Season Shifts

2/21/16

Yesterday, my third season of college basketball ended.  Basketball has always been an important part of my life and this season was particularly impactful to me.   It was my eleventh year being a part of a basketball team, which is crazy to think of. 

The Lord has taught me a lot.  Not only have I learned to be a better coach and heightened my basketball IQ, but I've also grown as a man.  But one of the ways I grow and still fight with basketball is fighting low confidence and insecurity.  A lot of that happens during the season, but it seems to be the worst once the season is over.

With the end of a season comes the start of a new one.  After summer, the season of autumn starts.  With sports, it is referred to as the offseason, but no matter what season it is, it must always end and another must start. 

Sometimes you want seasons of life to hurry up as fast as they can and be over with, but others, you want them to last until the last drop of joy is sucked out of it.

If anyone watches the NBA this might resonate with you.

I have always wondered what it must be like for the Golden State Warriors right now.  They are on track to have one of the best seasons in basketball history and look unstoppable.  I still do not think they are the 95/96 Bulls (That is a conversation for another place), but for both of those teams, there must be a feeling within them where they never want that season to end.  They want the magic of winning games and being adored by thousands to last forever. But, just like every season of life, it will end.  There must be a time of feeling devastating low at some point after that enormous highlight of a season.

The end of the old, the start of a new – A transition for talking about transitions.

The best life lessons can be found in the transitions of life.  That being said, they can usually be some of the suckiest times of life too.  Being freshmen in high school or college, your first real job, the first months of a relationship or marriage or having a first child appear to be some of the most lesson filled times of many lives.  Whenever there is something brand new to us, we have a lot of learning in a quick amount of time. 

Transitions seem to be a season in-between season, which I guess if you think about that too hard will dizzy your mind like it did mine.  Maybe they are a sub-season?  Whatever it doesn’t really matter.  They are some of the hardest times for us because they are times with the most unknowns. 

Uncertainty can kill us.  Uncertainty kills me and with the end of a season into a transitional time, there seems to be a lot of uncertainty.

“What is my life going to be like now that my girlfriend broke up with me?”

“Who are going to be my friends in college?”

“How am I going to afford rent with an entry level salary?”

These questions and many others weigh us down during times of transitions.  But transitions are good for us.  They are the prepping state for the new season is about to begin.  You have to rip a band-aid to get it off, which hurts, but helps you in the future.  They help us get ready for whatever the Lord has for us next.

In the season

As the great philosopher, Andy Bernard once said, "I wish someone would tell us when we are in the good old days while we are still in them."

During a new season, we typically start idealizing the future or the past, but rarely embrace the current, especially when that season that is not going so hot.  Just like I wonder how the Bulls and Warriors feel, I wonder how brutal it was to be a part of the 2008 Detroit Lions, the only team to lose every game in NFL history.  That must have been brutal on the psyche of those players and coaches.

Pastor Bill Van Groningen, the Chaplain at Trinity Christian College where I attend, once told me one of the most impactful pieces of advice in my life.  I was speaking to him while I was really struggling my freshmen year of college.  He told me something along the lines of this.

We often find ourselves in the wilderness.  The wilderness is a time when we can learn.  The wilderness is not fun, but we are always thankful for it.  (and then he asked me) Which do you think is the better way out of the wilderness, the fastest way or the correct way?

Whenever we are struggling, we are trying to get out as fast as we can and just want it to end, but just like how the great season of the 95/96 Bulls had to end and the 15/16 Warriors will have to end, so did the 0-16 season of the 2008 Detroit Lions.  The Bulls and Warriors never want a season like theirs to end, but the Lions were probably hoping they had the remote from the terrible Adam Sandler movie Click so they could get the season over with.  With both teams they should not be thinking ahead.  The Warriors should just enjoy it instead of thinking about it ending.  The Lions should learn as much as they can while they are struggling.  No matter what, they should be in the moment, probably my all time least favorite cliché, but one of the most important in life.

Seasons come and go, but we need to recognize whatever kind of season we are in while we are in it.  We can’t focus on what happened or what is going to happen, but on what is happening, because it will not last forever.

Our lives will not be all flowers and candy, but they will not all be wildernesses either.  We get thousands of seasons in our lifetime.  Awareness of the situation while we are in the situation and seeking God’s wisdom during our current seasons, good and bad, help prepare us for the next seasons of our lives, not dwelling on our past season or dreaming of our next one.