Don't Forget the Stick

It's my job to get the hockey stick when we go to practice and games. My daughter hauls her bag of gear, and I grab the stick. We've always done it that way, mainly because my daughter doesn't remember how long the stick is and has a tendency to accidentally whack others with it. We've been hauling her gear and stick to practice and games for more than a year and a half, and I've never forgotten the stick. Until last night.

I popped open the back of my station wagon, pulled out her gear and realized we didn't have a stick. A hockey player's stick isn't like a baseball bat. You can't just pick up another one and it will do the same thing. Sticks are cut to be the right height, and the blades are curved differently, depending on if you're a left-handed shot or a right-handed one. Playing with someone else's stick is a lot like trying to borrow someone else's eyeglasses. You can do it, but it may not be the right fit.

Left with no choice, we checked with the guys at the snack bar to see if they had a stick we could borrow. The one they came up with was a little bit short and curved a little bit in the wrong direction. But it was better than no stick at all. My daughter survived practice without her stick but said it wasn't something she wanted to do again.

Because I forgot her stick, my daughter was forced to play with a stick that was less than ideal. Too often, we try to force our kids to play the game of life with the wrong stick. We forget that our kids were created to be who God wants them to be, not who we want them to be.

I'll admit there are times when I try to force my girls into the mold that I would like them to fit. I miss the days when my girls loved to wear skirts and dresses. Now, it's all jeans and T-shirts. Sometimes, I wish I could get my youngest to just take a few minutes to think before she acts and not barrel through life at 110 miles an hour. And there are other days when I wish my oldest would not be quite so cautious. There are days when I'd rather do anything other than sit through another freezing hockey practice or another rainy soccer game.

But God designed our kids to be a part of His perfect plan -- not a part of our "perfect" household. As a parent, it's our job to encourage our kids and to show them how to use their gifts and personalities for Him. It's not our job to create the "perfect" children.

We are to help mold our kids into the image that God has for them, not the image we have in our minds. No matter how different our kids' choices may seem, we must keep in mind that Genesis 1:27 tells us "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Those quirks and differences are all a part of who they are. And who they are is exactly who God made them to be.

So, encourage your kids to be themselves. Don't expect them to be like anyone else. God didn't make them to fill the same role as anyone else. Let them play with their own stick, not a borrowed one, and you'll be amazed at where God will take them.

Training Every Day

As I told you last week, I spent the week taking my daughter to hockey camp. She spent six hours every day last week doing something related to hockey. Of that six hours, she only spent 2 1/2 hours on the ice. Much of the rest of the time was spent doing dry land training.

Dry land training is where the kids strengthened their muscles and their skills off the ice. At my daughter's age,  that consists of playing games and working on stick handling and agility. As the kids get older, they focus on training their muscles and building their endurance by doing things like running stairs.

Dry land certainly isn't the most fun part of training to play hockey, but it is necessary. The things the kids did off the ice got them ready to play on the ice.

Our spiritual walk is much like training to play hockey. We can be actively involved in ministry and in living our lives as God wants us to. We can put up a good front and never spend any time alone with God. From the outside, it looks like we have a close relationship with God, but on the inside, we're just skating by on what we already know. We're not growing in our relationship with Him because we're not spending any time with Him.

In hockey, your game won't get any better if you don't spend time off the ice perfecting your skills and training your muscles. When faced with the pressure and intensity of a game, you won't have enough knowledge or skill to win.

In life, if you aren't filling yourself up daily with God's word and spending time with Him, then when faced with the pressure and intensity of life, you will falter and fall. Psalm 119:58 says "I have sought your face with all my heart; be gracious to me according to your promise." If we're not spending time with God each day, then we're not seeking His face with our whole hearts like David.

God called David a man after His own heart. We want to follow in those footsteps and become men and women after God's own heart. The only way to do that is to spend time getting to know God's heart.


Spending time with God is a habit -- one we have to take the time to cultivate. It's important that we spend time with God every day, and it's important that we teach our kids to spend time with God every day.

• Set aside a time in each day that will be your family's quiet time. Our time is in the morning before school.
• Get your kids an age-appropriate devotional book and Bible. There are some great versions of the Bible out there, but my favorite for elementary school-aged children is the New International Reader's Version (NIrV). It's written in an easy-to-read style for kids without watering down the Word. It's a full Bible. It just doesn't have a lot of the really big words.
• Talk with your kids about the importance of spending time with God every day. Get three pictures -- one of their best friend, one of someone you see a couple of times a year and one of their favorite sports star, movie actor, or singer. Ask them to tell you how well they know each person. Ask them if they know that person's favorite food, favorite TV show and favorite color. Explain that the more time they spend with a person, the better they know them. We know about the celebrity, but we don't know the celebrity. We have never met them or spent any time with them. We know a little bit more about the acquaintance that we see a few times a year, but we don't know them intimately. Your child will probably be able to tell you all sorts of things about her best friend because she knows that person well. She spends lots of time with her. Explain that the same is true with God. We can know all about Him and never spend any time with Him. To know Him, we have to talk with Him and listen to what He has to say to us. We have to understand who He is and how He wants us to live. If we love Him, we'll want to spend time with Him. We want God to be like our best friend, someone whom we know intimately.
• Spend time with God yourself. The more connected you are with God, the better you are able to parent your children and help them create a relationship with God.

