Dear Reader:

Sometimes we get so caught up in football…particularly when it extends over into the next year (literally) that  basketball season is over in a blink and suddenly it’s “Take me out to the Ball Game” time!

I have to admit that after football, baseball is my favorite sport. I think it all goes back to being a  mother with two sons on the same team one season (Walsh as a 10-year-old player and Tommy as their 5-year-old ball boy and mascot- Tommy is on the front row extreme left and Walsh is on the second row…second to the right.) This was the miraculous year when their team won the whole “enchilada” in their age division in the lowcountry!

*Confidentially I liked baseball because I could go settle in the bleachers for their practices…stick my white winter legs out in the sun on another bleacher, roll up my sleeves, and get a jump on a summer tan. (How little did we know?) Half the time I would find myself nodding off…after teaching school all day …sitting on the bleachers in the warm early spring afternoons made my eyes start fluttering a few minutes after I sat down.

But that particular year I have to admit I had mixed feelings (like most of the team parents watching if they were really truthful) about how far we really wanted the season to go. From the time sports started in elementary school…summer vacation time got smaller and smaller until by high school it had disappeared. Baseball went into football and good-bye summer.

However the joy that night as the team won the grand prize for their division actually did make up for a vacation…watching both Walsh and Tommy getting their trophies with wonderful coaches who were the best male mentors a mother could hope for…they made the season even more special.

Walsh would go on to love baseball and play it in high school…Tommy decided he liked another type of ball that came with a golf club….both boys excelled in their different sports passions.

*You know me by now…I am the connector…give me a name and I can find some way to connect it to something else…it is my only somewhat dubious ‘gift.’ Golf reminded me of Bob “Goff” who truly simplifies life with funny and insightful thoughts and one of them dealt abstractly with baseball. Ping! This is it:

“Failure is just part of the process of life, and it’s not just okay; it’s better than okay. God doesn’t want failure to shut us down. God didn’t make it a three-strikes-and-you’re-out sort of thing. It’s more about how God helps us dust ourselves off so we can swing for the fences again. And all of this without keeping a meticulous record of our screw-ups.”

How true! Don’t we humans take the fun out of sports games too often with young children… by getting caught up in our man-made “rules” and meticulous record-keeping? Aren’t we glad God doesn’t do the same to us as we learn more about this game called life with experience after experience?

We don’t have to worry about a ‘Three strikes and you’re out!”situation.  (I don’t know about you but I would be in some serious trouble right now…if that was the case.)

Not only are we not out after striking out three times…God doesn’t even “keep a meticulous record of our screw-ups.” (Not being irreverent  but “Thank God for that!“)

So until tomorrow….As we round the first, second, and third bases of “dangers, toils, and snares” throughout our lives we know we have God waving us in when it time to go home…because “Grace will lead us home.” 

“Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh (Thanks Jo for the reminder this morning that I forgot to add this…how could I have a favorite day if I forgot to add Winnie to it…you are what friends are for…reminders to keep the day a favorite!)

*As I walked by one of my tables today I noticed just how pretty it was with a new beautiful bowl set Lee and Vikki gave me at Christmas and an original oil painting of my bottle tree (that Joan did from a photo taken from an earlier blog post.) You are so talented my friend Joan…and I love, love, love the painting!