My senior year in high school, my biggest dream up until that point in my life, came true. I remember the phone call like it was yesterday. I was sitting at a common lunch table in the cafeteria of my school during my morning off hour. I hung up the phone right as my friend walked up and sat next to me. I was glowing and had an uncontrollable smile on my face. She turned to me questioning my excitement as I joyfully proclaimed, “I just gave my verbal commitment to play Division 1 soccer!” In that moment nothing else mattered. My entire life I had dreamed of this moment.
A week later this dream was followed by my worst nightmare. I was playing in just another one of my usual Saturday morning club soccer games when I took a shot on goal, connecting with the perfect cross ball sent from the corner of the field by my teammate. But as I planted my left foot and swung my hips I felt something pop in my knee and fell to the ground. It was a terrorizing pain that overwhelmed me. As I tried to catch my breath the pain subsided and was replaced with a suffocating stiffness throughout my knee. I must be over reacting I thought as I picked myself up to my feet and made my way off the field. With each step I took my knee buckled beneath me, a feeling that made me sick to my stomach. With a concerning quivering in my voice I went over to my coach and said, “I don’t think its good.” Confused by my ability to walk off the field on my own, he was not all too concerned and asked me to sit down and take a break. Not 10 minutes, he turned to me and said, “Get on the line.” Still trying to shake the nerves and shock that had taken a strong hold over me, I stood up and tried to jog to the line. I made it half way before my knee gave out completely and left my legs trembling beneath me. I turned back to my coach, and with tears in my eyes I said to him, “I can’t play, its bad.”
Not too long after that I found myself sitting at the same lunch table during the same morning off hour. This time, however, when I hung up the phone I was crying. The doctor’s office had just confirmed that I had torn my ACL and would need surgery.
For the next two years, four soccer seasons, I battled injury after injury that kept me from playing the game I loved. At this point in my life, my identity had been completely invested in this single sport and as each day passed that I couldn’t play, I began to lose confidence in myself, as the only thing I knew about myself and thought I was good at was striped away from me.
When I was finally able to play again, I expected everything to come back just as fast as it had vanished. I expected to be the starter on the team, the leading goal scorer, and the all star I had been in my youth. But instead I was greeted with a rude awakening. The one thing that had once and always come easy to me was now hard. I was weak, I lacked muscle memory and strength. I was rusty, out of shape, and slow. I was getting beat to the ball and losing one on ones. I could not score a goal to save my life. In fact I couldn’t even play quick enough to get a shot off on goal.
Who was I?
What had happened to me?
I was not the same player I had once been and I began to believe that I could never be that player again. Everyday was a constant mind game, battling the lies that said I wasn’t good enough; I had nothing to offer my team; that I was a joke.
This made me bitter. And soon I found myself dreading every practice and longing for the day when it would all be over. I was miserable, and when my time playing soccer was finally over, I walked away with a hatred for the sport I had once loved.
Many times I found myself frustrated with the Lord.
I did not understand why things had turned out this way. I couldn’t find the silver lining in all the injuries I had experienced. And people tried to comfort me by saying the Lord had bigger plans for me and was going to use this for His good. But how? I couldn’t see what good all of this had done.
Then the Lord brought me on this crazy thing called The World Race, and I found myself with a borrowed blue soccer jersey, number 20, and a borrowed pair of electric orange cleats that were two sizes too big, running out on the field to play in a college game at STI University in Bacolod, Philippines. I am not really sure how I ended up there. But as I jogged out onto the field, old emotions of pure bliss surfaced from a place that I had buried them. I felt a joy that I had not felt in a long time. And as I played, the Lord reminded me of the happiness this sport brought me. I watched the students as they played with passion, and being a part of that changed my heart for the sport once again.
It was completely a God thing the way it all happened.
My team and I were originally assigned a different ministry at a different school, doing classroom to classroom evangelism. But among some confusion with all the teams having the same host this month, our ministry got switched last minute to STI. And because of this “mix-up”, I had many opportunities to participate in sports ministry. I have never actually done this kind of thing before, and the Lord quickly revealed to me how much I loved it. I immediately connected with the soccer players, and found myself spending time with them each day I was at STI. It was amazing how the Lord used our common interest in soccer to open so many doors for discipleship.
Because of this one sport, I was able to share my story with them, encourage them, cheer for them, play with them, and pray with them.
I had always wanted to believe that there was a reason why I got injured and why I didn’t turn out to be the player I had imagined, but it was always hard to believe in a reason because I hadn’t seen anything good come from it.
And the truth is, I was bitter because the plan I had created for myself hadn’t panned out.
Instead, my injuries forced me to lay down my identity in soccer and place it in the Lord. I learned to turn my eyes from the sport to Him. I learned to stop playing for the world and start playing for Him. I learned to stop focusing on what people around me thought. I learned to find my confidence in Him and not in my talent. I learned that spiritual strength was stronger than any earthly strength. I learned that when I may have failed in the eyes of my coach, God was still pleased with me.
I left the sport bitter because it didn’t go my way, but it went God’s way.
It took me until this past month, with the players at STI, to realize that God’s plan was so much greater than my own. I realized that the things He had taught me in those hard times were far greater than any trophy. God works all things for his good, and I know in the moments when it sucks, it is hard to believe that. But He does and now I see that. He has given me a beautiful story through the trials of injury and identity in soccer to share with athletes around the world. And with this story, I can stand in front of students and bring Him glory through it.
This month I experienced a redeeming love for a sport I thought I hated.
