Patience In Your Pain: A Letter to Kevin Durant

Whenever I watch sports, one narrative that always pulls at my deepest emotion: when a star athlete has a terrible almost-career ending injury.

Can you imagine the difficulty living in a city that every time sports is mentioned on the evening news, your condition and viability is mentioned in the same breath… every single day? The fans, the front office, your agent… everyone wants you back out there playing. Even the doctors treating you might have to answer to the front office and be under pressure to get you back on the field or court as soon as possible.

It must be a horrible process when that player is by themselves late at night… questioning their ability, their age, their relevance. I’m sure they also even have fear – are they good enough to ever come back?

After intense painful therapy, blogs, salary questions, ESPN discussions, the player is released by the medical team to get back into the game and fight through all of the pressure of “can he still make the magic happen”…

When they get the ball, we all watch in anticipation, worry, caution and excitement when our star is back and ready to bring back the excitement to a team that has missed their hero.

You can imagine where I’m going with this… that first play… that first catch… that run that looks like our hero is back and the playoffs are in sight again. And then, like a well-written made-for-tv movie, what you feared happens.

The break. The fall. The snap. The look of agony and shock. The shrieks from the stands. And there on the ground – the face of despair from the young man who worked like his life hung in the cusp of his return looks up with the pain too deep for words. Everyone thought he was ready. But not yet.

You don’t have to be an athlete to know what that feels like. Some of you have been on that same hard place on the ground. After years of rehab, you thought the drinking was under control, you felt the strength to get back in the game of life, but one bad phone call, the downsizing at the office, and unemployment. The bottle called you and you answered.

How did this happen? You thought that chapter was over. Your ex, out with someone younger, prettier. Or that sin that you prayed through, stayed in God’s word about, you journaled about saying you would never go back… but you did.

Now you’re questioning your salvation and your heart. Condemnation has settled in your mind. The words “what’s the use of even trying” haunt you. You lay in your pool of defeat.
Some never recover, some do. How?

Because the truth is family, it’s hard to get back up when everyone was watching, cheering, depending on you to come back strong and win.

You were even depending on you.

But to be forced to go back to page one and figure out where do I go from here is a lonely, numbing place to be. Here is the hope I find in my pool that I find myself swimming in from time to time:

God is with me for life. Not for the season.

Ahh, that even felt good writing that!

So often I feel like a failure because I don’t always live up to the picture I’ve painted in my mind of what a Christian looks like. But my creator has his own picture of me and He is ever drawing, changing, and erasing as the story is being told… not to Him, but to me.

See, he has in his special place the finished work that I don’t get to see on this side of heaven, but soon I will see the Michelangelo of Michelangelo’s work as it has always been in his mind. My failures are just reds and blues in His painting process. But we must reject the paintings of others.

The fans of the athlete don’t know his whole story. They’re just judging the career… not the life. They are not invested in the long haul. As a fan of many of them myself, I make the same mistake. Judging only what I see now. But if you can pull yourself back into the arms of a non-judging, non-disposable father who uses setbacks and defeats as some of his greatest tools of life building and character development, you will find a coach that’s not just invested in your career but your soul. This is not about winning and losing. This is not about what you’re going to do next. This is not about what people think of you since you didn’t live up to their expectations… this is about you knowing that there is a beautiful lesson waiting for you on the ground while you’re broken, disappointed and afraid.

What is that lesson from God?

Simply this:

“See, you needed me more than you thought you did. You’re still weak without me. But I got you, I wont leave you, you’ll be back, but you’ll be softer, quieter, more humble, more hungry-for me.”

Photo: Easy Money Sniper’s Instagram

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