With basketball season going on all I have been thinking about lately is well….basketball. For those of you who don’t know, I played basketball from when I was five all the way up through my sophomore year. I was on JV/Varsity my freshman year and Varsity my sophomore year. I planned on playing ball in college but instead I decided not to play my junior or senior year. Why you might ask? To be completely honest with you when I told my coaches I wouldn’t be playing anymore I had no idea why. So, we can rewind a little bit and I’ll tell you how this all went down. One day out of literally no where I had this weird feeling that I shouldn’t be playing basketball anymore and I had no idea why. I know the idea seemed so stupid considering the plans for my future and the time and money my mom had spent on the sport that made me feel as if I was actually some what good at something. So I walked into my moms room one night of my sophomore summer and told her I didn’t want to play basketball after my summer season was over. At first she just laughed at me ….like really hard. Then as I was already tearing up she asked me if I was actually serious. She started yelling at me telling me how much money and time she had invested in basketball over the years (as if I didn’t already know) and how this was a bad decision and so on. As I’m just standing there during all of this saying absolutely nothing (in total shock) she asked me why and I honestly didn’t know why so I just bull crapped some answer… I told her it was so I could focus on school , which was really stupid because I wanted to play ball in college. She didn’t believe me anyway (moms always know stuff like that). So as she continues to yell at me about how this would be a huge mistake and how if I quit id have to get a job and blah blah blah. She told me I would have to make my final decision that night and tell my coaches at practice the next morning myself after I found a ride to practice of course. So as I’m now basically balling my eyes out in my room I began to ask God for help (something I had never really done before) I asked him to reveal him self and I just prayed for hours which was so crazy to me. So the next morning I obviously had to go to practice. I still didn’t know what I was going to tell my coaches I didn’t know if I was going to quit or not the entire practice, I mean I didn’t even have a reason at the time of why I wanted to quit something I loved so much. Toward the end of practice we had to run suicides and apparently I wasn’t running as fast as I should so my coach stopped every single one of us walked up to me and said if you don’t want to be here then just say so…. I didn’t know if that was a sign or not but you know what? I trusted in God because it’s not just a coincidence when things like that happen after prayer, it’s just God showing you a tiny tiny glimpse of how he works. Anywho I still struggle with “what if’s” but I do know if I would still be playing basketball I wouldn’t be where I am today with my relationship with God. I’ve realized so many things the past two years and one thing I know for sure is that ball isn’t life ….Jesus is.
ps. Even though my mom still misses it as much as I do…she got over it (;
