved and hated the same teams, and screamed (and yeah, sometimes cussed) when our teams did crappy. No matter what though, no matter how badly they sucked, The Texas Rangers were always our #1! Dad started taking me to games when I was probably in the third or fourth grade. Back then, Juan Gonzalez was my man! I wanted to be an outfielder, just like him. And man, that man could swing a bat! One time Dad took me to a game and we sat right behind him (he played left field) and we ended up sitting next to some of Juan's friends from Puerto Rico. I didn't believe them till one of the guys called out to Juan and when he looked back, the guy started pointing at me. Juan smiled at me and waved, and said something back to the guy in Spanish. I got invited to stay after the game to go meet him! Unfortunately, it was a school night, so Dad didn't let me stay. Dad later said that he totally regretted not letting me stay, but I still look back on that day has an amazing day. 

When Dad got sick, baseball became something he found shelter in. He was sick for a whole season and the Rangers kinda sucked it up, but Dad watched them faithfully (maybe more so) as he'd always done, and cussed the Yankees just as much. Dad got better and he and my Uncle planned a trip to go to the baseball Hall of Fame, but then cancer came back with a vengeance...Dad never made that trip. Baseball season had just gotten into the full swing of things when Dad finally lost his battle with lung cancer. A month before he died, he was watching the Rangers kick some major butt and he looked at me, shook his head, and said (I'm quoting here, so excuse the language), "I'll be damned. Watch, I'm gonna die and the Rangers are gonna go to the damn World Series." Well, go to the World Series they did, and I'll be dad-gummed if they didn't go again!!!! 

I haven't watched a game of baseball since Dad died. I don't know if I would turn down a chance to watch the Rangers in the World Series, but I'm not sure I would go either. That was our thing, something special between me and my Dad and I'm not sure I'd be able to watch it without him. My Uncle Bob went to see them last year and bought a seat for my Dad, so in a way he had the best seat in the house. I'm not sure how much God gets involved in professional sports, but I do know that if God allowed such things, Dad would totally be down with being the angel in the outfield. Patrol Saint of Baseball! Err, not that my Dad was a Saint or anything, he was too goofy for that, but you know what I mean. 

So, come on Rangers!  Bring it home this time, for people like my Dad who were always faithful fans. I know winning the World Series, to most, wouldn't be considered much of a miracle, but to people like me and my Daddy, it's the next best thing. 

Alison

Stormy Weather

I wish life was easy. I wish love didn't fade, people didn't die, and friends stayed friends forever. The truth of it is, life is hard and messy most of the time, and beautiful and wonderful sometimes. Maybe I've had too much of the bad and now I'm jaded. Or maybe I've gone through just enough bad so that I can treasure the good just that much more.

Sometimes I feel like my life has been one gigantic thunderstorm. It doesn't matter how many steps I take forward, there is always a bolt of lightning making craters along my path. Sometimes I manage to find my way around the gigantic holes, but most of the time I trip and fall in. Every single time, though, I manage to climb and claw and curse my way out of the grave I and others have dug for me. I come out a little dirtier than I went in. A little bloodier and with fresh scars. I'm changed, sometimes for the worst, but sometimes for the better.

No one watches their father die a slow and painful death and come out unaffected. I watched him take his last breath. I saw, over the span of several months, the life just creep out of his body. My daddy was a fighter, but at the end, he just didn't have any fight left in him. We bought baby monitors to put in his room toward the end so that we could hear if he needed us late at night. We knew he would go anytime. The night he died, my aunt came into the living room where me and my cousins and friends were sitting and asked us if we'd gone into his room. We told them no, we hadn't been in there for nearly half an hour. Some voice had come over the monitor and asked, "Are you okay?" I figured it was interference from another electronically device and shrugged it off. A few minutes later my aunt returns, saying that she heard another voice say "Be still." He died not long after that. A few weeks later I found a passage in Exodus and I will never forget the shock I felt when I read it. Exodus 14:14 reads, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." Daddy stopped fighting and let God fight for him, and God decided it was time for Roland to go home. I don't know another man more deserving of a rest.

