Give them Jesus
My girls started their little league careers the summers between kindergarten and first grade. We practiced and played a couple times each week. One spring as several rural communities were gathering to organize the Tri-County league, a coach from a larger town in the area approached the board and asked if he could bring a group of little girls that just wanted to learn the game. Their city league was a little too much for his objective. The powers that be said, “Okay” and the season began.
I’ve seen amazing metamorphosis occur between domesticity and the gaming fields. Because of behaviors I’ve observed and my compulsion toward student learning and achievement, I’ve always wanted, just for fun, to suggest we place our little sports stars on the playing field and allow everyone to start screaming math facts, laws of physics, phonics rules and great moments in history, then threaten them with withdrawn vacation time if they didn’t get their lessons in the two hour practices and apply them when test time came. Just a thought.
Back to the Tri-County softball season, 199?????
It took one inning of the first game to realize that our little team of girls, just wanting to learn the game, was much, much more. They arrived with their matching gear bags, suits that smelled of new vinyl lettering, mommies included, and black grease under their eyes. They had their game face on and we’d been had!!!!! Winning wasn’t the goal, total annihilation was.
Every inning they scored their run limit while their coach paced and screamed. We provided batting practice and fielded their balls just wanting the night to end so we could wipe little tears, buy some snow cones and go home. Did I mention it was a school night? To top it all off, the thunder in the distance drew closer and rain began to fall. The teenage umpire called the game and Mr. Coach of the Year came storming from the dug-out crying foul. The official looked at our coaches as parents watched from the stands and Mr. All Knowing Sportsman, palms up, with great compassion on his face, pled with our staff to keep playing. He’d even quit keeping score. Our coaches looked to the parents and in that moment I became braver and more out spoken than I ever had before. I said, “Here, let’s think…….if our only option to bring the Word of God to each of them was to stand in this rain and have church, would we do it, or would we go home?” A quiet fell and I told my child to get her helmet and glove, we were heading to the house by way of Dairy Queen.
My girls participated in many team activities both academic and otherwise. They needed the life skills this encouraged and strengthened, but more than anything, they needed Jesus and we had to chose to live in such a way that expressed and modeled discipleship as our top priority.
We ask our children to validate our DNA and parenting techniques, but we don’t ask that they submit themselves to the Lordship of Christ. I know this is harsh, but it is true and it is absolutely a matter of life and death. We teach them to throw a knuckle ball, or how to pose perfectly on a pageant runway, but we don’t teach them to kneel as their first line of defense in life’s trials and tribulations. With greater enthusiasm than we do anything else, we must GIVE THEM JESUS! The rest will take care of itself.
Swinging for the Fence,
Gretchen
I love this!
LOL I love you!