first place {how to be a real champion}

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At every event, Adam stands too close.  I have to keep drawing him back to me.  Sometimes I hook an arm around his waist, sometimes I just catch his eyes with mine and say, come here.  But he bounces forward, right up to that white-chalk line on the grass, and it’s not his turn yet.

Special Olympics is every shape and size of beautiful.  It’s patience and courage and learning and encouragement all exploding in a single day.  It’s knots of awkwardly jutting kids gathering too close to the line, but maybe not for the reasons you’d expect.

The boy who is actually supposed to be at the front of the line holds a softball cradled in his palm, but seems distracted by the sunlight, squinting up.  With his other hand, he touches the top of his head and his fingers curl as though he feels temporarily lost here in the grassy field, the sea of people—kids in clotted splashes of color wearing slogans and school names in neat letters, volunteers in cloud white with blue.  It takes five volunteers to run this one section of the softball throw—three to check in and organize athletes, one to plant flags in the ground where the ball falls, one to measure distance against a tape stretched flat and long.  A man with a clipboard jots the numbers quickly as the judge calls them out, and then nods toward the boy, still lost in the sky.

I can’t help but think of all the time it took to prepare for this, all the details we  hardly consider in the middle.  Someone had to lay out the tapes, chalk the lines, tie the balloons.  Hands gathered pens and printed schedules and maps.  Someone ordered the t-shirts the volunteers wear. Someone knew just how many people would be needed to make this happen.   Someone—actually, a whole team of someones—prepared well in advance to encourage and celebrate these kids.  It’s an effort that matters, an effort I appreciate.

One of the volunteers looks at the sky-lost boy and says, “Ready, buddy?”   But it isn’t until his mother touches him lightly with her hand, speaking softly, that he returns from the clouds and awakens to the weight of that ball in his deep palm.  He glances at her briefly, then down at the ball.

“Okay, ready Buddy?” the volunteer says again, gesturing toward the field, the tape.  “Whenever your ready.”

The boy looks down the field carefully for a moment, suddenly alive to the effort, and then lobs the ball in a graceful arc that bounces in the grass somewhere close to the end of the measuring tape.  The line judge takes off in a run, but not before I glimpse the delighted surprise registering on his face.

Beside me, Adam shrieks; eyes glued on the boy, the field.  Adam stands on tip toe, excitement shooting out of his moving arms and hands, his fingertips.  He can’t stand still or stay beside me.  He has to get closer.  He bends in front of the thrower, examining the boy’s shirt for one of the stickers all the kids wear—wide white labels with their names and the list of their events, the location, the time.  He’s looking for a name, and finding it, Adam looks slightly down and away, but says, in a low, soft voice, “Very good job, Kevon.” Before Adam speaks, he lifts a hand just in front of his mouth, curving his fingers toward his cheek.  It’s something he often does when he initiates speech himself, a gesture that betrays his discomfort with words, his ownership of inadequacy.  And yet, he so desperately wants to tell this other boy good job, and that makes it worth the effort to fumble uncomfortably.

Adam speaks and then bobs back to me, grinning all wild delight, without a single thought about or expectation of a response.  He requires no polite gratitude or acknowledgement.  He has offered a gift for the sheer joy of giving, without any selfish agenda.  He finds real delight just in being able to congratulate and encourage someone else.  The other boy’s mom grins toward us, touched by Adam’s expression, and then reaches for her son to guide him to his next event.

I lift my arm, intending to loop it around Adam’s shoulders, but before I can touch him, he bounces forward again, gracefully quick.  He bounces far, God-thrown, God-held.  Enthusiasm propels him, and he bends right into someone else’s space to read another thrower’s name.  He prepares his congratulations even before the effort has even been made, before the volunteers have even gathered the flags from the last throw or placed the ball in the next boy’s hand.  And just that quickly God uses my son to teach me, writing questions deeply into my thoughts:  Am I intentional enough about encouraging other people to plan on it in advance?  Does my own enthusiasm for building others propel me forward in a such a wild, grace-full arc that I bounce all the way into vulnerable risk?  Not often enough.  Admittedly, encouraging others often comes secondarily to my own agenda, responsibilities, and exhaustion.

We go on like this for half and hour, because they’re running behind, but Adam seems so captivated with joy over the accomplishments of friends–and yes, even strangers–that he has little time for impatience or concern over when it will be his own turn for acknowledgement and notice.  I stand beside my son and watch him surge forward and take risks again and again, not for a ribbon, but for the chance to build someone else.  And suddenly, I know that this is the effort, the spirit, that actually makes these kids champions.  They are people-builders of an Olympic caliber, and knowing them makes me a better person.  They are blind to all the things the rest of us so tragically notice and attend to, but completely alive to the things that matter most.

So at the end of this sun-soaked, grace-arching day, I will leave voiceless from cheering and inspired yet again to be so in advance purposeful about encouraging others that I hardly wonder when it will be my turn for notice.  Yes, just this will be the empty-filling gift I will carry pinned up close:

I want to be a people-builder of an Olympic–no, still more, a selflessly Christ-like–caliber, because these are God’s real champions.

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