Life lessons from softball:

Yesterday, I had a softball game . . . theoretically.  It was a make-up game for a rain out that we had in May.  However, the other team had a miscommunication and didn’t show up.  We decided to stay and have batting practice.  I was out in the field shagging balls and I injured myself (minorly), twice.  Once, a grounder bounced off my mitt, hit my thumb and flew over my head.  The thumb is bruised and a little ouchy.  The other time, I was fielding a hard-hit line drive, let it take a hop and it slammed into my shin (even more bruised and ouchy).

But this morning, walking with my friend, I was explaining to her that if I had been playing a game neither of these would have happened.  Because I wouldn’t have been so casual.  I would have run up on the ball, squeezed harder when it hit my mitt, gone for the line drive on the fly.  I might have missed, might still have hurt myself, but it wouldn’t have been these hurts.  “So”, I concluded, “it’s really my own fault . . .  I mean . . . play like you mean it.”

She agreed and related it to her milieu, which is theatre.  She said that the very best actors are those that give 100% at every rehearsal, every read through, every time; in short, those that play like they mean it.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not very good at playing like I mean it, even in the games that are far more important than softball.  It’s one of the things that God is talking to me about a lot lately.  In fact, I think He wants me to adopt it as my motto for a while until it becomes second nature.  And so I’m trying, in my life, in my work and, yes, even in my play, to play like I mean it.

Colossians 3:23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men,