Show up!
Since the beginning of August Lydia has been on the Caroline High School Volleyball Team and last night the fall volleyball season finally came to a finish for our family. Lydia, my youngest daughter, is actually the only one in our family who played volleyball, but boy, at times if felt like we were all on the team. Between getting her to and from practice and going to games 2-3 nights a week, getting home late and then getting everything else done that is necessary for our life to function, it has made for a busy 3 months for all of us. If you measure a season in terms of wins/losses we’d get a pretty low score. If you measure a season in terms of how much fun you had, I think Lydia would place it positively off the charts. If you measure a season in terms of life lessons learned then I’d give it high marks. You’ll have to ask Lydia what she learned, but I learned a whole lot.
Probably one of the biggest lessons I learned happened on the last game of the season on Tuesday October 31. We got absolutely crushed and we scored the fewest points we had in any match all year. On the other hand I couldn’t have been any more proud of our team of girls and their coaches who showed up on that last night and I was proud to say I’m with them.
You see it would have been easy not to show up that night, Halloween night. It would have been easy to choose to do other fun things, to go trick or treating, to go to a party. We all knew that we were probably going to lose. We’d lost to the same team twice before. It was the last game. There were lots of other opportunities for fun that night. But six girls and their coaches chose to show up. They’d made a commitment to their school and to one another and so they chose to show up. They showed up knowing that a crushing defeat was likely, but they showed up anyway. They could have forfeited, they could have just quit, they could have walked off the floor, they could have chosen to do other fun things on a Halloween night, but instead they showed up and they competed. They were defeated in volleyball, but they won in the game of life.
Our society is one that encourages us to choose to do the things that maximize our own benefit. Our society teaches us that we should look out for our own interests. And our society tells us that our focus should be on what’s in it for me. None of that is necessarily bad. We should look out for ourselves. We too are important to God. God wants us to be happy and to have fun. But I was also reminded again the other night by six Caroline High School girls that there is something to be said for showing up. Even if there is no individual benefit, you show up. Even if you think you have a better, more enjoyable option available or there’s really nothing in it for you, you still show up. You show up because you made a commitment to one another and the commitments we make should matter. You show up because life is about much more than just your interest or what is going to benefit you. You show up because real life, true life, the Christian life, the Godly life, only happens when it is lived together in relationship through the joyous victories as well as the crushing defeats.
Thank you Caroline County Girl’s Volleyball team. I’ll remember your lesson. I pray I can live it and show up even when life gets tough!
