By: Candice & Danny Williams
Recently, I had the difficult task of watching my high school basketball team suffer a traumatic loss in the semifinals of a tournament they had spent the entire semester preparing for. The game came down to a final shot, our leading scorer was able to get off before the final buzzer sounded but the ball rattled in the hoop and bounced out leaving our team once up by 18 points in the 2nd quarter shocked, stunned, frustrated and angry that they let the game slip through their fingers.
The leading scorer was especially devastated as was our starting point guard who missed several key free throws in the final moments of the game. “It’s my fault,” seemed to be theme of their mournful lament and both of these key players were inconsolable for a good while after the game ended. I left that scene with two important lessons: Basketball is a team sport. Individuals don’t win or lose games contrary to how the star obsessed media portrays sports highlights. Sure the hero gets the credit in the end, or blamed if he made a mistake at the end of the game, but that is not a true reflection of the outcome of the game. Team sports are won and lost by teams not individuals.
Every blown defensive assignment, every time a player failed to box out, or follow his shot, every missed free throw, every missed layup, every unwise pass by individual players from the beginning of the game until the end impacts the outcome of the game for the entire team. Similarly, in life we don’t live exclusively for ourselves. No man is an island…we are all are affected by each other’s mistakes, some of which might have happened at a seemingly insignificant part of our lives. But there is no insignificant part of our lives. Every action counts, every decision is critical and impacts the whole outcome. We must never lose sight of the fact that our actions will always impact more than our individual selves.
Secondly, as I stood in that locker room after the game and witnessed the intensity of their grief, I wondered why is it that for die hard athletes competitive sports are so much more than just a game–for some it can seem to almost be a matter of life & death. As the popular saying goes for so many, “Ball is life.” Why is this? What if anything did our young players need to understand? Well I couldn’t say it any better than one assistant coach to a distraught young player, “You are more than this game…you are an amazing person”. Talk about life lesson! I can’t tell you how many days I needed that one, and if we are honest I think we all do from time to time. Tough as it was to admit, that very important game wasn’t the sum of everything.
Of course no one will ever be able to minimize the sting of failing to win that game, but loosing might have very well had a more lasting impact on their character. You see, failure is unavoidable….but it is also compartmentalized. Every now and then we all need to be reminded what mistakes might have been made, but those mistakes don’t make us, so why stare at the rear view mirror and in the words of Indie Arie “wreck your future, running from your past”? Disappointments, they are inevitable, but discouragement need not be the choice we perpetually make. Choose instead to allow the lessons learned from failure to guide you to true success. I don’t know where you are today, maybe you needed to hear the timeless message for yourself, or maybe you can help someone who is struggling by speaking those words “you are more than this….you are an amazing person,” to someone else today. You see, we are all on the same team. Beating yourself up, or watching someone near you do the same benefits NO ONE!!!! Whatever “THIS” failure is, we are all more than IT. Somebody special thinks each one of us is worth way more than the sum of our past mistakes.
Faith in Focus: Devotions for Professional Women 