A Better Story

We all had one. Some of us still have one. Many of us gave up on ours a long time ago. Some of us are jealous that others still have one. Some of us have been embittered by their illusiveness. We often mock those that pursue theirs.

What am I referring to? Dreams. Just admit it! When you were a child there was something you wanted to be. There was something in you that said you were destined for greatness. There was a reason for your existence. It was a dream. It was big; really big. It was much bigger than you were; big enough to impact the world.

I’m no different. I had a dream as a child. My dream centered on a ball made of horsehide, wrapped around yarn, wound tightly on a rubber core, and held together by 108 red stitches. Well, obviously that’s just an elaborate way to say I wanted to be a major league baseball player. In fact, that’s ALL I wanted to be! If you asked me when I was 10 years old what I was going to major in at college, I would have told you, “Baseball.” When you told me there was no major for baseball, then I would have confidently and defiantly told you, “Then I’m not going!”

Baseball was life! It’s all I ever wanted to do. It was the one thing that motivated me in school because I couldn’t play if I didn’t keep good grades. I loved it, and in a strange way it seemed to love me back. Baseball was how I was known. It was where I found my identity. It supported my ego and was a refuge when nothing else seemed to be right with the world. Not to mention, I was pretty good at it, or so I thought.

I experienced a lot of success in the game through little league and into my high school years. I had enough success, in fact, to earn a very small scholarship to Georgia Southern University, a well-respected Division I college program in my hometown of Statesboro, Georgia. Looking back, that’s where my dream began to die.

At Georgia Southern, I went from being the proverbial “big fish in a small bowl” to a “small fish in a huge bowl.” For the next two years, I struggled and amassed a whopping three at-bats during that time. I continued to work hard even though my dream was on life support, and the plug could be pulled at any time. During that time it felt like I was stuck in the replay of a bad movie every day of my life.

My life seemed to be one failure after another. Every day was a reminder that I didn’t measure up to the other players. Each practice, or game that I watched, reinforced the fact that I simply wasn’t good enough. With each passing day, I inched closer to the death of my dream as my failures, shortcomings, and inadequacies were relived and then replayed time and time again in my mind.

Things began to change between the second and third year of my college career and I made some good strides. I actually improved a lot through the fall and early spring practices and heading into the season it seemed that I would have a good chance to play, and possibly even start in a lot of games.

Once the season started, I realized our coaching staff didn’t think as highly of my improvements as I did. Let’s just say I really didn’t see the field a lot. This led me to have a conversation with our head coach. (We’ll refer to him as Skip, since that’s what we called him.)

Looking back now the conversation is humorous. In the moment…not so much. Our talk took place one spring afternoon as we were leaving practice and it went something like this:

“Skip, can I talk to you for a second?”

“Yeah, Big Guy.” (He called us all Big Guy. Honestly, I’m still not sure he knew my name!)

“Well, Skip, I was wondering what else I need to do to get in the lineup more. I feel I’ve played pretty well when I’ve gotten a chance, but I’m not getting much opportunity.”

(Then came the nail in the coffin of my dream!)

“Well, Big Guy, I think you are overestimating your talent and ability.”

That was it.

Really? End of conversation?! Hit the showers?! See you tomorrow?! What the heck?!

It was at this moment that I realized it was over. I finished out the season and then hung up my spikes forever. Dream over. Gone.

I still highly respect my former coach. He was one of the best to ever coach the game at the college level. To be honest, he could have been dead-on accurate about my ability. Either way, that conversation brought an end to my dream; a separation from the god I served for nearly 21 years.

College baseball is the only thing I’ve ever quit.

Well, unless you include drinking, chewing tobacco, cussing (for the most part), and gambling. Oh yeah, I also pretty much quit golf. After giving up the aforementioned vices I found that golf wasn’t much fun! Now you got me sidetracked…

Baseball was the only thing I had ever quit, and I don’t think its coincidence that I have two recurring dreams. One is that I can’t get to church on time, and I don’t have my notes for the sermon. I’m sure there are people more spiritual than me that can dissect that dream and tell me what I’m really feeling. I’ve just determined that I’m afraid I’ll be late and unprepared for church. (If there’s a deeper more horrifying meaning please let me live in ignorance.)

The other recurring dream is that I return for my last two years of eligibility at GSU and complete my baseball career. It’s as if my college baseball experience is still being replayed through my head almost 20 years later. I simply can’t seem to escape it!

I would imagine you could relate to my experience in some way. It may not be athletics, but some other area of your life seems to haunt you. It’s that person, place, or thing in life that just won’t leave you alone. Like an old episode of a 60’s sitcom, it just seems to continually replay itself.

For some of us, the rerun is more like a horror story. For others, the rerun resembles the can’t miss block buster movie that, no matter how many times you watch it, always seems to end leaving you unsatisfied. Some of us would label it “that ONE thing,” that if I could just get over, my life would be exponentially better. Truthfully, we all have It. Some of us may have more than one of It. While It may be different for each of us, its effects are the same and to think we can somehow escape its grasp seems to be overestimating our ability!

If this is true for you, I bet I can almost tell you the pattern of your life. You, like most people, want to be a good person. You want to represent Christ in the things you do. Your days are spent trying to hold up your end of the bargain and do things the right way. That’s admirable! But how’s that working for you?

Most likely, you do well until you trip, stumble, or fall and don’t hold up your end of the bargain. When you do stumble, you are flooded with guilt that turns into condemnation. As you struggle under the weight of condemnation, a burden too heavy for anyone to live under, much less thrive under, you find yourself in a familiar place: burned out and exhausted from bargain-based living. In our “Christianese” language we call this legalism.

This funk lasts for a series of days, weeks, months, or even years until you “do right” long enough to settle your conscience and gain enough courage to slip back into God’s presence. Once again, we put our nose to the grindstone and try to be God’s good little boy or good little girl. We audition for God’s love, and perform for Him like a dancing chicken at the county fair.

It works… for a while, but then we sense that our performance is no longer worthy of God. We finally trip, stumble, and fall again. And once again, we feel the deep shame and guilt of having let God and others down with our poor performance. Sound like you?