Bad Calls

Last Saturday night, my hometown high school basketball team was playing for the State Championship.  The stage was set.  Small town boys from across the state took the floor at The Pit to duke it out for the blue trophy.  When the dust settled, my hometown team was defeated.  The worst part was that the game was lost on a last second questionable charging call made by an official that took away the winning basket we scored.

Sometimes, you get bad calls in life.  Politics causes you to be overlooked for a promotion.  Lung cancer appears in a body that never puffed a cigarette.  Infertility prevents a dream from becoming a reality.  A layoff spirals into bankruptcy.  The wedding ring you want to badly appears nowhere in sight.

You get bad calls in life.  It's a hard lesson to learn at 17, and I can tell you, it's not much easier to learn at 31.

I trust that these boys will learn that lesson and how to move on to great things.  I hope that they will realize the great accomplishment that bringing home a red trophy is, even when they wanted blue.  I hope they will appreciate the support of our tiny community that spent the last week hoping and cheering and painting red and white signs.  I hope they will relish the physical ability to play basketball at all, regardless of the outcome on the scoreboard.  I hope they will appreciate the friendships they have formed with their teammates.

Mostly, I hope they will spend the rest of their lives working hard, keeping their heads down, and fighting for whatever championships they seek to achieve.  Because sometimes, you get bad calls in life.  It's how you respond that will really matter.