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Rebel Talk: Not a Verdict
Both of my boys had basketball tryouts recently.
And as a dad, this one hit me harder than I expected.
My oldest is in 8th grade. He's tall. He can shoot. And the kid can block shots like nobody's business.
But his ball handling isn't where it needs to be yet.
He grew fast. Really fast. And sometimes I watch him out there and I swear I'm watching myself at his age.
I remember those years.
I grew fast too, and for a while it felt like my arms and legs belonged to somebody else. I was stumbling into everything. My friends called me Gangly. Gumby.
For those of you who survived the '90s, you'll understand the reference.
Eventually, your body catches up.
But when you're a kid living through it, you don't know that yet.
You just know that you tried out for a basketball team...
and you made the lowest team.
And Dad can't fix that.
That's the part of parenting nobody really prepares you for.
When they're little and they fall down, you pick them up.
When something breaks, you fix it.
When they're scared, you tell them it's going to be okay.
But then they get older.
And eventually life starts handing them things that Dad can't fix.
A coach makes a decision.
They don't get picked.
Someone else gets the opportunity.
They work hard and still don't get the result they wanted.
And you're standing there watching someone you love more than anything hurt.
My heart broke for him.
I found myself praying for the right words.
Not words that would make him feel like the coaches were wrong.
Not words telling him that it doesn't matter.
Because it does matter to him.
I wanted the words that would help him understand something that took me a lot longer to learn:
Where you are today is not where you have to stay.
Maybe the coaches are right.
Maybe his ball handling isn't good enough right now.
Okay.
Then we know what to work on.
That's not a verdict.
That's a roadmap.
You can spend your energy being angry about the team you made.
You can decide you're just not good enough.
You can look around at the kids who made the higher teams and convince yourself they have something you don't.
Or...
You can get to work.
You can dribble until that basketball feels like an extension of your hand.
You can work when nobody is watching.
You can turn the weakness everybody sees today into the strength nobody expected tomorrow.
That's the part I hope he understands.
Not today, maybe.
Maybe not even this season.
But someday.
Because the team you make in 8th grade doesn't determine the man you're going to become.
How you respond to making that team might.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, my younger son reminded me that maybe we're doing a few things right.
He tried out too.
Last year he was on the lower team.
This year he moved up and made the B team.
He was excited.
He should be.
He earned it.
But when we talked about it, he told me he was excited...
but sad for his brother.
Man.
That one got Dad.
Because that's brotherhood.
Being proud of yourself without needing someone else to lose.
Being able to celebrate your own win while still feeling the disappointment of someone you love.
Those are things that matter long after basketball is gone.
So right now, I have one son learning how to handle disappointment.
I have another learning how to celebrate with compassion.
And I have a dad still trying to figure out exactly what to say to both of them.
Maybe that's parenting.
Maybe we're not supposed to have all the answers.
Maybe our job isn't to clear every obstacle out of their way.
Maybe it's to walk beside them long enough to teach them that obstacles aren't the end of the road.
Sometimes they're the beginning.
I've lived long enough now to know something my 8th grader doesn't know yet.
Life is going to put you on the team you didn't want sometimes.
You're going to get passed over.
You're going to lose.
You're going to find out somebody is better than you.
You're going to discover weaknesses you didn't know you had.
And it's going to hurt.
But those moments give you a choice.
Let it define you.
Or...
Let it develop you.
Son, you didn't make the team you wanted.
I know that hurts.
But now you know where the work is.
So let's work.
Because you don't have to be the best today.
You just have to refuse to stay the same tomorrow.
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