ROOTED IN LOVE â—½ ENCOURAGEMENT
During softball season this year, we had to travel for some of the games. When you live in a small town where there’s only one 8U team, you have to play against neighboring towns. (For us, living outside of town, that means about an hour drive one way.) It was a lot of time on the road, but it was also really fun.
One Saturday, we were in another town playing against their team. For the sake of not naming names, we’ll just call them the purple team. My daughter and her teammates made a restroom trip before the game started, where they apparently ran into some girls from the purple team. After the game, on our way home, my daughter told me something that honestly surprised me. She said the purple team girls told her and her friends, “We’re gonna do our best to break your faces.” Oh, my goodness. I was shocked! What eight-year-olds really say that??
To be honest, they did kick our team’s butt, but that doesn’t really make a difference. I was just totally flabbergasted that they would be so mean. I told my daughter that they were probably just repeating something they heard from their parents. I told her it wasn’t nice of them but that it didn’t really mean anything. We’d been talking about how you can’t control other people’s actions, but you can control your reactions, so this was a good example of that.
A few weeks later, we had to face the purple team again at the end-of-year tournament. And, of course, we had a bathroom encounter before the game again. I didn’t find out until after the game, but I was once again surprised by what transpired. My daughter, not thinking much of it, told me what she said to the purple team in the bathroom. She told them, “If you knock us out of the tournament, I hope you win the championship.” Goodness gracious – talk about heaping burning coals on their heads! I definitely wouldn’t have said that to them, but it made the biggest smile stretch over my face. Looking in the rearview mirror at my sweet girl in her pink car seat, I told her to never change.
The truth is that it’s easy to be ugly to people when they’ve been ugly to us. It feels good in the moment to get that jab in or put them down. Revenge is so tempting, isn’t it? It’s not easy to be kind to people who aren’t kind to you. In fact, it takes a lot of self-discipline. It takes confidence in your identity. Knowing your worth and not letting it be dictated by other people’s words or actions.
The Bible tells us (in Matthew) to love our enemies, but how often do we actually do it? How often do we choose to turn the other cheek and repay evil with good?
I definitely learned a lesson from my daughter that day. More like I got slapped in the face, actually. I don’t know where she learned such kindness, but it must have been by the grace of God. I do know that I want to be better at this, and I also want to speak more gently to my family. Rather than lashing out at my loved ones or letting them get the brunt of my frustration when things aren’t going my way, I want to choose words full of kindness and love. I want to control my tongue, not the other way around. After all, a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Proverbs 15:1)
In case you were wondering, the purple team did end up beating us and going on to win the championship. But I think my daughter was the real winner that day, because she chose something much more valuable than winning a softball game. She chose kindness when she didn’t have to, and that’s worth more than a thousand trophies.