Embedded Glass

This past Tuesday at my weekly humbling soccer game, whereby my coaching credentials get shredded by each opposing goal after goal after goal, I had a player completely meltdown on the field.  We gave up probably our 15th goal in 8 minutes and she turned and just started crying.  Right there on the field.  Huge Old Testament tears.  For the first time in quite a while, in all the games I have coached, I had no idea what to do.  I think deep down she must have felt some kind of disconnect with myself and what was going on in the field.  After about the 5th goal, my typical peppy, encouragement-driven, energy-enthused leadership turned to sighs and inward groaning.  I think at one point I stopped blowing my whistle when the other team scored.  I might have even clapped sarcastically at one point.  Even Reycina looked at me quizzically at one point and I was saddened to see that the seed of the coach-daughter relationship had been planted on shaky ground.  "I should have kicked that ball, right?"  I answered with a, "Duh."

Driving home I felt like I was explaining my behavior to the rear view mirror.

Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I don't have bad days.

I can't always be "on."

I know we don't take score, but then don't have a goal.

All were pathetic excuses for the behaviors of a man who simply fell short.   Coaching isn't the only aspect that had  begun to form thorns in my side.  It's those teaching moments when you've spent 30 minutes talking about respect and you find three girls in your class passing a note amongst themselves calling one another "bitches."  It's leaving church and hearing the kids talk about honor and serving one another only to fight five minutes later.

And when those thorns dig other events in your life seem amplified.  My poor wife had this small, stubby bump on her foot this past month which was probably from an embedded glass she had stepped on.  Every time she stepped she felt it.  That's how those moments feel when they happen.  Trivial events when pulled alongside and analyzed.  Forgotten unless they were jotted down in some blog like this.

Like the initial stress of new questions and eyes of wonderment from a new kid coming in 8 weeks after school has started.  The computers freezing at the moment of an observation.  The parent at dismissal who hit a parked car three times but said, "It wasn't my fault."  The back yard that is only 1/3 cut.  Your daughter crying in the morning because she can't find her bookbag.  Like each step feeling that embedded glass.  It stings some but you get over it.  But it's always there.  That nag.

This past Sunday our pastor spoke about having that winning attitude.  He made sports analogies which always resonate easily with men, especially with me.  Being from Houston, I've been witness to sports failures and a culture of losing, from the Oilers to the Rockets and my beloved Astros.  Only someone from Houston really knows the pain of the Warren Moon years, losing that game in Buffalo, choking in the playoffs.  My brother and I reminisce during the Hakeem Olajuwon championship years with the Rockets.  Clutch City.  Rudy T.  Mario Elie's kiss of death.  And then the Astros who have taken losing to a new low.  Swept in 2005 to the White Sox, Brad Lidge's hanging slider to Albert Pujols, the last few years when we've looked like a minor league team.  My dad always joked to my grandpa that he was the "jinx" that kept us from winning.  But that culture of losing had more to do with the futility of our sports team than anything my grandpa did.

But those attitudes of losing permeated throughout the city and into my own life growing up.  You begin to outwardly express yourself in ways of the culture just to overcompensate for all your shortcomings.  Losers complain.  Losers make excuses and losers embed the glass even deeper with every step they take.

So when it came time for me to share my closest to Christ moment (those who have undergone the Emmaus walk know what I am referring to here), I had some digging to do.  It didn't come to me at some epiphinal (sign of a good blog?  Make a new word) moment this week that would have stopped the traffic of my being.  But I found some moments.  Like when the kids and I compared our square-shaped smiles in the rear-view mirror.  Or the laughter I had with my fifth graders listening to "What does the fox say?" at indoor recess.  It's the wonderment of a captured prey mantis in a pickle jar.  It's the synergy of men who wear Star Wars shirts on the same day.

The automatic things we take for granted.  A car starting.  The taste of coffee.  Lights that brighten a room at the flip of a switch.  I wish men's ministry was that easy.  Flip the switch and discard the failures of the past, that losing attitude.  It's stepping in carpeted green fields instead of glass.  The glass you don't see, the glass you don't feel until days later.