Full Circle

Mar 18, 2013

I’m frequently asked what motivated me to undergo weight loss surgery. I give the fairly standard responses:  overall health, felt crummy, for my family, etc. . .

One of the main motivators, to be honest, was how my weight affected my kids. They were pretty young, so they didn’t care that I was much heavier than other mommies. They wanted me to run and play with them, which I couldn’t do – but I told myself that lots of other parents couldn’t, either. It bothered me, though; I felt like I was letting them down because I couldn’t play like they wanted me to. One of the biggest “motivating moments” came when my kids wanted to try soccer. When we went to our first practice, the coach told us that he never intended to coach a soccer team – but if he didn’t volunteer to coach, his son wouldn’t have a team to play on.

Sounds innocent enough, but it bothered me to know that I couldn’t have done what he did. I literally could not have coached my kids’ team. I couldn’t keep up, and I couldn’t move well enough to teach them the ball handling skills they needed to learn. That realization caused me to really start looking for more information about weight loss surgery.

Fast-forward about three years. My daughter has been begging for a year to play softball/t-ball. I signed her up last fall, but no teams had a space for her on their roster. This spring, I received a call from the league coordinator:  they had enough girls for a team, but nobody would sign on as the head coach. . .

So now I’m coaching a softball team of 7- and 8-year-old girls. Let it never be said that God does not have a sense of humor. It’s funny, though, that I’ve come full-circle in a way – from varsity player to obese mom to little league coach. And while I’m stressed about practices/game schedules/parents/uniforms/etc. at the moment, I’m so thankful for the opportunity to be part of my daughter’s athletic endeavors. I’ve gone from “I couldn't" to “I am!”

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