By Brennen Schmertmann
Fatherhood in Real Time
The other day my son was playing in the All-Star game for his baseball league. A great honor and a validation of his hard work and performance throughout the year. One problem: he was terrified to play. Earlier in the year, one of our teammates was hit by a line-drive baseball and suffered a serious injury.
This affected my son initially but, after a few days, he seemed fine. He was playing well and his fielding improved greatly and he was one of our best infielders. Then about six weeks into the season, he became terrified to play infield. He was so afraid that he was going to get hurt like his teammate that he couldn’t even stand being in the infield. It was hard to get him to move past the fear.
Fast forward to the All-Star game; he is in tears because he is afraid. Afraid the bigger kids are going to hit the ball too hard toward him, afraid of the new setting. The situation was spiraling downward. It took my wife and I a lot of time to get him back on the field before the game started. He wanted nothing to do with baseball at that moment. He told me he wanted to quit, but I told him no.
I said, “You have an obligation to your team to be out there and to do your very best. You have to play this game but, after the game is over, if you never want to play baseball again, that is fine.” I may not have handled the situation in the best way. At first, I was sympathetic and understood where he was coming from but I was also embarrassed.
My son was crying in front of everyone about not wanting to play and he was supposed to be our best player. My pride was taking a hit, which I allowed to cloud my thoughts. That caused me to become impatient. I knew that once he was out there and having fun, he would move past his fear and be the player that I knew he could be and that’s exactly what happened.
Deciding to make your children face their fears and placing them in a situation in which they feel uncomfortable or maybe even scared, is a tough call. I knew my son was safe and that he was capable. I told him, “I will never put you in a situation that you can’t handle. If I didn’t think you could do it, I wouldn’t make you go.”
Part of me wanted to take him home and call it a day. However, on some level, I felt like I had to help him overcome his fears. That fear was keeping him from his true potential. Fear of failure, fear of pain, fear of the unknown keeps a lot of us from becoming the men and women that God asks us to be. “God will either shield you from suffering or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.” – St. Francis de Sales.
My son went out into the field and after an inning of being nervous, blossomed and performed really well. He had a great game, had fun and was playing to the crowd to boot. The boy swings from, “I don’t want to play baseball ever again” to “I’m the best player on the field. You know it, I know it; everyone knows it.”
I am still pondering about how I handled the situation. Facing fears is hard and it is scary. However, God is good and his strength is enough for us to overcome our fears and obstacles, if we trust him. That is how we become the person God needs us to be.
(Brennen Schmertmann attends St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Davenport.)
