He Did It!

Our Second eldest son earned his Black Belt in karate this week. It’s taken him nearly five years of incredibly hard work to get to make it to this point. Long time readers will remember that he’s the boy with double vision caused by Convergence Insufficiency. Simply put, his eyes work independently of each other. It makes things like reading and physical coordination extraordinarily difficult. Which is why his Black Belt, which would be a big deal in any case, is an especially impressive accomplishment.

He’s spent the last month working on how he was going to showcase the skills that he has learned. He’d drilled himself with his nunchucks for hours, and worked on his kicks so that he could show off breaking boards in front of the friends and family who came. He was ready for all of it.

Then he broke his foot on Monday night, and instead of dazzling us with his skills, he wore a boot and dazzled us all with his grace and self-deprecating humor instead. I’d expected a few words of complaint, but there haven’t really been any. Instead he’s spent his time teasing his younger siblings and cracking “gimp” jokes with his sister.

What should have been a night of his showing us how much he’d learned in all his years of karate ended up being a showcase of all he’s learned in life – humility, wisdom, perseverance, and an ability to find joy even in disappointment, and those are skills that will carry him for the rest of his life.