Play The Game or Sit Out For a Season?

Its football season again!! I never in my wildest dreams thought that football season could get me so wound up. My oldest son Cameron has always been my artsy, musical, somewhat wimpy type, so when he told me last year that he wanted to play football it threw me off guard just a little. I mean this is my son that gets a pin prick and cries like a little baby. This is the same son that shrinks back when someone looks at him the wrong way; the one that wants his future wife and children to reside with me because he isn’t going anywhere. He has always been my sweet little home grown mama’s boy… until puberty began to inhabit his innocent little body. It happens to all of us and now he’s growing into a young man with more testosterone than I know what to do with and subsequently he wants to play football.

Now here we are with a year of football under our belt and my skinny, wild haired little boy is now a tough, proud, still skinny, testosterone driven young man who plays middle linebacker on his school’s football team. This year, after only a couple of weeks into summer practice, he had an injury to his growth plate and a small hairline fracture on one of the bones leading to his wrist. We were both extremely disappointed. I had become the mom that can’t sit down in the bleachers because I need to see my boy play. I travel up and down the sidelines with the team so that I don’t miss a thing and can cheer wildly when the team needs it. Cameron has grown to really love football and didn’t want to be out for the season. We hadn’t even played our first game yet. So, the first thing he did when we visited the orthopedist was ask if he could still play football. To my surprise, the doctor said yes. He told me that they would put a fiberglass cast on his arm and before playing football he would have to cover it with ample padding so as to not injure the other players. Really? I thought my boy was the one that was injured here. I tell you, times sure have changed since I was a kid. I remember when a cast looked like the sheetrock from my walls and could fall to pieces with the slightest touch of a hand. Deciding not to take the mama bear protective approach, I determined that I would let him settle for himself what he was going to do. A week later he was back in the game practicing with his teammates as if nothing had happened. The only sign of an injury was this attachment on his arm that looked like a mallet or a club from Fred Flintstones garage. After a couple of practices I realized that this injury had turned out to be really positive for him. I began to see a young man on the field that gives everything he has within him to his team and to the game. I saw my once timid, shy and feeble little boy as a young man who is strong, bold, confident and committed to what he had become a part of. My boy was not going to let an injury keep him down. He was going to be there for his team and he was going to give it 110%; and he did. At yesterday’s practice I watched him sack the quarterback twice, break through the line at least ten times and intercept the ball from the opposing side. I had never seen him play like that before. You see, although a little timid at first, when he came back to practice with a cast on his arm and ready to play, his team mates began to encourage him. When he made his first tackle in the cast, the team cheered him on and the coach began to push him for more. His confidence began to build and he now plays the game, in my opinion, even better than he did before. He pushed through the pain of the wound, played the game and stayed committed to his team while still injured and from what I can see he will be a better player because of it.

What about us in our own lives? Do we let the wounds take us out of the game or do we keep playing? In life there will always be wounds. Usually more emotional wounds than physical but I have found that the physical are much easier to recover from. The emotional go much deeper into the heart and take a great deal more than a cast to heal, but the same principle applies. My son’s injury has taught me that when we get wounded, and we certainly will, that we have a choice to make. Are we going to be out for a season or are we going to go to the physician and ask if we can still play? Will we allow God bind up our wounds as the orthopedist did Cameron’s, and allow us to heal while we are still playing? Will our response be “please let me still play LORD” or will we let the wound dictate the path of life for us? My son’s response to the injury has taught me that if we push through the pain of our wound, continue to play the game of life while still wounded, stay committed to our team, whoever they may be, and allow God to wrap our wounds with soft padding so as not to injure anyone else, then we will come out on the other side bold and confident because of who we are in Christ and what he has done for us. We will come out having grown in our relationship with the healer as well as with our team that we have stayed the course with and through our teams encouragement and with God, our coach, pushing us for more because he wants us to grow, then we too will be a better player on our team and in the game of life.

Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

I'm So Angry I Could Spit!