We can go through life, just skating by on what we already know about God, but that creates a shallow relationship with Him. When we hit the thin ice in our lives, we'll know we haven't trained hard enough off the ice to survive the intensity of being on it.

Let your relationship with God bring you strength for the intense moments in your life. Spending time with Him every day means you let Him fill you up with grace and strength so you and your kids can get in the game and face head-on any challenges that come your way during the day.

Memory Monday: Just Open the Door and Ask for Help (Matthew 6:25-27)

I'm a bit tardy with this post today. I just dropped my daughter off at hockey camp, which is about 45 minutes away from our house, and it starts at 8 a.m. I love all of you, but I was unwilling to get up at 5 a.m. to write this morning, so this week's posts will be a bit later than normal. Unless, of course, I actually manage to get ahead of my schedule. But I wouldn't hold my breath, if I were you.

This is the first time my youngest has ever gone to camp where I drop her off for the day and come back and get her at the end of the day. They skate for an hour twice during the day, so she has to be responsible for getting her gear on and off by herself and making sure it all gets back in her bag. The responsibility of all of this was very concerning to her.

Because the camp is across town from us, not many of her hockey friends were attending. Whenever we walk into a new hockey season where she doesn't know people, she gets really nervous. She never knows if she's going to be the only girl or if she'll know anyone else. She's always concerned about how she's going to fit in.

Between these two things this morning, I was afraid I was never going to get my daughter out of the locker room. She was letting her nerves get the best of her and was in tears before we finished getting her dressed. We had to take a deep breath and remember that we had conquered these situations before and that she was perfectly capable of handling the situation.

Her tears this morning reminded me that no matter how old we are, new situations full of uncertainty leave us feeling anxious. Usually, when we look back on the situation, though, we find that we worried for no reason.

God doesn't want us to worry. As a matter of fact, Jesus commands us not to worry in Matthew 6:34. He even  asks the question "Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?" (Matthew 6:27). Worry robs us of joy. It makes us irritable and anxious. Constant worry can cause health problems.

We don't want to raise children who are worriers, yet we don't want to discount the things that concern them either. My daughter had some legitimate concerns this morning. She's never gotten completely dressed in her hockey gear by herself before. She can't tie her skates. She does need some help. But this is a camp for 5- to 8-year-olds. Help is always nearby. My job was simply to reassure her that if she needed help, all she had to do was open the locker room door and ask.

The same is true any time we begin to worry. All we have to do is ask God for help. He wants us not to worry. He wants us to rely on Him for the things that we need. He wants us to replace the worry in our lives with reliance on Him. Just like my daughter is going to have to rely on the camp workers to help her tie her skates, we need to rely on God to help us through our worry. We can't conquer worry on our own. It takes God's help.

The fastest way for your kids to learn how to deal with worry is to see how you deal with worry. If they see you looking to God for help with your worry, then that's where they will learn to turn with their worries. But, if they see you in constant turmoil because of worry, they will learn that the only way to deal with their concerns is to worry and gnaw on them until you are sick. I know which one of these approaches to worry I want my kids to take, so I have to model it for them.

I hope that this week, you'll take the time with your kids to memorize Matthew 6:25-27, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

Use this verse to replace your thoughts when you begin to worry. Use it to remind yourself that worry accomplishes nothing, and Jesus commands us not to do it. Use it to teach your kids that worry has no place in their lives.

When you start to worry this week, be like my daughter and open that line of communication with God and ask for help.

Even the Professionals Fall Down

As most of you know, my youngest daughter plays ice hockey. She doesn't just play ice hockey, she's passionate about all things hockey. If there's a game on TV, we watch it. If there's a stick and a tennis ball available, we play it. If there's an opportunity to strap on skates, she takes it.

The Stanley Cup playoffs are going on right now. Just about every night for the past month, we've watched at least some part of a hockey game. This is the first year I've watched hockey on TV from the vantage point of being a hockey mom. I know a whole lot more about the game and about how hard it really is to play.

Those guys in the NHL make it look easy, but if you've ever watched a hockey game, you'll notice that even the guys in the NHL fall down sometimes. When you're chasing a small piece of frozen rubber while skating on a sheet of ice, even the professionals can fall down.

