A Good Game

Devotional 17

May 07, 2025

In the spirit of spring and new seasons of learning and experiences, this devotional is for all. I hope you find it helpful. ~ Brandi

Impressionistic painting of a little boy leaning down to pick red flowers in a field — Mary Cassatt. Detail, “Picking Flowers in a Field,” 1875. Public Domain.

Early spring’s chill has fled for the last time, and dandelions dot yards and park fields with stars of yellow. The crisp air and longer days have reinspired the joy of playing outside again, so this spring we signed our little boy up to play soccer for the first time.

Alas, team sports has never been my athletic strength. I remember required middle school basketball games and track meets with shuddering failure and embarrassments. I was too short, too slow, too uncoordinated to be much of an asset to a team. But my little boy is not me, and I want him to experience and try all kinds of different physical activities to help him find something he might enjoy doing with his growing, vivacious body.

His father and I also thought learning to be on a team for the first time and listen to an adult we trusted would be good experience, too. All these things combined with sunshine and playing with a good friend from school twice a week outside?

Sign us up for the soccer league.

***

To watch my son learn to be on a team for the first time - chasing after a ball in a group and playing a new game with very specific guidelines - has been a greater lesson in parenting than any rules of sport. “The summer you learned to swim,” Michael Simms begins his poem, “was the summer I learned to be at peace with myself.”1 I have found this to be very true.

Watching my son play soccer for the first time has also humbled me by allowing me to see him and love him exactly as he is.

During practice or games, for example, he picks wildflowers from the field. He stops to look at ants. He’s climbed the soccer goal and had to be relocated back to the ground - more than once. He hugs his friends when he’s supposed to be kicking the ball. He picks up handfuls of dirt. He watches clouds.

He is, in other words, my precious, beautiful boy.

He’s also four years old, and all of this is perfectly normal, developmentally appropriate, and to be expected. I’ll never forget the moments when he brought me a wildflower or I had to extricate him from a tree he’d climbed in his cleats.

What hasn’t been expected, however, are the feelings watching him has elicited in me. He’s on a team with boys who have played soccer before. And although I have tried, conversation with some of the other parents hasn’t resulted in much connection, and so I sometimes feel like an outsider. I’ve caught myself thinking, “Are these other parents looking at me? Is his performance a reflection on us?”

Maybe these aren’t true statements or the right questions to be asking, but they are honest feelings. Maybe other parents have had them, too.

Because of this, I have to work hard to carefully curate my expectations and my own reactions to how my little boy plays. I’m not interested at all in him winning (thank goodness the league doesn’t keep score at age four!), but we do want him to try new things, attempt new skills, see that he’s capable of stretching himself, if only for a short season, with us right there with him, encouraging him on.

And so we steer him away from the trees and back to his teammates kicking a ball into the net.

***

The Saturday morning of his last game I explained that if he listened to his coach and ran after the ball and tried to help his friends, we could get a special treat after his game.

“If you play a ‘good game,’” I said, automatically using that phrase, “and help your friends, we can get ice cream afterwards. Do you think you can listen to your coach and help your friends with the ball?”

“Yes,” he said confidently.

He’s very motivated by ice cream.

***

The day of the game was clear and bright, with a stark blue sky overhead. The weather was perfect, too: not so hot that a few quarters on the field would be too taxing.

Most of the game went as expected, and we cheered our son as he kicked the ball a few times, chuckled when, of course, he did something funny or endearing. There were lots of moments of examining a hole in the ground, and of course, he had to be untangled from the soccer goal once.

But a moment when another parent pulled her son off the field and disciplined him in front of us for something he’d done rattled me. It shattered the lightheartedness of the game and put a spotlight back on difficult feelings that always seemed to creep around the edges of this team sport experience.

I was relieved when we finally climbed into the car to drive away.

“Mommy … ” my son began from the back seat, eyes wide and face pink from running in the afternoon sun.

I thought he might ask me about his snack or an animal he saw or his friend.

But instead, he asked, “Did I play a good game?”

This question unexpectedly broke my heart.

It broke my heart because he didn’t know if he’d played a “good” game. What does that even mean to a four-year-old? In his innocence, he stayed on the soccer field during his quarter and looked at me when I shouted encouragement to chase after the ball, remembering the entire time my promise about the ice cream.

“Of course you did,” I said, turning to him. “You tried your best, and you helped your friends. You did really well, and we’re so proud of you.”

