Climbing Back Up the Mountain

I simply love the moments when God directly reveals to me exactly what I need to hear!

Yesterday, I had a lacrosse game. It was an important game, because it determined who we would play first in playoffs this weekend. As a goalie, i feel a lot of pressure to play flawlessly, because if I mess up, the scoreboard shows it. The game was turned in to an uphill battle when it started to hail and snow, and became quite windy. It was miserable weather to be outside in. To make matters worse, I could not find my game. I was trying to mentally stay in it, but I was having a terrible game. I felt distanced from it emotionally and physically. Finally, in overtime, I got my act together and started to stop the shots coming at me. My team played awesome throughout the whole game! We pulled ahead and won during overtime..

This morning we were supposed to play our first game of playoffs. When I woke up, I prayed that God would speak to me through my devotions. He did.

The devo for today out of "my utmost for his highest" by Oswald Chambers put in to words what I needed to hear. It gave me a new mindset and perspective for games like yesterday, and for life when the circumstances aren't matching up to what I'd like them to be.

Let me try to sum up the devo: We all have moments when we feel we are at the top of our game. We're standing on top of the mountain and feel better than ever before... ready to face whatever the world is going to bring our way. But we are not meant to live forever in moments like this. When we are not on the top of the mountain, it can be so easy to shut down. But Chambers writes, "yet we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there." When we are feeling defeated, down, or unable, it is easy to say "oh how wonderful it would feel to be on that mountain top again." but that is not going to get us there! When we are longing for the mountain top experience, hopeful wishing won't get us there. We must act! "we must pick ourselves up by the back of the neck and shake off our fleshly laziness. Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience." We need to learn how to live our every day, plain, "gray" lives in light of what we've learned when we saw when we were atop the mountain.

So when I face games like yesterdays, or days where I feel like throwing in the towel and giving up on what I'm doing, I can take encouragement from this. Every day is not supposed to be easily conquered. I've had good days, and can use the strength from those good days to help pull myself up on the "gray" days. I can choose to kick my laziness, doubts, and pessimism out the door and to replace it with hard work, determination, and optimism.