I was just there for the Alamo handstands….

It was absolutely living up to the hype when, on Sunday afternoon, I took a wrong turn at the competition venue and walked into My-Reason-For-Being-There. Two steps through the wrong doorway, and I was staring at the back of a very buff gentleman. A very buff gentleman wearing a CrossFit t-shirt and sitting in a wheelchair.

For the past month or so, my daughter has talked about the things she can not do. She has asked for people like her so that she doesn’t feel so alone. She has been asking for normal people who just happen to be different….and there he was….right in front of me.

I walked up,before I lost my nerve,and tapped his shoulder. “Excuse me, sir, do you CrossFit?” I asked him. He smiled and nodded, and then listened as I explained about Ella.

In an openness that I adore about CrossFit people, he told me about the illness which had taken his ability to walk in just four hours. He talked about his love of exercise, and of the Box (CrossFit talk for the gym) that he owns in Houston where he trains athletes of all kinds, including a good many who are adaptive (handicapped) athletes.

After our short conversation, he gave me his business card and invited our whole family to a competition next weekend where some of the best athletes in Texas, adaptive and not, will be competing. There would be a huge number of people “like her” out there doing amazing things and living their lives…just being normal people.

She’s been a different girl since I showed her his picture and told her about next weekend’s plans. She’s coming out of herself and has stopped talking about the never-agains. She has the hope of normal right in front of her, and it is beginning to seem as though normal might really be a thing that she still gets to do. It didn’t matter how often I had told her so, she needed to see the proof for herself.

Life is weird like that. You can go to San Antonio for drunken Alamo handstands, take a wrong turn, and end up meeting someone who could change your child’s whole outlook on life.