Renewed Strength

“Go on now, go, walk out the door”

This week has been difficult. I’ve been hurt, bludgeoned, stabbed in the chest. I have felt the loneliness and emptiness of trusting too much too soon. I have, regretfully, allowed another person to take up space in my heart. My head has been dealt a serious blow but the message has suddenly become crystal clear. Truth, so it seems, has been a mixture of shattered promises and convincing lies. And so, I am left wondering how I missed something so obvious, someone so arrogantly self-serving. The series of compliments, whisperings of sweet-nothings, showering of gifts…it turns out some people will say and do just about anything to get something they want.

I’m stuck picking up the pieces (again) of my glass heart. The pieces will come together again. Each time, it seems I get a little stronger. I get a little closer to gluing the fragments back together into one piece. I pray for renewed strength. I pray for courage, and the ability to forgive and forget. I believe something remarkable will happen to me. I will somehow be given a new sense of strength. I know this because my hope is never going to walk out the door. There is one greater than I, more superior to the coward who broke my heart. He is always looking out for me. He is with me, and for that I can be grateful for everything that has happened—good and bad.

“I’m not that chained up little person still in love with you”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmwwQBWRIAs

The Worst Is Over

“I remember running through the wet grass, falling a step behind”

If you had a chance to do it over, would you change anything at all? That is the question circling the air at various times in our lives. The light at the end of the tunnel hangs in view. We know it does. It can’t get any worse. We hope the light comes sooner rather than later.

I’ve been cooked, down and out, practically wiped off the tennis court by opponents who could beat me even if they played with a wooden racquet. It’s all part of the game. You are, eventually, going to lose. In fact, you will probably begin by losing. There are seldom few people who come out swinging in their first tennis match. The sooner you accept defeat, the better your chances of improving as a player. Not only is it difficult to experience defeat first-hand, but it’s just as excruciating to watch it if you’ve been through that set of emotions yourself. I’ve seen more than a handful of severe beat-downs occur between the lines. When it’s happening to someone else, it’s easy to point out mistakes. Soon, however, you begin to feel the pain of the player being pounded into the ground. The player, who cannot do anything right save for lose points, becomes someone you pity. Isn’t it like that elsewhere in life? How many of us don’t give a hoot about other people’s problems until we have those same problems jolt us into reality?

You have to learn to accept hardship. I don’t care who you are, you’re going to have a wrench thrown into the toolbox of your life at some point. What will you do? How do you react to a brandishing racquet across the court? How do you respond to life’s strains and exertions? Do you spit in the face of the worst of it, sink into the net or continue to toss the ball high in the air until the match is over…until the light appears again? We all have a choice when the rough patches, the rough opponents, challenge our comfort zone. Think about all the unfair, difficult times you’ve faced in your lives. When the worst was over, what did you think? Would you have changed the circumstances or would you have changed your reaction?

I think sometimes we have to begin by losing. We need to go through something difficult to wisely earn the easy. It makes sense in tennis. Unless your name is Pete Sampras, you probably weren’t born with a gifted serve and perfect forehand. And even Pete played through hardship.  It’s the same way through life’s rocky road. This should not be a revelation. Everyone deals with problems of varying sorts. But sometimes it helps us to remember that.  On a related note, my college tennis coach once recommended a book called “The Dip” by Seth Godin.  He explained the book’s lesson as: no matter how good our lives are, no matter how happy we get or how successful we are in our jobs, we will go through ‘dips’ in our lives. Successful people are able to decide quickly what to do, while others wallow in in their dip until it’s too late. I think ole Coach’s words have stayed with me all these years. I never read the book, but somehow I didn’t have to read it to know what he was saying.

“They say the worst is over”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl6gaF_6Wcs

Silence

As are many around the world, I am still trying to wrap my head around the senseless tragedy in Connecticut. I am thinking of the fallen, the grieving and the surviving children everywhere who attend school every day. I think it’s important to find comfort in the word of God. To the grieving, take comfort in the fact that God is taking those children in his arms and raising them up as we speak. They will never have to know hurt or pain again. To the children around the world I say be not afraid, for the kingdom of God is still among you. For every bad guy, there are thousands and thousands of loving hearts who would have gladly given their lives for each of you


Silence

(In memory of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims)

Their silent hearts no longer race,

The pitch of death brought on this place.

Where once their dreams did sit akin,

Their hands are now joined by sin.

Lo, these violent hate-punctured souls,

Giving new meaning to evils and woes.

Oh, for the children who witness and weep,

Pray them joyful, happy to sleep.

He will take them by His might,

Illuminate their gloom with light.

He will christen them His own,

Beautiful angels the world be known.