Ok, so I really need to get this off of my chest this morning. What do we do when we get so angry that we could spit? That’s the nice way we say it down here in the south. What I really want to say is that he is lucky that he is not here in the same state with me because I would love to do things to him that I can’t really allow to leave the private spaces of my thoughts because I could be arrested just for thinking it. But here’s the problem; Jesus knows I’m thinking it. Matthew 9:4 says “and Jesus knowing their thoughts said `Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? `” Oh LORD, this is so hard. Sometimes I feel as if my thoughts are truly out of my control.
As I sit and write this, I am thinking about some things that are important to me. My 13 year old son is wearing football cleats that are one and a half sizes too small because I can only afford shoes for school. I am trying to recover from a summer of paying $600 per month for childcare and that is going to take some time to get back on track. My budget is already tight without the extra childcare cost. Two of my three children need braces that I am not sure how to pay for because insurance considers it cosmetic, yet the dentist tells me they will both need surgery later on if we don’t correct their cross bites. Anyway, you get the point right? So, yesterday was my middle child Benjamin’s 9th birthday. His father who, mind you, has not paid child support in a couple of years and is about $20,000 behind to date, called to tell him happy birthday. This is wonderful! Children need to know their fathers love them, even if they are not around to show it. I once read an article by Don Miller who wrote something that has never left me. He grew up in a single parent home as well and knows what it is like not to have a father around. He said that 10% of his dad was better than none of his dad so I do what I can to keep my children in contact with their father, even if it is minimal; even if my job entails damage control afterward. So, Benjamin hangs up the phone super excited because his dad is sending him and his older brother android phones in the mail. What? Are you kidding me? I can’t get our children things that they NEED yet you are going to buy them things that they WANT. I take that back, they don’t even want them. My 13 year old is completely satisfied with the phone that he has. He probably uses it once per month. He has it for times when I am not home. My 9 year old, who is without a doubt my social child, wants a phone and would be completely satisfied with any phone. I have told him no for various reasons and he is content with my reasons. It certainly doesn’t mean that he stops asking, but the answer remains the same for now; until yesterday. Now Benjamin gets what he wants and I am so fuming mad that I could spit fire.
Now the old me, before Christ, would have reacted immediately to the intensifying emotions that I was suddenly experiencing. In fact, sometimes I still do; but not today. I desperately want to honor God in everything that I do, even when dealing with an ex husband. So I sit here and release my emotions through writing instead of vomiting all over my ex husband with them and really giving him a piece of my mind. This is one of the reasons that I have journals all over my home. So that I can sit with God and filter my emotions through him rather than letting my emotions control my actions. I tell you, my emotions when they are in control have made me look like a raging lunatic with Turrets Syndrome who needs to be committed to an asylum immediately. Seriously! The actually have had that much power over me in the past.
What about you? Do you let your emotions get the better of you? When you get angry does everyone around you know it? When you are sad, do you lay in bed all day so that you don’t have to deal with the world or do you call in to work because you seriously can’t function when you feel this way? When you are afraid, do you let that fear stop you from accomplishing a task that you need to accomplish? Do you let fear inhibit your kids from certain activities? Do you make decisions that stem from any of these emotions? I ask because I have done it all. I ask because I am certain that there are many more emotional struggles in others that I am not aware of. You see, I think we all struggle with our emotions and we all have that one prevalent emotion that seems to rear its ugly head and cause us to do or say things that make us later feel like we were abducted by aliens that really have issues and spewed them out all over those that we love. But the truth is that through the power of Christ and His Spirit that is alive in us, we can overcome this battle that we have with our emotions. We can get angry and not react. We can get sad and still make it through the day successfully. We can be afraid but still move forward through that fear and accomplish the task anyway.
Emotions are not as dreadful as they sound or sometimes make us feel. They are a component of who we are and who God designed us to be. Anger over an injustice can move us to do something about it in ways that wouldn’t be possible without that driving emotion. Fear, when it is proper, can stop us from doing something that we know will bring disastrous consequences. Sadness is necessary for grieving and is a normal emotion. John Chapter 11 says that Jesus was deeply moved and troubled in spirit when he saw Mary crying over her brother Lazarus’ death; and then Jesus wept. This fascinates me. Jesus knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead yet he still wept. He still felt sad. You see, God created emotions, but he did not create them to be the driving force of our lives. The driving force of our lives comes from the Holy Spirit which he gives us upon coming into relationship with him.
So, what do I do with this anger that I feel? I give up my desire to react and abandon my heart, once again, to the hands of our capable and loving God. I return to the LORD with all my heart so that he can deliver me(1 Samuel 7:3). I write, I pray, I read God’s word and I shut up. I don’t say a word to the person behind the incident that has made me angry until this mammoth emotion has subsided. Then I rationally figure out how to manage the situation if I am to do anything at all. I seek guidance from a trustworthy friend, pray some more and move forward into my day with the unspeakable joy that I described in my previous post. Does this mean I am no longer angry? No way. It just means that the anger is not going to decide for me that I am going to have a bad day or make a fool of myself. It means that this emotion is no longer about to explode like a cannon from my chest as it was an hour ago. It means that just as Jesus was still sad over Lazarus, I am still angry over this situation but I choose as Jesus did, to let the Holy Spirit lead. I wish I could do it every time anger wells up. It means that God is bigger than any emotion I can feel. After all, He created them so he can certainly help me deal with them accordingly.