Losing a Tennis Match
Earlier this week I gathered as usual on Monday night with a group of new but dear friends to play tennis. It is a time of the week I look forward to – the tennis is great and the companionship of friends with whom we share faith and our hearts makes it even better. This week my partner and I started out our match up a couple of games and I could almost taste how sweet the victory was going to be. Maybe we both needed to feel like we won something that week, maybe we started thinking too much about winning rather than enjoying the game and maybe our opponents just played better. We fought valiantly, the match went to a tie breaker but ultimately we lost. It shouldn’t have been a big deal. There was still a glass of wine waiting for me and the fellowship of my friends but I was consumed with the feeling that I was a loser.
I drove home still in a funk but not really knowing why. As I pulled into the garage and went to collect my tennis gear from the trunk of the car my neighbors pulled up after a dinner out on the town. Knowing how much I enjoy my Monday night tennis, they called out “Vicki how was tennis?”. I am sure they were expecting a much more positive response than they received.
What ensured was what I can only describe as an impromptu therapy session on my front lawn. The dear couple who live next door are half my age and a foot taller than I am. My precious neighbors wrapped me in a big bear hug as I sobbed and just kept repeating “I am a loser”. As the wife went in to put away the box of leftovers, she brought their dog out to add to the support group. What, they kept asking me, had happened? My head didn’t know but my heart was inconsolable.
Are you familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality assessment? If so, you know that the preference alternatives related to decision making are thinking versus feeling. I am an off the chart feeler – don’t ask me what I think about something until you know what is on my heart – that is just how life works for me. My heart didn’t know why it was hurting so much so my head was clueless.
Eventually, the therapy session broke up and I went inside. The TV was on and tuned to the Houston Astros game which had ended. I hadn’t checked the notification on my phone to see if the Astros won and the replay was getting ready to start so I settled in on the couch for new next several hours and watched the game as though it hadn’t already taken place.
I saw that my friends had sent a group text out voicing concern, support, and comments on how much our friendships mean along with lots of cute emoji’s. I didn’t yet have words to share, it was very late and hopefully, I was the only sleepless one in the group so I read the messages, held my friends close in my heart and kept trying to determine why I was hurting so badly – it really couldn’t be about losing a tennis match.
Around 2:30 AM the replay of the game ended with a victory for my Astros (see I was a winner after all!) and it was time to get up off the couch and get ready for bed. After prying my contact lenses out of my swollen, puffy eyes, I hoped in the shower. I washed away the sweat but still couldn’t stem the flow of tears. Getting into bed with my iPad ready to look at the latest list of homes on the market and yet more floorplans on Pinterest – yes this was going to refocus me. But no, the tears now stained my pillow case and still, I didn’t have the answer my heart sought.
My subconscious must have been at work during the few short hours of sleep I got that night. That morning I was starting to understand the source of the pain. The fact of losing at a game led me to feel like a loser which had tapped into my childhood pain and woundedness of not being valued. I took unrelated events and liked them together like a chain – one that grows longer and stronger as each new link is soldered into place. No one, including me, intended for that to happen. Truly, the enemy seeks out where we are most vulnerable and often in clever ways attacks us when we are unaware.
Your wounds are likely very different than mine but you too may find that you keep adding links to that ugly chain. Links God never intends for us to add. He does use these places where we have been hurt to create a compassion in us to serve others. He intends to use that pain from our past to further His kingdom, not for us to keep wounding ourselves or others.
Will you join me in identifying these burdens in our lives and then leaving them at the foot of the Cross. Then with the power of the risen Savior living in and through us go out and use our gifts to serve others in His name.
Blessings,
Vicki
© Chateau Life Coach