I have grown up around the game of soccer. From the time I was a baby-child, my older brother was playing…and it wasn’t long after I learned how to work my legs that I was running around on a soccer field too. My first team was a “co-ed” team which consisted of me and a bunch of boys. My mess of curly hair bounced on top of my head while I ran up and down a field with a bunch of boys who giggled at the girl on the field.
I grew up as one jersey led to another, each level of competition turning into a higher one as time went on. I lived and breathed the game, and I was fully in love every time I stepped on to the field or had a ball at my feet. I felt alive on the field.
Eventually, that led to every piece of my identity being tangled up in soccer…which team I played on, the position I played, obsessing over making sure I was still starting every game. At the most insane part of my life, I was finishing a season out on one team, beginning pre-seasons for high school ball, and finishing out a winter indoor season. I was no longer a girl in love. I was a girl obsessed.
Stepping on to the field began filling my heart with anxiety instead of life. I over thought everything because I wanted it to be perfect. Knee injuries put my development as a player on hold, and I stupidly ditched physical therapy early so I could get back on the field. A couple of knee injuries later and I was permanently sidelined.
Everything I had based my life on came crashing down as I sat on the couch with my knee in an immobilizer. I hobbled through months of physical therapy (learning to bend your knee again is a really fun process) until I finally heard the words I had feared most from my doctors. It’s probably going to be best for you and your future if you leave the game behind.
I attempted to go back, but quickly discovered nothing was the same. The thing I had loved now became something I hated. I was angry and bitter, and all I wanted was the joy of the game back. I refereed games, I coached teams, and when that didn’t work, I attempted to run completely away from the game, all in the hopes that I would find the satisfaction I had once enjoyed. None of it worked, so instead I lived with the gifts the game had given me: performance anxiety and bitterness.
I let them both eat away at me for a while, even after going away to college and getting involved (hesitantly) in a solid, Jesus-loving community. I slowly started untangling the knots that had bound everything about me to soccer and the loss of it, and started discovering that who I am is not based on what I do or how well I can do it. Beautiful discovery, really, but not one that I was ready to fully accept. I began finding myself in the stands of my youth kids’ soccer games and playing again…always in a spirit of anxiety. No matter how much untangling and discovering I did with my identity – I could not walk onto a soccer field in freedom.
I decided it was impossible for the game to ever be anything but a sad story of loss & regret in my life. I let the idea of my future drift into the impossibilities: What if my kids want to play soccer one day? Am I going to be able to stand on the sidelines and be happy about it? It’s far-off, but it was a serious source of fear for me. I was more than happy to avoid the thing I had once loved and found incredible joy in. It was too small a thing to even think about in relation to freedom, so I walked away in another attempt to detach.
When I came on the Race, I knew this year would be a lot about redemption. (Then again, when is life not about redemption)? I was team leading after a season of exhausting, unhealthy leadership in ministry. I was burnt out on living my ministry. I was tired of learning. I have never known anything but unhealthy relationships and unhealthy boundaries. I thought selflessness and humility looked more like self-deprecation and insecurity than anything. I knew there was refreshment and redemption coming in those areas of my life. I knew the Lord was promising freedom and newness. Little did I know how much He would deliver on those promises.
I had a few chances in the beginning of the Race to be around the game again…and every time I found myself stressed out or angry. I hoped to avoid any kind of serious sports ministry, because I didn’t want to deal with the turmoil inside me.
Fast forward a few months and I’m in Thailand.
Our host has started his own soccer ministry with some of the younger guys who live in the village and he invites us along for an evening. I jump in the back of the pickup truck and start feeling the butterflies of anxiety turn into butterflies of joy as I see a motley crew of barefoot boys running around on a concrete “field.” I hopped out of the truck and lost myself in the pace and the laughter of a game played on concrete with a bunch of foreigners who can’t speak each other’s language. The game was inviting again. It was joyful, and the freedom I thought impossible was just bubbling out of me.
I didn’t look at the field and see a piece of me that had died anymore.
I was seeing a piece of my heart resurrected.
Fast forward again to this month in Moldova.
Our contacts invited us to play soccer with the “youth” on Sunday afternoon. We quickly discovered as we piled out of the minivan that these “youth” were actually a bunch of guys our own age who come home from university on the weekends. I laughed as my teammates and I approached the field and were split into teams.
My mess of curly hair bounced on top of my head while I ran up and down a field with a bunch of boys, just like it was 18 years ago when I first discovered my love of the game.
I stopped to take in the scene for a little while, laughing at my teammates and the Moldovans all the same, and realized that this is how it was meant to be. This is freedom.
Freedom is a game that doesn’t depend on how good or bad you’re playing. Freedom is a game that makes room for the injured. Freedom is a game that awakens life and joy, and that causes laughter. Freedom is a game where I don’t have to struggle for control anymore.
As I told my story to the guys on the sidelines, I admitted how losing the game years ago made me distrust God and doubt His love for me. Lying in bed that night, reflecting on just how much fun I’d had – I realized how God had been guiding me towards freedom I thought impossible and unimportant through soccer fields all over the world. Piece by piece, game by game, foreign friend by foreign friend, God has been showing His insane love for me.
And if there’s anywhere I’ve discovered you can find freedom, it’s in His love.
