Expecting to Lose

I have struggled with who I am, how I am defined. Throughout my life, I would give myself to certain interests and seek to be defined by them; whether it be dinosaurs, football, music, girls or even drugs. I would devote myself to be filled with every tidbit of info I could find about these interests and would find gratification in the search. But I have also felt a common thread through each of these things, I would lose.

Football has been the clearest example of this losing for me. My high school team lost 29 straight games during my career and went on to lose 20 more after I left. To be the captain of that team and to love something as much as I loved football, that hurt. I can't even give words to how it felt to lose so much or how demoralizing it is to think we never had a chance. And to add to this, the team that I gave my attention to, the South Carolina Gamecocks, were perennial underachievers. The first time they ever won a post season game came 100 years into their experiment with football back 1995.

We've flirted with success here and there but only to find our hands empty. After a while, you just expect to lose. I have realized that the one word that best sums up my self-opinion is 'loser.' Football seems small compared to the failed relationships, the drug abuse, practically flunking out of college, and severe depression that became my story.

God has this thing for giving new names. The great persecutor of the early church Saul, rode the meager christian out of town and into death, but God defeated him and gave him a new purpose and a new name, Paul. He would go on to write 2/3's of the New Testament and was almost single-handily responsible for bringing the faith to all of Europe. And yet he never forgot his first name, 'chief of sinners' and because he never forgot, the power of his new name was unsearchably immense.

God is giving me a new name too. Once a loser I now find myself living under the moniker of 'victorious.' Its a hard pill to swallow. Even though I sobered up, made it through college with honors, and have the greatest relationship of my life with my wife, I still am scared that I will lose it all, that I will lose even my new name.

And it was in the midst of this fear and uncertainty that I watched the Gamecocks win a second consecutive baseball national championship. And not just win it, but do it in style. Pulling off near-miraculous plays when all seemed lost, breaking the all-time records for consecutive tournament wins, to do it against near-insurmountable odds like your best player playing with a broken wrist. And best of all, I kept expecting them to lose and I was so wrong.

This team comes from a place that knows nothing of winning. The schools athletics seemed so doomed to lose that the local papers refer to the 'chicken curse' as stifling all the opportunities for victory. But this group of self-proclaim nobodies won in way never seen before. And while most simply enjoyed the spectacle, I was floored with the sprig of hope these gamecocks were bringing me.

I am not destined to lose.

Life has thrown me some wicked curve balls, I've had my share of brokenness but my expectations are changing with my name. I am beginning to believe that I might just win. And that, my friend, is the greatest hope I can imagine.

A Children's Message: Good Names

One of the joys of being a parent is teaching your children about animals. With Mary Grace, this has been a lot of fun. She sometimes gets lions and tigers mixed up, but she has her farm animals down. She will sit in my lap as we flip through a book of animals, pointing out all the ducks, geese, horses, cows, and bunnies. Her new favorite game is for me to ask her if her animal friend, Jack-Jack, who is a cat, is some other kind of animal. She'll sheepishly grin and moan a long "no" that implies that her daddy is silly. It is so funny to her to hear us give the wrong name to Jack-Jack. She like most little kids loves animal names.But how did all these animals get their names?

A long time ago the very first person, Adam, had the huge honor of naming the animals. One can imagine the line of creatures miles long waiting with anticipation to hear Adam pronounce, "woodpecker" or "duck-billed platypus." Adam sure was creative, I would never of thought to call a black-and-white striped horse a Zebra, I would just call him "confused." But I also imagine that this was a lot of fun for Adam and that it meant a lot to him to name the animals. I have had the honor to name some things in my life and those too have been fun and meaningful.

My dog's name is Brandy, I gave her this name because her parents names were Belle and Buddy. I wanted her to have a "B" name too so that she was connected to her parents. Michala and I name our cars too. My old, beat-up white truck was called possum. We named him that because he was white, fast, and ratty. But best of all, I was privileged to name my daughter. She is named after her great-great grandmother, her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mom. In her name is line of women who loved Jesus and we wanted to her to be connected to these beautiful women before her. Our names mean a lot, they give us our identity.

Long before I named possum and brandy, long before we were named, even before Adam named the animals, God named everything. He gave everything, the sky, the stars, the oceans and the mountains, and especially us our first name. He looked at all he made and he named us "Good." Before we are Michael or Sally, or any other name, our first name, our most important name is the one God gives us: Good. 

"God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!" Genesis 1:31