Sunday, February 2, 2014

I was up at 5 a.m. for volleyball and I'm too tired to think of a title for this one

"that I might win"
1 Corinthians 9:19

I went to another one of my daughter's volleyball tournaments today, and for one of the matches, I think I might have had the best seat in the house.

I mean, don't get me wrong; there were lots of reasons to enjoy where I was sitting.  First of all, I was on the floor, alternating between positions in an attempt to keep one or another of my body parts from cramping or falling asleep.

And I was seated between a mom from our team, who likes to talk to herself.  And her daughter.  And the ref and the coach and the line judge... None of whom could hear her.  Except herself.  And me.

And on my other side was a mom from the other team, who was a loud fervent and excitable fan of her daughter's team.  Her specialties were, "Sideout, Ladies!  Sideout!  Sideout!"  and of course, the ever-popular, "Woooooooooooooooooo!"

But no, that's not why my seat was so great.  It was my proximity to the scoreboard.  Now, I'm a big fan of not being able to see the scoreboard when I'm at my kids' games.  It keeps me from getting anxious about winning, and I leave the game with just an overall sense of how we did. 

"You guys played really well!" = "Surely we won that game!"

And since I'm a fairly optimistic person most of the time, and I focus on the good more than the bad, in my mind we "win" a lot of games. 

But I think today's seat was actually even better than not seeing the scoreboard, because I could only partially see the scoreboard.  All I could see was our score, not the other team's.  Now, there's a bit of a catch, in that I knew we were ahead.  But that's important for my point here.  I didn't care what the other team was doing, I had my focus on our score, little-by-little getting closer to our goal of 25.

That should be our approach in life.  Never mind what the enemy is up to.  He's battling you, and he wants you to lose.  But all we need to do is just know our goal, and work to achieve it. 

Course, it doesn't hurt to know that we're in the lead, and our victory is sure. 

~ "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.
And this is the victory that has overcome the world:
   our faith." ~
1 John 5:4
~

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