My inaugural blog!

Thank you for checking out my blog.  I hope this won’t be the only time you stop by.  Maybe you are looking at the blog because you know us or maybe someone who knows us sent you the link—but whatever brought you here, I hope you will keep coming back.  The purpose of the blog is simple: document Matt’s journey towards his goal of making the U.S. Paralympic Track and Field Team.  If you know Matt, you know it hasn’t been easy for him to get to this place.  His visual acuity is minimal, but his dedication, passion, and ambition are boundless.  I met Matt five years after he lost his vision, so what I know about those initial challenges and emotions are based on what Matt has told me.  The raw emotion he originally felt was gone, and when he told me about his sight he had the benefit of five years of living with Lebers and knowing that things would get better.  But he still has hard days.  He hates that he can’t drive.  He can’t always tell our kids apart.  He can’t read the actual words of a book to them.  If I didn’t tell him the color of my eyes he wouldn’t know.  He sometimes walks down stairs in two different colored socks (or worse, two different colored shoes), and gets annoyed when I point out that his tie and shirt don’t coordinate because he thought he was wearing a different one.  But this blog isn’t a pity party.  It is a celebration of Matt’s amazing ability to overcome all of these challenges and be the wonderful man that he is.  I don’t know if he’ll make the U.S. team.  But since meeting my husband almost nine years ago, I’ve seldom heard him complain about his visual impairment, and I’ve never heard him use it as an excuse for why he couldn’t do something (except maybe for sweeping). So when he said he was maybe sort of thinking about trying to make the U.S. Paralympic team, I committed to helping him in whatever way I can.  I thought that a blog of Matt’s journey, from the perspective of his wife, might be a good way to start.  Happy reading!  Happy running!