Did you know that one of the first things they teach kids in learn-to-skate classes is how to fall down and how to get back up? When you're learning to play hockey, it's inevitable that you will fall down. Knowing how to get back up puts you back in the game faster.

Life is a lot like a hockey game. I don't know anyone who doesn't fall down on occasion. We fail at something at which we really wanted to succeed. We make a mistake in dealing with our kids. We miss an opportunity that God gave us to share His love and compassion with someone.

Our kids fall down, too. They fight with their siblings. They say the wrong thing to a friend. They don't make the cut to make the team or the school play. They are disrespectful to mom and dad.

All of these scenarios lead to pain and disappointment in varying degrees. But, if we learn and we teach our kids how to get back up and get back in the game, we are much more useful to God than if we wallow in our mistakes and failures.

God doesn't remember our mistakes and failures. Psalm 103:12 says "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." And Paul reminds us not to dwell on our past mistakes in Philippians 3:13-14 when he says "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Getting back up and into the game isn't always easy. When you fall down hard, when you fail at something, it would be so much easier to just give up and walk away. But, God has a plan for your life and your children's lives, so it's important to know how to get back in the game and let God use you and what you've learned from your failures to help you fill your role in His plan.

In hockey, they teach kids to pull their knees up underneath them, and then put one knee up and push themselves to a standing position and go hard to get back in the game. That's a pretty good model for getting back up in life, too. Rarely do we just hop back up, straight to our feet. Teach your kids these steps for getting past failure. Equate it getting up when we fall down. You can't go from laying down straight to your feet, but you can take steps to get yourself upright again.

• Get to your knees: When you fail, pray and ask God to forgive any sin that may have played a role in your failure. Ask Him to show you how to go forward.
• Get one foot under you: Take a step toward getting back into the game of life. Take another stab at whatever knocked you down or go in a different direction.
• Push to a standing position: In hockey, many kids will use their stick to push themselves all the way to their feet. Consider God to be your hockey stick. Lean on His strength and guidance to show you how to go on in the face of failure. Let Him fill you up with the strength you need to face the day and to show you which way to go from here.
• Get your feet under you and go full speed: God's got a plan for your life. He wants you to get back in the game as quickly as possible. He needs your heart fully engaged with Him. Only when you are seeking Him -- spending time with Him and asking for His guidance -- can you go full speed ahead in the game of life.

Falling down is part of life. Knowing how to get back up after we fall gets us back in the game so God can use us.

Memory Monday: Lessons from the Hockey Season (2 Timothy 4:7)

We had our end-of-season hockey party yesterday on a cool, overcast Sunday. It was supposed to be a cookout, but we moved all the food inside because it was so chilly. The kids weren't bothered by the weather, however. They spent the entire party playing street hockey on the driveway.

The end of the season is bittersweet. I'm excited not to have to run around as much getting everyone to practice, but we've spent almost the entire school year playing with most of these kids. As I watched the kids play, I realized that this hockey season that we started with a bit of trepidation about how well our girl was going to fit in with this team of boys ended with her being just one of the gang. I know that she will miss skating with her friends over the summer, and I will miss hanging out with the moms and dads.

When she first started playing hockey, I would lie awake at night worrying about how well she was fitting in and whether this was the right thing for our little girl to be doing. Yet, God has placed a passion for this game inside her. She would rather have a hockey stick in her hand than anything else. And, she's learned so much this year. All my concerns were for naught. She had great coaches who taught her and encouraged her. She had great teammates who helped her learn and accepted her. And she had a group of parents in the stands who were rooting for her to succeed.

And I learned something from my youngest as well. This hockey season has taught me that if God gives you a passion for something, you should follow it. No matter the obstacles or how uncomfortable you might feel, there's joy in doing the things God created you to do. Too often, we look at something -- a task, a dream -- that we would like to do, and we dismiss it as impossible or too far outside the norm to be done.

We've spent the past few weeks trying to figure out the mechanics of what her team calls a "peanut butter shot" -- a shot that goes in the top of the net (the top shelf where you keep the peanut butter). She and I have spent hours on the driveway trying to lift that puck into the air. She finally has figured it out, and in warm-ups for her last game, she got a puck to lift a couple of inches off the ground. It was quite the accomplishment, and it was fun to see all that determination beginning to pay off.

God wants us to follow our passions -- he gave them to us for a reason. He wants us to be determined to finish the things He's asked us to do. We want to be like Paul who tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Make that verse your goal this week -- to fight the good fight, finish the race and keep the faith in whatever God asks you to do -- even if it's not easy.


This hockey season, I learned from one determined 8-year-old, that you can follow the dreams God has given you -- even in the face of a world that tells you that you've deviated from the norm. Even when it's harder than you thought it would be. And even when it would be easier to give up.