Faith and Love

So, this past week the Michigan high school girls basketball season kicked off with tryouts. I am assisting with the varsity team, which only won 4 games last year, so we have a lot of work to do.

I have been trying to figure out what approach will really get the girls on track and motivated to move forward. We do have some potential and can really do some good things, but we need to establish determination and team work ethic where we will do more as a team than individually.

As I've thought about why they have struggled, it came to a place I didn't quite expect at first . . . faith. What place does faith have in sports? Is it the hail mary pass? Or teammates holding hands at the shot goes up at the buzzer? Actually, I think our team is kind of a microcosm of the struggles of life. So let me explain . . .

The seniors on this team have been through 5 coaches in 4 years (yes, 5). Their 4 win season last year was not out of the ordinary and their coaches keep leaving for "something better". So I can get frustrated when they do not want to work hard or don't think that they can change their shot, or the way they play. But then I think about if I were in their shoes . . . no one has demonstrated that if they do something a certain way, they will succeed. Each coach brings a different "way" and they continually see the same result. So they don't have faith in the "way" because they haven't seen the fruits.

This led me to think about my own life and what makes me have faith and move forward when I am not sure of the "way" that I'm taking. Ultimately, it comes down to faith in God. OK, I thought, so I need to reinforce that if they listen to what we are teaching, that they will become better? That didn't seem likely to get a great reception with the past history. So, what then?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that even more powerful than my faith in the fact that God is all=powerful, omniscient, omnipresent, etc is my faith in His love. Now, this isn't to take away from the fact that God knows all, but I don't place my faith in Him simply because He knows all - I place faith in Him because I know He loves me perfectly. I could not place myself in the hands of someone who knows all unless I also knew that they loved me, otherwise how do I know that they are being honest and looking out for my welfare?

So, the faith that we need to develop in these girls is their faith in our love for them. I wonder how much time I actually spend developing my friends and family's faith in my love for them? And how much stronger and trusting would my relationships be if I did so? Anyway, I think this is the only thing that will change things for the team. They've never seen someone truly care about them, and yet it is the only thing that will open their eyes to believe that they can be more and to see what we see in their potential. So my goal the next month is to really develop their faith in how much we care for them as a team, as athletes and as people.

We'll see how it ends up . . . but it amazes me the increasing faith that they have put in us already, ready to trust us more than we have merited on our own given their history.