“The Success of Failure”
When one of our sons was a junior in high school he played behind a boy on his basketball team who wasn’t nearly as talented as our son. (This wasn’t just a parental prejudice! Even a college coach made the same judgment). After one of his games in which he played little, he grumbled: “I work hard, practice extra, play well when I’m in the game, but get little playing time. Other guys never do any extra practicing, play O.K. to poorly, and get lots of playing time. I’m not sure I want to play next year.” Our discouraged son needed help.
The ability to interpret life accurately is fundamental to maturity. People are not shaped as much by their circumstances, as they are by their interpretation of those circumstances. Initially, we helped him see that his extra practice had paid off—he was leading the team in field goal percentage. Furthermore, we asked him to consider God’s purpose in all of this. Was God teaching him how to be content “in all circumstances”? to love his teammates? to trust God for his playing time? We prayed together that God would help him respond properly to the situation and that he would get an opportunity to play more significantly.
That opportunity came a few games later when one of the starters was out with an injury. We asked several people to pray for our son. We again prayed as a family. The result? He played little and poorly. Did God answer our prayers? Definitely! But not the way we had anticipated. Our deepest longings were that our son would learn how to walk with God. As a result of his poor performance, he went to his closet and dug out some information he had received at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ camp about how to deal with adversity. Studying that material helped him accept his situation. Our son was learning to connect with God in his pain.
As the season continued, our son had highs (e.g., a critical role in a district final win--10 points, 4 assists, 0 turnovers) and lows (e.g., little playing time during state tournament games). But he was learning (again and again!) to tell himself to put his hope in God, not in his circumstances: “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him.” (Ps.42:5). If the source of a child athlete’s happiness is praise or playing time or plaques, he will experience a great deal of unhappiness. Athletic success can never fill up a soul.
One observer of children’s development has written that maturity “grows primarily through overcoming adversity,” by which she meant “circumstances or events that oppose your desires, wishes, or ideals.” Sitting on the bench was definitely in opposition to our son’s desires or ideals! But our son’s “failure” became the basis of his “success”—he grew in ways that would not have happened had he been a consistent starter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
