nose vs. basketball

i've got it pretty good. i've got an awesome, (and i mean WAY awesome) wife, awesome little kiddos, a great place to worship and lead worship, friends that outnumber my enemies,...i've got the whole burrito people. but even in the midst of all my life's awesomeness, there is still the propensity for life to get drudgingly frustrating. let me explain,...
you have a vision, an idea, an inspiration,...that vision begins to materialize,...so you surround yourself with people who have either caught that vision, or that might soon catch it in hopes that the vision will manifest completely, if not (pardon the cliche) beyond your wildest dreams. but between finding the people and 'beyond your wildest dreams' there's this no man's land called 'faithfulness.' (SHOOT! i completely forgot about that part!) so, in being faithful, you realize that somedays, you're the only one who's gonna be faithful. but, that's what you're called to, so you keep pluggin' away. this is where the frustration comes in. not only does it seem you're the only one working, the work isn't even coming easy. let me illustrate it this way;

i remember being 6 or 7 years old in our back yard in Oklahoma. we had a basketball goal set up over the big swinging door of our barn. the hoop seemed like it was 4 or 5 stories of the ground and the ball felt like it was full of lead, not to mention that it was bigger than me. but getting the stubborn gene from both my mom AND my dad, i hoisted the basketball to my shoulder shot put style and gave my best try at a goal. i think the ball got about 3 feet higher than my head and then upon its defeat by the laws of gravity it plumeted like a meteor and landed squarely on the tip of my bewildered little nose. i saw that flash of red you see when you get hit in the nose and i half fell, half sat on my rear in the dirt. i sat there so mad that i wanted to cry. i probably did, i don't really remember, but i wasn't mad at the ball hitting me, i was mad that i didn't make the shot. the throbbing on my nose was salt in the wound. i wanted to succeed. why wasn't i stronger? why wasn't i taller? why wasn't i faster? ( if i was faster i could at least have avoided the nose vs. ball match.)

i'm not 7 anymore, but i still feel like sometimes i get the basketball in the nose. i feel like that kid right now. trying so hard but coming up short. i'm a results oriented person, so if i don't get results frustration quickly follows. i start to question why i can't make certain things happen, (how come i'm not better at what i do?) even though now i'm old enough to know that its not always me that limits progress. but today i got a card from a new member of my worship team. her card was pretty funny, talking about the daily task of dealing with frustrations. it was nice to be able to laugh about it. she's been in and around worship ministry for a long time and has seen quite a bit which is why the card meant so much. but there was one thing she wrote that somehow sparked the memory of a kid with a throbbing nose with the red dirt of okalhoma on the rear of his jeans. "it will get better." this is not a riveting statement, i know. but let's go back to the baskeball goal. i'm not 7 anymore, and with time, with three squares a day, and with some coaching i could hit a lay up everytime by the time i finished high school. that doesn't make me michael jordan, but i've come a long way. now, back in the present, i've long ago given up on basketball, but i think God works the same with us spiritually. i'm not a baby Christian or an unexperienced pastor anymore, but i'm also not Billy Graham, at least not yet. so, when my nose meets squarely with the basketball, i just gotta remember,..."it will get better."



what i'm listening to today:
Andy Gullahorn "Room To Breathe"