Defender of the Week

So we're playing word games this morning.

Conner had his last soccer game of the season last night. The entire season he scored exactly zero goals. Not one. My heart broke for him because I want my son to feel accomplished and successful. Then, I realized that my son really enjoyed his last game because he found his niche. His forte. His modus operandi. He was the Defender of the Week.

All season long he's been focusing on trying to make a goal because that's the stuff people cheer for. And who can blame him? We all want to be the one with the sexy job. We want to be the receiver making the cool touchdown in the end zone. We want to be the cop who saves the people who are being robbed. We want to be the fireman who rescues the toddler from a burning house. No one cheers for the front line that protected the quarterback so he could make that beautiful pass that was caught in the end-zone. We don't see the dispatcher that took the 911 call that got the cop to that robbery and the fireman to the burning house.

All season my son has been much bigger than the most of the kids on his team (or any of the other teams for that matter.) He's not as fast or as agile as the other kids he's played with. He was the moose to their antelope. This last game, he did a lot of getting in the way. Our coach was the referee for the game (that's how we roll when it's 4-year-olds.) He laughed after the game and said the other team tried several times to push him out of the way with their bodies and just bounced right off. When everybody got tied up in a scrum in the middle of the field, Conner would just wade right into the middle and kick the ball out to one of the superstar strikers who got about 15,000 goals this season. When a member of the other team was going to try to steal the ball from one of our guys, Conner just stood in his path and, of course, the kid just bounced right off. He raced around the field just looking for somebody to frustrate. And he had an absolute blast. He got a couple of yellow cards in the process but who's counting? As one of the parents said, "It's not holding unless the ref calls it." Just call him "Moose McBride."

I guess the lesson here is "play to your strengths." The front line of the offense may not get the cheers but they still get an NFL-sized paycheck. Not bad. Not bad at all.

Defender of the Weak

Man! I have so much racing through my head right now I'm afraid I won't be able to type it fast enough before it leaves. I woke up at 4 am (thank you, 5-month-old) and couldn't get back to sleep. I started thinking about how God is the Defender of the Weak. I sort of had an "Awwww. Isn't that sweet?" moment thinking about how He takes care of all those weak people out there. "Itn't that special?" (Insert Dana Carvey reference here.)

Then I sort of got hit between the eyes with the fact that sometimes I'm "the weak." ugh. I hate thinking of myself as weak. I'm the self-sufficient one. Toilet guts need to be replaced and sprinkler system repaired? I'm your girl. You need to store up enough food in the freezer to feed Cox's Army? Call on me. New chocolate chip cookie recipe and made up pumpkin cranberry bread? I can do that. You want a new bookcase, tile in the kitchen and new concrete counter-tops? Sure. I can do that. Probably. Just because I've never done it doesn't mean I can't.

But.... Sometimes I've been cheated and cheated on. I've been betrayed and lied to. I've been stolen from and wrongfully accused. Someone who for one reason or another had power over me decided to use that power to their advantage and my disadvantage. I was the weak.

So what God was dealing with in me this morning when my mind was racing at 4:30 AM was the fact that when I do not choose (it's a choice not a feeling) to forgive the guilty party in those situations, it's because pride has risen up in me. I would rather be angry and bitter about those things than admit that I was weak. Ouch.

Then I had to get past that point to the fact that when I can't admit that I'm weak it's because I don't trust God to be my defender. Double ouch.

Thankfully there were no more points. I think that's enough for us to deal with for the next few weeks. Or years....