Do it for Him

Yesterday, I played in my last meaningful college baseball game. We have four more games on the schedule but they don’t mean anything for our season. We lost two straight games in the conference tournament; including a double-digit beating we took from Catawba to essentially end our season. I’ve still yet to shed a tear and I don’t really know why I haven’t cried. Last year I balled my eyes out when we lost at conference tournament. I was completely distraught to see some of my best friends finish out their playing careers one year ago. I guess I am refusing to let reality sink in, or maybe I know I still have a few more times to put on a jersey and walk onto that grassy diamond. I am sure the last game I play; there will be no chance to hold in the emotion.

            My senior season did not turn out the way I envisioned it. In fact, my last season to play baseball has been by far the most frustrating baseball year of my life. After our first loss in conference tournament I tweeted the question “What do you do when hard work refuses to pay off?” I didn’t know the answer until today. But before I get to the answer to that question, let me give you a glimpse of how my senior season has gone. I’m usually not this negative or this concerned about telling people about my problems. After all, people have their own problems. They don’t want to hear about mine. But I believe and hope that by telling people about the last 10 months of my life, they will learn a thing or two.

            The drama began last August, right before I came back to school. I was having shoulder pain that traced all the way back to the previous season at Carson-Newman. I thought time off from throwing would make the pain go away, but I was completely wrong. An MRI revealed a torn labrum in my throwing shoulder. The labrum is similar to the meniscus in the knee except it’s in your shoulder. The tear makes throwing extremely painful and almost always requires surgery to fix. In my case, I needed surgery to repair the damage. The problem was the recovery time for surgery would have me ready to play dangerously close to the start of the season IF everything with rehab went according to plan. One minor set back during rehab and I could miss my senior season of baseball. Here were my options: 1. Have the surgery and risk getting set back and missing my last year to play baseball. 2. Postpone surgery. Rehab my shoulder and play my senior year with the tear in my arm. Now for those of you who don’t know, I play second base. You don’t need a Rafael Furcal-like arm to play second. Plus, the idea of missing my senior season terrified me so much that I chose to rehab my shoulder and play the season with the tear.

            I rehabbed and received treatment for the injury almost every day from the time I got back to school to the day our season ended (special thanks to my athletic trainer Misty Hudgins for dealing with me the entire year!). The strengthening exercises allowed me to get through the fall and play in the spring. I had to sit out more games that I would have liked during the season to give my shoulder the necessary rest, but I was able to play in the majority of the games. I often compared myself to a man in a gunfight with limited ammo. I learned certain tricks to conserve my limited ammunition (throws). When fielding a groundball, I would shuffle my feet several times before throwing. The shuffles would allow me to get closer to my target and the momentum allowed me to use my body weight to throw which in turn, took pressure off of my shoulder. Double-play turns were by far the most painful throws I had to make. I have never been stabbed before but I imagine being stabbed in the shoulder would have a similar feel to the double-play throws I had to make during season. Luckily my shortstop Troy Zawadski either touched second base himself whenever possible or booted the groundball so I didn’t have to throw (just kidding Troy. I love you man!). The point is, I had to make all kinds of adjustments throughout the season so I could play.

            The good part about the season despite my injury was that I was able to play. That’s what I wanted. However, a huge negative of the season was the success I had… or lack there of. I am embarrassed to even put this out in the public. I spent most of the year hoping people wouldn’t look at the stat sheet online. I usually don’t really care about stats or what people think about my abilities as a player, but my average was so devastatingly low that I couldn’t help but worry. I hit under 150 my senior year in college. I’m not going to make excuses for my poor offensive performance. I’ll say it was as simple as slumps, bad luck, and at times shaky confidence combining to make this the statistically worst offensive year of my life… literally. I envisioned myself riding off into the sunset at the end of my college career. After hitting below 150, it was more like an ugly stumble into a grayish evening. I wish I could say the team had great success despite my struggles, but the team finished under 500 for the first time since I have been at Carson-Newman. To our credit, despite one of the worst starts imaginable, the team rallied back and made it to the conference tournament. We all showed true character and resilience in the way we battled around the adversity we faced early in the year. Our team truly was made up of guys with amazing amounts of heart, character, perseverance, and intestinal fortitude. I love all my guys I played with for that.

