"Football players get 'hurt' virtually every practice. When hard plastic meets soft human tissue, soreness sets in quickly. We try to teach our players to play through this soreness. Some are better at it than others. It gets tricky when a player is injured. This would be a time when trauma has occurred to the point where the player can no longer perform at a level that can help the team. Typically this is when a medical professional should be consulted. We leave this to your discretion as parents. Typically, a player can practice when they are hurt, but not when they are injured."
These are the words of Mike Schmidt, the principal and football coach at our local high school where Kodren is now playing football. I have known Mike for many years and have always appreciated his point of view on all areas of education and sports but the above quote is one of my favorite. And I believe that it really applies to life in general, at least it does for me. This is a follow up post to my last post about seeing the parable of the talents in a different light. In that post I stated the following: "People will hurt you if you are vulnerable. I cannot promise otherwise, this will happen." I have pondered this a great deal and I realize that I often take myself out of the game and even out of practice because of a hurt, when I should be able to play through the soreness. I fear that a lot of people in the world are doing likewise. And I think that the people out there who have agendas are using the fact that we want to avoid not only injury but we want to avoid all hurt to keep us from fully living.
How do we learn to play through the soreness? How do we not allow the hurt or the fear of the hurt to rule our decisions and our actions? And if we receive true injuries, how long do we place ourselves out of commission before we jump back into the fray? These are the questions that are weighing on my mind right now. I want to be a star player. I want to seriously make a dent in the mission that I feel I was placed here to fulfill. But I have to learn to play through the soreness and that is hard. I am a wimp. I really, REALLY like to be comfortable and safe but it is time now to take risks and push myself. In the words of my daughter Michayla, "It is time for adventure". A large enough part of me is ready for adventure to begin to do some hard things and to push back against the pain and soreness. So tell me...how do you find a way to play through the soreness? And how do you manage to understand fully when you are hurt vs injured? I would really love to get some feedback on these ideas. I want to be fully alive and not have anyone and their agenda(s) rule over me because of my fears or needs to be comfortable.
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