John Wooden once said “Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.” These wise words spoken by a legend who has gone through so much in his life and yet is humble enough to tell the Lord “your will be done” demonstrates the example of how to a live a life of worship; to ultimately lay down the desires he had, for what the Lord wanted him to do. We each have a passion, hobby or activity that we love to do, but sometimes we are asked to give that up so that God can reveal something new to us.
This is truly hard to do, to walk away from something that we love in order to obey God’s voice, sometimes we don’t even know that it’s God really telling us. For me, part of my story was giving up sports when I entered into college. I grew up in a family where sports was just apart of who I was and therefore something I always had dreamed of doing in college and professionally. However, when the time came there was just something about stepping into the college level that left me with an uneasiness. I went to a couple colleges, checked out the programs and realized that I didn’t want that to be my life, I knew in my heart that I wanted something outside of sports, but I didn’t know what. Scared, afraid, and nervous for what was ahead I stepped away from what I thought was going to be apart of me for the rest of my life.
I got to talk with one of my friends about his life growing up in a family with sports enthusiasts. Sports became his life, in particular baseball, which he ended up playing in college. Life though had its unexpected curveballs and yet even in the midst of it all God had bigger plans for him, he just didn’t know it yet. God started him on a journey that took him from a dark valley, into the wilderness, that continued into a desert which ultimately brought him to a mountain in which he had to climb. This all began with a choice. The choice was the willingess to step away, to then step into what the Lord really had for him and still does to this day. It wasn’t a simple decision, or maybe it was, but the fact of the matter is that it was hard to give up something, to let go of a part of his life he had known for so long, for a future of uncertainty.
These decisions to quite literally walk out on faith all come with a sacrifce, it comes with the willingness to die to self. With this choice to let go of the “identity” both I and my friend thought we had, we ended up learning that really we were both just too scared to step into the greatness that the Lord truly had for us. Why? Really, I think I can speak for both of us when I say it is becuase we didn’t want to let go of the one thing that defined who we were, to say “never mind” to the dreams, hard work, and passion that drove us. And say “no” to where we each had felt accepted and valued for what we could do, where we felt most affective. Yet, again Wooden got it right when he said “Don’t let making a living, prevent you from making a life.”
This is where we both were stuck in our ways of how sports were going to be our way of making a life, its funny how we didn’t have a clue what was to unfold. For, since that time of stepping away, God has done some really amazing and special things in both our lives. Revealing to us both, our true identity in Him and how He has such good plans that far exceed our own. Do either of us really know what the future holds? No, yet we both can look ahead with hopeful expectancy of what He is going to do, saying more of “yes” rather than “no.” To have faith that welcomes mystery into our lives where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strenth then to let go of our fear of uncertainty. For surely we are the lucky ones of our generation; blessed to battle. For who else gets to love with such verve? To look into the unkown, serene, because long ago we decided the fog and bitter nights with a brimming cup were far better than armchairs and emptiness. Truly I cannot imagine any other life than the one I am living, right here, right now.