            But enough with the “warm fuzzies” (as my coach Tom Griffin would put it). In summary, I played my last year hurt and had LITERALLY the worst offensive season of my life. I even hit better my freshman year of high school when I weighed about as much as a Beanie Baby. Needless to say, the last 6 months or so have been extremely tough for me. Baseball has been an enormous chunk of my life for about 18 years now. It’s been incredibly tough to see the final chapter of my playing career fizzle out the way it did. So what did I learn? I know the anticipation is rising to read what I learned but hold on a little bit longer. Before I reveal the lesson my last year taught me, I have to make another confession about one of my flaws as a person. My entire life I have been the guy that 99% of the time, people watching or not, I make the right decision. Hard work, honesty, dedication, and the right choices have been staples of my life. I’m not saying I haven’t made mistakes or bad choices. I have made lots of bad choices. I wish I could take some of those bad decisions back. But for the most part, 99% of the time, I do the right thing. The flaw?... I believed I deserved something for it. I have never verbally told anybody that belief which makes it weird that I am choosing to make that revelation on an Internet blog! (I confuse myself sometimes). I don’t think I ever actually admitted it to myself. But I believed because I work hard and do the right thing, I deserve something special.

            Here is what I learned: you are not owed anything in life. Neither God, nor the World owes you anything for your hard work or right choices. Now let me pause, because right now you’re probably thinking what a pessimistic, cynical, evil person for making me read two pages to try to teach me such a depressing lesson. The lesson for me would have stopped there if I had not made by far the best decision of my life. Two and a half years ago I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. If I had not made that decision, the lesson I learned this year would have stopped with the statement I made earlier. I would have started to believe there is no reason to work hard or to make good choices because you do not receive anything in return for doing so. I may have completely changed the type of person I was for the worse. But with Christ in my heart, I know and realize that I may not receive the earthly rewards I want and desire. BUT I will receive the best reward ever: the eternal reward of Heaven. By working hard and doing the right thing, I am giving God the glory with my life. Now, don’t misconstrue what I am saying. I am not saying that good choices and acting the right way will get you to Heaven. Good works alone will not grant you eternal life. Faith in Christ is what counts.

            I want to be successful in life and it’s completely okay to have lofty goals for yourself. I am simply saying and pleading you to realize, no matter how amazing the accomplishment, no matter how much money, fame, or popularity you gain by achieving your goals, the rewards are not worth as much as the reward for giving God the glory with your life. I may have told you about that idea before this past year, but I don’t think I truly believed it until now. I wanted to hit 300 this year. I wanted to have the best year of my life on the field. Did I deserve to have that kind of year? Who knows. I man much wiser than me once said, “God doesn’t treat us the way we DESERVE to be treated. God treats us the way we NEED to be treated.” I NEEDED to learn this lesson. Whether I deserved it or not, it really doesn’t matter. Because the truth of the matter is, we don’t want what we deserve. As human beings, we don’t deserve very much. One of the lyrics in Lecrae’s song entitled Boasting says, “God has never been obligated to give us life/ If we fought for our rights, we’d be in hell tonight.” Lecrae is absolutely right.

            Again I want to make sure my message is clear. I am not saying that working hard won’t get you what you want. Hard work and good choices can ABSOLUTELY allow you to achieve great things in life. I have achieved some amazing things already in life because of the choices I have made and the work I have put in. But don’t be discouraged when you don’t receive the earthly rewards that you were expecting because the eternal reward will be so much sweeter than anything you could obtain in this life (my translation of 2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

            We are all blessed. Whether you believe in Him or not, God has given out so many blessings to us. Cherish all the good things in your life, because they are blessings. I have so many reasons to be thankful. I have two parents that would literally do ANYTHING for me. I have a brother who will support me in whatever I do. I have made countless friends that I know will always have my back. And those are just the relationships I am blessed with. The list would go on forever if I told you every way I am blessed. I may have hit far below the average I wanted to achieve my last year of playing baseball, but that’s okay.

I don’t know what Heaven is going to be like but I can dream. In my dream when I’m in heaven, there’s going to be a baseball season. In that season, I’m going to hit around 456 with 12 triples. I know God isn’t big on greed so I’m only going to hit two homeruns (I always thought taking 4 bases at one time is SO GREEDY!). And I know God isn’t big on stealing but I think he’ll forgive me for the 137 bases I steal when I’m in Heaven!

            So thank you God, for teaching me this lesson about earthly rewards. I used to think I was owed a reward for making good decisions. Now I have learned otherwise. I’m going to continue making the right choice not for the earthly reward and not for a reward that is OWED to me. God will undeservingly reward us because of his love, grace, and mercy. He works in mysterious ways. He works in ways that we don’t want. But in the end, He works in ways to make us stronger. So to answer my question, what do you do when hard work refuses to pay off? You keep working hard. You keep doing the right thing. It WILL pay off and probably already has. If you don’t get the worldly rewards you were expecting, stay the course. Because the reward for giving God the glory with your life will be so much sweeter than anything in this life. Keep working hard. Keep making the right decisions. If not for you, then do it for Him.