Finding Help and Comfort

My 10-year-old daughter played in a soccer tournament this weekend. She played five games in three days, with three of them on Sunday. Her team played amazingly well, and for the first time, they made it to the championship game.

The final game was a nail biter. Both teams played really well. It ended in a 0-0 tie. The tie breaker in this tournament was a shootout. Five girls from each team got a chance to go one-on-one with the goalie. The team with the most goals wins. If it's still tied after five, it goes to sudden death -- first team to score when the other one doesn't wins.

My daughter's team lost in the sixth round of the shootout. The girls who missed their shots were devastated, feeling like they had let the team down. The goalie was upset, thinking she should have been able to stop more shots. After such a great weekend, this team that had played their best tournament ever walked off the field with heads hanging and shoulders hunched. Tears flowed.

In talking to my daughter after the game, I found out neither coach wanted to have a shootout. They both asked several times why they couldn't just declare the game a tie and give both teams the first-place medals. Neither coach wanted their girls to end up feeling as though they had failed.

A shootout at this age really boils down to not much more than luck. The coaches wanted the girls to walk off the field with their heads held high, knowing that they had played their best. They knew a shootout would leave two girls -- the goalie and the last girl to miss -- feeling horrible. After playing so well, neither coach wanted that for either team.

But there was to be no bending of the rules on this day, so to the shootout we went. The coaches' request reminded me of what it's like to be a parent. We do the best we can to keep our kids from getting hurt. We protect them and love them. We offer guidance and try to keep them out of situations that will leave their heads hanging, their shoulders hunched and the tears falling. We ask God to protect them.

Yet sometimes, despite our best efforts and our diligent prayers, the hurt gets through. The painful experience happens. The world wallops our kid with a healthy dose of disappointment.

Our kids don't make the team or get a part in the play. Someone says hurtful things to our children. Broken relationships bring sorrow and uncertainty to our children's lives.

It's in these times that we want to teach our kids to turn to the only source of help -- God. When hurt walks into our children's lives, we want them to know the ultimate source of help and comfort. Psalm 54:4 says "Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me" and Psalm 119:76 says "May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant."

God always offers us help and comfort in difficult times. He doesn't take the difficult circumstances away, but He does offer us a way through those circumstances. He promises never to leave our side. We want our kids to know that no matter how dire the situation seems, no matter how awful it makes them feel, God is waiting to help them through it.

• Talk to your kids about what the word comfort means. Ask how they feel most comforted in a difficult situation. Ask them who they turn to for comfort. Talk about how God is the ultimate comforter. He offers us His unconditional love. In tough circumstances, He's just waiting to offer us peace through His love.
• When your child is in the midst of a difficult situation, talk with him about the ways that God can help him deal with it. Make a list of the things God could do. Write down all the possibilities you can come up with, even if they seem outlandish. Talk about how God may not choose to take the problem away or zap our enemies, but He is there to offer help.
• Help your child see that God is bigger than their problem -- no matter how big the problem seems. Place a small rock on the table next to the biggest rock you can find. Ask your child which rock they think represents their problem. Talk about how God is the big rock, and their problem is the pebble. No matter how big our problems seem, to God they are always the size of the pebble. God is bigger than our problems, and He can help us through them.

Just as my daughter's coach couldn't protect his team from the disappointment of losing their game in a shootout, we can't always protect our kids from pain and disappointment. But we can direct them to the ultimate source of help and comfort when tough things come their way.

Soccer Tryouts and Tears

My oldest daughter plays club soccer, and we spent the weekend going to soccer tryouts in near 100-degree heat.

For those of you unfamiliar with the world of club soccer, every June soccer clubs hold tryouts. Kids can try out for as many or as few teams as they like. Then, they wait for soccer clubs to call and offer them a spot on the team.

We're a family that has chosen not to tryout hop. Our daughter tries out for one club that guarantees her a spot on one of their teams. The whole tryout process leaves me feeling conflicted, though.

My daughter is 10. She's a decent soccer player who shows occasional flashes of brilliance. She's not a girl who can dominate a game all by herself, but she's an important cog in the wheel of her team. And she loves playing soccer at a competitive level. However, tryouts generally leave me with a sobbing child at some point during the two-weekend long process.

The first day of tryouts on Saturday did just that. The club she plays for has different levels of teams. This year, our daughter played on the top level team and before the tryout we talked about what it would take to make that team again.

A combination of nerves, heat and getting kicked in the ribs had my daughter having a bad day at tryouts. She was exhausted and frustrated. All weekend, I watched girls come off the field in tears. The combination of stress, heat and exhaustion were taking their toll. As I watched the tears fall, I thought, "Why do we do this to our kids?"

The answer is our youth sports culture forces it on us if our kids have even a smidgen of talent. To sit out of the process pretty much leaves your child with no chance of ever making the team when they get older. But the pressure those 10-year-olds felt on the field this weekend was crazy.

Don't get me wrong. I love having my kids play sports. I wouldn't trade the things they have learned from playing team sports for anything. My girls have had great coaches who have invested in them both as people and players. They have learned lessons about winning and losing well. They have gained self-confidence and courage.

But the pressure they feel in trying to make a team is out of proportion with the importance of making that team. Short of pulling my girls out of the sports they love, which would stifle some of who God made them to be, we have to figure out how to help them through the stress of the situation.

So, after a tear-filled Saturday, we changed our tactics on Sunday. Instead of talking about how to make the top team, we simply encouraged our daughter to go out and do her best. We reminded her that we love her whether she makes the team or not and whether she plays soccer or not. Removing the pressure of expectations from my daughters' shoulders made a huge difference. Even a ball to the head didn't keep her down long on Sunday. She even found reasons to smile out there on the blazing hot field as she competed for her spot.

What was the difference? Well, a good night's sleep helped a lot. But the thing that made the most difference for my daughter was knowing that her worth to us and to God was not tied in up in whether she did well on the field or not. Sometimes in our efforts to encourage our kids to do their best in whatever they do, we place unrealistic expectations on them. Everyone wants to be the parent of the next super star, but most of us are not those parents.

When our kids know that they will be loved and accepted by us no matter what happens on the field or at school, it frees them to be able to be themselves. God expects our best. He tells us "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." (Colossians 3:23). But God doesn't expect us to be someone that He did not design us to be. Ephesians 4:11 reminds us that He gave everyone different gifts: "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers."

Expect the best from your children but be sure they know your love and acceptance isn't dependent on anything they do. Don't let the expectations of the rest of the world get in the way of your unconditional love for your child. Your unconditional love and acceptance allows your child the freedom to be who God created them to be.