Day 32: Breathe, Seek, Play....Live Like Jay

 After our week of school testing and epiphanies..we've finished reading Chasing Mavericks. Tonight we watched the movie. What an absolute perfect ending to this week and a positive message to the boys. Jay Moriarity at age 16 surfed Mavericks and dropped in on a 50 foot wave....he didn't ride it in, but slammed into concrete after the 45 ft or more drop. Crazy to watch that and realize someone can walk away from that kind of devastation. But he fought through so much adversity, fear, panic, hurt to get to a place that pushed him beyond normal limits and try again. I think at times we've all surfed a Maverick of one form or another in our lives. Maybe not on a surfboard with huge mountainous waves, but we've at one point or another been teetering in our minds on a 50 ft drop into the abyss...the drop, the letting go, the decent into what lies beneath....We've had our wipe outs, were we feel pinned under water and are unsure of which way is up. This week, watching and discovering Elliott surf his way through standardized testing was like watching Cooper surfing 8 foot waves on Emerald Isle. It is panic you feel as you watch your child teetering on a surfboard out in water so deep, and with sea life you pretend does not exist...and you watch in awe as he glides in the water as a wave towers over him and he has a look on his face that says he is more alive than he has ever been. I've been blessed to see this look on my boys faces...the moment they feel more alive than they've ever been, that exhilaration and joy. That is the look I saw on Elliott's face when he shared his reading level that had climbed to new heights this week, the same look when I told him how much higher his benchmark tests had rose when he took them with pencil and paper rather than on the computer. He rode a different wave, but no less intense...As a mother of twins, one with a disability and one that is a reflection, I see them as they see themselves, an extension of each other.....They both are amazing, they are not afraid to try new things and test the limits. I sometimes think they get that from me, but I know I cannot take all the credit, it is a seed inside of them that I nurtured and has grown. This is all them, I always push them to do more, to try more.....to take risks, but like they learned in the movie "all I will say is, the ones who push the limits sometimes discover....the limits sometimes push back". I pushed the limits for Elliott this week, the limits pushed back...The school administrator first resisted in letting Elliott retake the test but finally allowed him to retake it (after I presented how invaluable this would be in helping us figure out why his test scores had dropped)...and Elliott pushed back with his result of higher test scores. He surfed a wave of another kind, but the techniques all the same. I think it was God's perfect timing for us to read Chasing Mavericks at this particular time. How the boys watched how Jay did not give up, how he dared what was the impossible, and he listened to his mentor along the way. His mentor said at his memorial "We all come from the sea, but we are not all of the sea. Those of us who are, we children of the tides, must return to it, again and again, until the day we don't come back, leaving behind only that which was touched along the way."~~The book goes on to say 'this was the lesson of Jay's life', his mentor once told him "I know how good you are. I've seen you out there. You surf circles around those other kids. Those are normal waves. Surfing normal waves is about how you perform when everything goes right. Big wave surfing it's a different ball game. It's about how you perform when everything goes wrong. One bump off the face of that wave and you're hitting the water like concrete at 50 miles per hour. Then you got a thousand tons of water coming down on top of you. It's knocking you senseless, ripping you apart and pushing you down to a place that's so deep and so dark that you don't want to be there." Jay replied "why do you do it? Train me to ride" I feel that I am teaching my sons how to surf not only in the ocean but in life....that life is great when everything goes right, but there are times, and you need to know this...when everything will go wrong, and it matters most how you handle that. So no matter how the surf of life is tossing you or holding you down..whether or not your feet or steady and you are riding the wave or battling the white wash of wave after wave crashing upon you...we determine how we handle it. That part is in our control. Jay's mentor told him "What's going on inside of you, Jay? What are you afraid of? You've got a chance to change everything. Take it. This is about more than just surfing. This is about choices you make in life. This is about finding that one thing that sets you free. You need to believe in yourself or none of this matters." I hope my boys Live Like Jay...What an amazing story, to push yourself, to ride the waves of life, to be prepared when the swell changes, to know what to do when things go wrong, to drop in on something and feel so alive, to dare the impossible, to know I will always be watching from the shore (or if I get the nerve up this year I will be watching alongside them in the surf) and to always know to believe in each other as much as they believe in themselves. In life they may ride many waves, some on and off shore...Frosty, Jays' Mentor said their were 'Four Pillars of the Human Foundation'....the mental, emotional, physical and spiritual realms. Those that have found them know how to paddle and glide!