Conquer

In just over a month

Erin will be home for 2 years.

In some ways 2 years seems a distant in the past

other times it seems just like last week.

She has made many positive changes

each time she made a step forward

I would be amazed.

And I would Praise the Lord that step happened.

She was very challenging the first 8 or 9 months.

And gave up easily when she got fustrated.

After that, she finally started to feel

"safe"

but still kept a pretty high wall up around her.

This past spring,

she started to let that wall come down

by huge chunks.

Her first winter here (3 months after she came home),

She tried the basketball team

because she had classmates that talked her into it.

She was a difficult teammate to start with.

She didn't like what the coaches said all the time

or her teammates

"aggressiveness" style on the court.

They remained patience with her

and she slowly learned,

She learned that

they would be there with her.

Last fall there were no sports for her middle school as

not enough girls for them.

She was disappointed but  decided

she could do cheerleading

her cousin was teaching it.

She discovered that was something she didn't like

because it

required to much smiling

and she wasn't ready for that.

This spring she started to talk

about playing Volleyball when she goes to

the high school this fall and was pretty excited about it.

Earlier this summer

we discover because of a large group of girls graduated from Erin's school

or moved, there wasn't going to be enough girls for

volleyball this fall.

Erin really was looking forward to playing volleyball

and was disappointed when we found this out.

She really wanted to play sports now.

I started to do some researching

Contact the home school

asking if she could try out,

which she could.

She was excited to hear

she could be on the Hearing School Volleyball team.

When I told her that she needed to tryout

and not that everyone makes it,

she got discouraged,  wasn't totally

sure if she wanted to do it.

Her reasons:

She is deaf and that is a hearing school.

I encouraged her

I reassured her.

Erin has an history of

"throwing in the towel"

when things aren't going her way.

And she had the perfect excuse

She is deaf and that is a hearing school.

She doesn't have volleyball experience

I kept encouraging her

Got an interperter (the school did the work on getting one)

and continue to pray and encourage her.

She said she would give it a try,

I could see she was very unsure of herself with this decision.

I worried that she would

"throw in the famous towel" attitude.

When the tryout days started.

During the whole summer,

Erin and I have talked about volleyball,

I could see that uncertainity showing itself

Erin was waivering, not sure of herself.

Kept telling her just try your hardest,

but those words didn't appear to mean

anything to her.  So I thought.

Two weeks of Olymp*cs

The girls and I were glued to the TV

Erin initially wanted no part of it.

"It is boring" were her words.

By the second day, she started to watch a little bit

By midweek she was watching a lot more and

becoming a "judge" especially in the

swimming, diving, volleyball and parts of track and field.

She even showed some interest in gymnastics.

When we saw Oscar run,

Erin asked a lot of questions about him

She was impressed by him,

She started to show some more positive thoughts about

trying out for a hearing school Volleyball team.

I used him a lot in our talks,

also showed her some of the people

that were competing that were hard of hearing or had some degree of deafness

You see she was impressed by this.

Monday she had her first volleyball tryout day.

She freely said

she was scared,

She was nervous,

She was unsure.

She walked away feeling "ok" and very sore.

I had prayer warriors out there, starting on Sunday

sending positive thoughts.

She said the interpreter did a good job

some of the coaches were using hand "gestures" too.

There was 105 kids for 4 teams.

Approx. 60 kids were trying out for the 2 freshmen teams.

We talked a lot Monday night,

I kept telling her that she needs to show the coaches she wants to play.

She had one good thing going for her.

Her powerful arm from her years playing

competitive badminton in China.  They worked her very hard in China.

Also said not to be afaid to dive for the ball and so forth.

She was agreeing with me and I could see

she really was trying her best.

I told her I was proud of her.

She conquered her fear,

She stepped out of her comforter zone

She tried her hardest

She didn't throw the towel in and give up

and it paid off.

SHE MADE THE VOLLEYBALL TEAM!!!!!

I am so proud of her.

Praise the Lord.

Thank you everyone for the positive thoughts for Erin

Thank you everyone for the prayers.

Thank you everyone for the support you have given Erin.

Now to conquer the schedule and figure how to get her from

her deaf school to her hearing school.

She is already talking about other sports she wants to do

at the hearing school.