In the year since my daddy has been gone, I have had to fight. I've had to fight to keep my head above water, and sometimes I just feel like letting myself drown. What astonishes me is that no matter what I do for people, no matter how kind I am, it never seems to be enough. I don't think I'm perfect by any means, but I am not a bad person. I'm certainly no illusionist. I'm so much more than smoke and mirrors. I am transparent and I wear my emotions and hearts on my sleeves. I am a human being with feelings and I've been through so much, too much for someone who is only about to be 23. I hate when people cry about life not being fair, but what was done to me by people who claimed to be some of my best friends...it wasn't right. I didn't deserve it. I will never take the blame for the cruelty that others dish out for no good reason. 4 months after I buried my father, three girls who I had grown to love like family started treating me like dirt simply because I didn't want to go to a party. I chose to spend time with my fiance because he wanted to take me out for my birthday. It was demanded that I not see him and go to the party with these girls. When I refused, all hell broke loose. There had been tension before this, I guess it was the straw that broke the camels back. I didn't want to party, I didn't want to be out late, and I didn't want to gossip. I wanted to study and spend time at home with my family and future husband. I wanted to feel normal after the hell my family had just been put through. I wanted someone to tell me that everything would be okay. I wanted them to give me space, and they wouldn't. They treated me like I was their child, told me what to do, and in the end pretty much said it was Zach or them. I chose the man I felt God had put on earth for me.

Zach has been a blessing to my life. He and I had been together for a month when my daddy died, but Zach was there through it all, even though he didn't have to be. He picked up my father and carried him so that we could move him into his hospital bed we built in his room. That's who Zach is. He loved me that much, and loves me more to this day. Why would I not want him in my life? I have never been loved so fiercely. As my friends, they didn't love me like that. They turned their backs on me and spread rumors that weren't true. They tried telling me what to do with my life and make my choices for me. They hurt me, threatened to get me kicked out of school. None of them gave a damn about the pain I was going through. Of the emptiness that now surrounded me, and the silence that engulfed me in our home that used to be filled with the sound of my daddy's laughter. They didn't understand that because they didn't try. Whether it was out of selfishness, or jealousy, I don't know. The only thing I do know is I'm not fighting anymore.

Last night one of my ex boyfriends tried to spread rumors about me to hurt me. I never did anything to him. I was happy when he had his child and he repays me by calling me a mess and saying I'm a liar and a cheat. I am neither of those things. I was good to him in the brief time we were together and he screwed it up, not me. My hands are clean. I was angry, fighting angry.

I AM A GOOD PERSON, I DO NOT DESERVE TO BE TREATED THAT WAY!   I am a person with feelings but no one seems to care! I am in a loving relationship, about to graduate from college, have some of the best friends anyone could ask for (for real this time) and what do you have? Tell me what do you have that I don't? What do I have that you don't? I have self-respect. I have pride in myself and my family. I have a future and goals and dreams that I will reach. I have a legacy. I have talent. I have class. I am everything God made me. I am everything you wish you could be, and you could be, if you'd only learn. If you would speak kindly and with love. If you would learn to treat others as you want to be treated. If you would learn not to make the same mistake twice, or the mistakes of those who have gone before you. Learn from what you did to me. Treat someone else better than you treated me.

I'm a strong person. I'm stronger than I want to be most of the time. I've lost so many people to death or circumstance, and I've experienced and witness some of the worst kind of cruelty. I am a better person because of the way I've been treated, because I will never treat someone else so callously. I will appreciate the friendships I have even more now. I will love my husband the way he loves me. I will cherish my fathers memory. I will see Shelley have justice. But it wont be because of me. I don't have much fight left in me. God will pick up the sword and shield and go to battle for me. I'm so tired of being angry at these people, resenting these people, hating them. I'm so tired of my heart being a storm. It may not be fair, but it is what it is, and they will probably never be sorry. And that's okay. I know what I will answer for when I am presented before my savior, and they will also be held accountable for every word that has ever come out of their mouths. I hope they are ready for this.

Alison