Time to the Lost

“Every corner of creation lives to testify”

Do you ever want to change something so badly? It must be the holiday season or perhaps it is the commercial about hungry children I just saw on television (this is what I get for having Cable after seven years without it). Something is stirring inside me and I don’t know exactly how to put it into words. I’m upset, but what is bothering me most is beyond being upset. It’s a deep and tremendous burning being aroused.

It’s upsetting to me that I cannot reach out to people, that my resources are limited in helping them. There are people struggling to survive around the world. There is upheaval, injustice and unrest. There are swarms of children who will not survive through Christmas, let alone next Christmas. And what am I doing about it? What can I do about it? Somehow, I don’t think offering to donate $28 a month to sponsor a child is going to change the way I feel. It’s not going to change anything about this world in which we live. And that is what frustrates the most. Our world cares more about which football player will score the most points this Sunday than they do about which country will accumulate the most deaths due to disease. I am first to admit I get lost in the entertainment of our world, putting second the people who truly deserve my attention.

I was taught to always be thankful for what I have. I was brought up to be not greedy, but generous. I was raised in a home where we were provided for and never without. My daily worries never consisted of where I would find drinking water or how I would make it in this world as an uneducated, underfed child. My soul aches for those in need. I cannot understand their pain and yet I feel so much for these people. It’s saddening to me.  It brings tears to my eyes, and there are even moments of guilt. Life for me is not without pain, but when compared to the cares of others, my pain passes out of sight. Perhaps what I want to change the most about myself is this very facet. To not only think about the hurting and hungry, but to nurture and feed them. To not just feel for them, but to be with them. To give my time to the lost, that is the most precious gift I can think of providing this Christmas.

“All the hope in every heart will speak what love has done”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb_AqCTp6rQ

Cynical

“Perhaps I’ve grown a little cynical…”

Don’t lie to me. Don’t play games. Don’t call the ball out when I see clearly it landed between the lines. It only pisses me off. Or is that your aim? Is that your angle?

Have you ever talked to yourself in this manner while on the tennis court? Sure you have. Everyone tells themselves things to make them feel better. What better voice than our very own to provide an impromptu pep talk at the height of exasperation?

Nothing infuriates me more than a cheater. I can tolerate a lot, but I can never tolerate someone who constantly makes bad calls. In high school and college, you seldom have the luxury of a line judge. This means each player is responsible for keeping the game honorable, for making the just call no matter the score. I admit I’ve been tempted to call a ball out when I am down in a game. When I am losing a match, it’s so easy to slip on a call I know my opponent could not get a clear view of from across the court. What stops someone from lying? I guess it’s something called integrity, and I wish more people would apply this principle to all areas of their lives.

We talk to make ourselves forget too. I started practicing this act of forgetting when I was in the middle of a match where my opponent was clearly winning some heavily shady points. She was missing calls so much I was going to ask her if she wanted to break to put on a pair of glasses. Was she blind? I turned it around, mostly because I was furious with the how the match was shaping out. I turned around my thoughts to help me forget her poor attempt at lying by lying to myself. Maybe she was making the right calls and it was I who was to blame. I was the one hitting these lousily close-to-the-line calls anyway. Well, this ended up not working either. It only made me feel worse about my play and about my opponent. I was misattributing credit to someone who didn’t have the authenticity to make the right call, to play by the rules.

This incident reminds me of something else. I have continually blamed myself for people who bend the rules. I can’t tell why I do this, whether it is guilt, fear or embarrassment. It’s made me grow very cynical of people. I still have a great deal of trust for most people, but somewhere inside I’ve lost my full capacity to believe in other people. This makes me sad. Why do people tell you one thing and do another?  Is everyone really out for themselves? What happened to the spirit of brotherhood, teamwork and a collective group effort? Why do people cheat? What is to be attained by lying to someone?  It only hurts people. It hurts most when it comes from someone you trusted. So, please…don’t humor me and tell me lies. I’ll see right through it.

“And I’ll lie too and say I don’t mind”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-yLH5wcEoQ

Deal breakers

“And so she starts to wander…can you blame her?”

There are deal breakers even in the game of tennis. I can’t stand competing against two types of players: the opponent who completely smothers you and the one who looks competitive on the surface but actually completely stinks. The one who smothers and the one who stinks…

The best matches are those middle ground battles where the domination of shots is divided between two opponents. I mean, why do we bother competing in the first place if we don’t live to play these matches? I live to play these matches because they are the most fulfilling to me as a tennis player. They are heated enough to kick my endurance up a notch and cool enough where I can enjoy the moment at the height of competition. Anyone who knows me also knows I am willing to play tennis with just about anybody. Beginner, intermediate or advanced—I will share a court with any of you. However, when it comes to match play and keeping score, I want someone who can return my shots just as well as I can. I want an opponent who isn’t going to lie down when I crank a serve. My favorite type of player doesn’t feel burdened by me and they certainly don’t crush me so hard I can’t compete.

