“EUNIS!!! Quit being lazy!” I yell at the basketball practice we held at the orphanage on Wednesday for their girls team. Breath of Heaven recently had someone who loves basketball raise the support to come and build them a court on their beautiful African property surrounded by corn fields. Michael Devine, the husband who runs the place, loves basketball and asked us to come by and coach the girls a little.
Practice was a blast. The girls, (between the ages of 10 and 15) were great and Derek and I had a blast coaching. We did a lot of fundamental drills, and for the most part, they worked hard. Although all of them were still learning, I could tell that some were natural athletes and had a knack for the game. Eunis was one of them. At only 12, I could tell she was a leader of the group. So it frustrated me when she showed moments of what I deemed laziness or disinterest. I could tell that she has a lot of potential so I wanted to push her to do the best she could. “EUNIS! Let’s go!! Pick it up!” “Great shot Eunis! Hustle back!” “Ah! You can do better, make that pass!” Yet I can tell something is missing with her. After another lazy shot, the encouragement turned into “EUNIS!! Quit being lazy!” Her head dropped as she walked to back of the line. Occupied with the other 11 girls, I quickly move on as we begin to scrimmage, and forget all about the incident as we are teaching them a zone defense. I was thrilled by how hard the girls worked and how well they understood the offense and defense. It was a blast. Me and Derek are usually super encouraging when we’re doing sports with kids, so practice ended well, we prayed it out, and the girls walked us back to Mike’s house. What a night. I wish we had discovered this orphanage at the beginning of the month.
But as we’re talking in Mike’s house, I’m bragging on the girls and say something to Eunis. She has a frown on her face so I ask her what’s the matter. “You called me lazy”, she says, not even accusingly, but with hurt in her voice. My first reaction in my head? “What? After all the encouragement today, that’s what you remember?” The second reaction? Shame. As an orphan, chances are this girl already lacks the necessary life giving affirmations that a family is supposed to provide. To make matters worse, she’s just had a surgery to remove a bone from inside her ear which was threatening to penetrate her brain, which is why something was missing from her that day. Dang. Salt on an open wound. I remove my foot from my mouth so I can apologize to Eunis for calling her lazy before we leave. She graciously accepts.
Now, this isn’t supposed to be condemning, nor am I saying that there aren’t times when people need to be called out. What I am saying is that there is power in our words, and in the tongue is the power of life and death. So we should be very careful with what we say and how we say it, because we often don’t realize the effect our words have on people, especially those in positions of authority.
Oh and #teamdreamteam is still living the dream here in Africa.
