Football Dreams

Me and my buddy Craig the summer after 7th Grade.  I was gonna play in the NFL!  (1977 or 78  :)

So I went to my son's 7th grade football game last night.

You have to understand, I love football.  I played it as a boy and relished in it.  Football is the ultimate team sport and can teach so many life lessons.  You make so many friends on a football team when you're a kid and you get live your dreams through it.  Everything is so open and the future is so bright for you.  You believe you're going to play in the NFL some day and that nothing can stop your success. It's a time of magic when anything is possible and life is just going to get better and better and more and more awesome.  It's just supposed to be that way.  Right?  Isn't that how life works?

Well since that time, life has thrown some very tough challenges my way.  I won't get into my whole life story with you, but I've been brought to my knees and humbled multiple times since than.  Been dragged through the mud and shown my own nothingness.  Have eaten dust and been left weak. I've learned that I can't do life on my own without divine assistance.  I look around me and I see so many others who don't have the Lord in their lives and even some who do, who seem to skate right along. Nothing stops them. They seem to live a charmed life with unmitigated success flowing in their wakes. What they set out to do seems to land comfortably in their laps.  There's nothing there to throw them off their games.  I think to myself, "That could've been me".  You take away of few of my obstacles and I would make multiple life touchdowns. Would be the MVP of the game. At least in my own mind.

I know that's not my path.  Not the reason I came down here.  I know if that were my path, I wouldn't grow or develop much.  I'd be a spiritual weakling with no chance to build the muscle needed for the eternities, at least the kind of eternity I desire.

Well, I had a muscle building experience last night at my son's game.  What is usually a joyous experience for me where I bond with my sons and celebrate life with them got intruded upon. Intruded upon because my ex brought her fiance, my former neighbor, to watch my son's game with her.  Mind you, I haven't even been divorced a year yet.  It's very difficult to not allow my rage to erupt.

Seeing them last night was a wake up call.  Whether I like it or not, I'm going to have to keep seeing these two over and over again.

As difficult as it is now and probably will always be, it's me that is required to forgive and that's no small order.  Sometimes I feel that I do forgive.  Other times, like last night, it's just not happening. The Lord intervened for me the last time I saw them together at my daughter's homecoming.  Now I have to work on it on my own and get stronger. I know in time I'll be able to handle this better. Seeing them was like a milestone.  It was a first in regular life.  I've seen them now in a normal life situation.  It will be the first of many. Let's move on.  Right?

It's just that these next few months are going to bring some challenges to me.  Not only has she moved my kids away, but she will be marrying him next month.  It will be bitter sweet for me. Happy that I can stop paying her.  Sad because it will just symbolically cement the destruction of a dream. A dream I had of an eternal family.

But you mark my words my friends, by the grace of God, I'll build a new one, and my children will still be sealed to me.  That's the promise I'm relying on.  And though I can't control the Lord's will or timing in these matters, I still stand upon the promises.  Don't worry.  I'll get over it.  Just like when I played football, I'll never give up.  Upward and onward!

Thank you for letting me rant my friends.  :)