I’ve been thinking lately about what type of relationship I want to have and how in the past, I’ve been drawn to men who simply aren’t cutting it. You know the types I’m talking about. There’s the smothering fella who bows down to your every word, much like the opponent who takes over the match while you are left sweating it out and feeling breathless. Then there’s the guy who starts off so strong you think he may turn into a smothering fool but drops out after a few games and becomes as noncompetitive as a stinker in tennis. Where is the middle ground? Where is the man who takes charge and shows you a good match? I think I need to take my tennis opponent criteria to this area of my life. I need to take a departure from the norm. I need to be wiser about who I allow to ‘court’ me. It’s one thing if I know going into a match that my opponent is a total stinker, someone who can barely muster a point off me. I would rather play with that person any day than someone who comes into the match faking it, only to pull out when things get intense (or worse yet, fake an injury **it’s not you, it’s me, sound familiar?**). I guess what I’m saying is if you come to play, you better be prepared to compete. I mean what I say and say what I mean. Don’t waste my time. There’s nothing I can’t stand worse than that.

“For the day that something really special might come…”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr2pOenWbQs

 

God's Sense of Humor

“I’m tossing up punch lines that were never there”

I can’t help but think how our God has a nifty sense of humor. He instructs us by giving us tests, and then tests us in order to provide a lesson. On one hand, He promises us that if we trust Him with our lives, we will be fulfilled. On the other hand, He fulfills us so much so that we have to be knocked back down to Earth in order to understand. He aligns our steps so we do not fall, but then pushes us down when we think we’ve been going down the right path. God creates us in a way that makes us unique individually but our differences are often the cause of much pain and trouble. These mixed messages from the creator are a great source of humor for me. It makes me continually question why I keep trying to out-humor Him. God must get a kick out of us always thinking we know punch line when the joke is on us the entire time. He must find it funny that some of us even pray for our favorite sports teams, thinking that our good faith will sway them to victory.

This brings me to a quick side note about Tim Tebow and the power of God’s influence on sports.  Tebow is undoubtedly a faithful person, great role model and talented athlete. He is outspokenly accepting of his role on the New York Jets as a bench warming fullback thrower (my own term for his role). To me, Tebow is almost the joke of the New York Jets. Why does Tebow, a playoff caliber quarterback, ride the bench for Gang Green? Is Tebow really getting God’s Word out through his actions on the field? If we think of God’s sense of humor, perhaps through Tebow, He is teaching all of us a lesson. Tebow is called upon to produce in random situations. He’s placed in positions where the demands are high and the outcomes are uncertain. He’s constantly in the spotlight, yet must always prove himself to the New York fans. I think, if nothing else, God’s teaching us that even Godly men can’t influence every outcome but must endure them anyway. What if the tables were turned and it was Mark Sanchez on the sidelines playing second fiddle to starting quarterback, Tebow? Would God fuel Sanchez’s anger into action? Would Sanchez be able to accept such a role or would he fade into self-defeat? It’s funny, and usually timely, how God uses different approaches with each of us. Actually, it’s perfect.

Let me go back to God and His testing us in order to teach us a lesson. I used to think many of the lessons God taught me would be lost had they been under different circumstances or if my personality was different. I did not, for example, expect to learn much when God pulled me aside and exerted loud utterances of wrongdoing. My personality and makeup are not such where I take criticism well. To my surprise though, in recent years that approach has prompted me to listen and to learn a lot about my life.  Anger-inspired action, humorously, has and does work for me. This is God’s sense of humor working in my life. He’s taking what I think doesn’t work for me and turning it into something productive. The joke is on me.

So when we place our trust in Him, I think what we’re really doing is offering Him the opportunity to once again dazzle us with humor.  If we thank Him for fulfilling our needs, He produces a riddle to keep us on our toes. Until we solve that riddle, we are left feeling humbled. This is part of His plan for us. When we step out on the path of His design, we are not expecting to laugh in unforeseen places along the way.  However, He delivers a laugh every time. The joy rarely arrives in sequence, but it does come. That’s the way God works. He is the greatest comedian. God’s perfect sense of humor is efficiently untimely. It somehow soothes things at the most inopportune times. We must take a step back and laugh at ourselves every now and then. God’s humor isn’t the dry, witty or slapstick type we all know. His is the welcoming kind that doesn’t necessarily provoke immediate laughter. It’s the kind we need most when we think we know the punch line, when we are certain of the bite. His humor is always within reach if we’d only accept and let Him flourish in the amusement.

“I’m looking for answers from the great beyond”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZC4TCjjfCs&feature=fvwrel