I was not disappointed in him in the least that he noticed the grass or couldn’t help but reach up for the soccer goal or was uninterested in chasing the ball down the weedy field.

I was disappointed in myself that I had so carelessly assigned a four-year-old’s game a value.

The truth is, we’ve been at soccer long enough now to understand that if he has a meltdown or decides not to play a single quarter, it’s okay. It wouldn’t make a “good” or “bad” game or practice. It just makes life at that moment.

And I hope that if he reads this someday he understands how much I cherish all these treasured qualities of childhood he so beautifully exemplifies. I hope he understands how much we have tried to honor and preserve this time for him and how much the only thing we ever want him to be is fully himself.

Perhaps my son does need a definition of what a “good” game is, someday, when he’s older and playing in a more professional and competitive sports environment, if that’s something he chooses to do.

But right now, more than that, he needs my prayers.

Lord, I prayed later, please don’t ever let me crush my son’s innocence or enthusiasm for life. Protect him from my ignorance, from any expectations I have - known or unrecognized - that aren’t right for him or aligned with Your will. Give me the eyes to see this and the endurance to do this.

He got good ice cream that afternoon, a well-deserved chocolate running down his chin.

***

This experience made me question how much we assign value to “performance” in our Christian lives. Sometimes we carelessly tell ourselves that we’re doing a “good” job or a “bad” job because our efforts are going well or terribly.

But what if that value assignment causes us to faulter and miss the point, to take our eyes off the prize, as they say?

“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize?” St. Paul asks in his letter to the Corinthians. “Run in such a way that you may obtain it” (1 Cor. 9:24, NKJV).

St. Paul was writing from Ephesus to the Corithian church, which at the time was fraught with internal disagreements, theological conflict, and disunity.2 Using the metaphor of athletes and boxers training for victory, St. Paul reminds this church that the “crown” (prize) for which they are competing is not a single win for a single winner in a single game, defined by a perishable crown of leaves upon the winner’s head.

Rather, the prize all race toward in the Christian life is the “imperishable crown” of Christ’s glory, in which we all share a part (9:25). We race as Christians toward the ultimate prize that never wilts or fades away: our eternal life in Christ. This prize is available to all, but it takes a lifetime to train for.

“What do you do all day?” a woman looking around once asked a monk at a monastery.

“We fall down and get up again. We fall down and get up again,” he replied.

In order to “fall down and get up,” we first have to show up, asking for God’s strength and grace because we are too incapable and weak to accomplish anything without Him (Phil. 4:13).

Just as there can be no expectation that a four year old can become a fully developed soccer player in one short springtime season, we have to temper our expectations of ourselves, as well. Our efforts, perhaps, are not “good” or “bad” but realistic to who we are and where we find ourselves in the Christian journey.

And this is where God’s endless mercy enters, allowing us to “finish the race” with purpose and confidence (II Tim. 4:7).

“Therefore I run thus,” St. Paul concludes. “[N]ot with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air” (1 Cor. 9:26).

***

There will be another soccer practice this week and just two more games before the season ends. I will remember to tell my son to have fun, listen to his coach, and show me his best discoveries in the fields when everything is over. Maybe he’ll climb a tree in cleats, but we will have ice cream, no matter what.

He has no idea how grateful I am for him. He’s reminded me train and play anew, with my eyes back behind me on the One Who loves us all and encourages us and cheers us on to the end.

For your contemplation:

How would you define the “good” Christian life? Are there qualities or aspects of it (or of yourself) that you have always associated with “doing well” or “winning”? If so, how have you felt when you have failed at these efforts? Take some time to write down your thoughts.
What are some elements of spiritual discipline that you feel you are “skilled” at? (Depending upon your background, some examples might include regular prayer, almsgiving, fasting, attending services, participating in the Sacraments, charitable works/service, regularly reading and studying Scripture/church fathers/religious works, etc.) What are some elements of spiritual discipline that you feel you could improve upon? Make a list in each category and spend some time brainstorming how you might increase your participation in each area.
Lastly, read Acts 20:17-24. How does St. Paul define “finishing my race with joy”? How would you define finishing your own race with joy? Take some time to think about this and then pray for God to give you the ability to see joy in all your endeavors.

Thank you for reading this devotional from Writing from the Desert Places. Did you enjoy it or find it helpful? If so, please feel free to share with others. As always, thank you for your support!

A Good Game

Devotional 17

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