Faith Building Experiences

As a parent I want these for my children.

Opportunities and experiences that build their faith and testimony. Times when they rely on the Lord, seek Him in honest, fervent prayer and know that He is aware of them regardless the outcome.

But there is also a conflicting emotion. I want to protect and shelter. Shield them from disappointment and heartache. I want things to be easy and to go their way.

As hard as it may be, as much as I might stew and fret over hard things, I'll take those faith building experiences. Not only for the lessons it will teach them and the strength they will gain, but for things I will learn as I watch my children go through them.

And now for the experience....please bear with me as I work my way through this long story and the emotions that go with it.

McKenna loves soccer. She has dreams of continuing on through high school, college and even coaching when she's a mom. She talks about it all the time. And she's good for the little eight year old girl that she is. She is blessed with raw athletic talent. This week we have been involved in Challenge Tryouts for soccer. She is in the age group of girls 8-10, so is the youngest of the pack. It is a two day event, with rotating coaches grading their play. Bret took her to the first day earlier in the week, pulled up and thought he might be in the wrong age group because a group of girls were dribbling the ball of their knee about 10 times in a row. He said the atmosphere was very intense, with parents jocking for what scrimmage team their daughter would be placed on. Then they played for an hour and a half straight with no subbing. They did stop however to time a foot race.

While Bret was with McKenna at tryouts, I was with the rest of the kids at a going away party at a friends house for MBA students who are graduating and moving on. It was a blast. Good food. A giant bounce house. Great friends. Yet the whole time my stomach was in knots. I was having a hard time focusing on conversations because my mind kept drifting to McKenna and wondering how she was doing. I was so stressed. And because I was feeling that way my mind kept coming back to two main thoughts:

Thought Number 1: What was WRONG with me! Am I really so competitive? I have got to learn how to manage this because I have years of my children's sports ahead of me.

Thought Number 2: How sad that society has come to the point where kids have to pick a sport at so young an age and play it year round and at club level in order to play at the high school level. What happened to the days where they played a different sport every season? How sad that my little eight year old daughter was in such an intense environment, being judged if she was "good enough" over something that she loves so much.

We kept telling McKenna leading up to these tryouts that the worst case scenario is that she still plays soccer next fall and spring, just on a recreation team. That's not a bad worst-case scenario if you ask me! But she really wants this, and I have to be honest, I want it for her as well. (There's that competitive side of me coming out again!)

After the first day of tryouts she was pretty pleased with herself. She was on a dominate team who won their game 8-0 and she had 2 of the 8 goals. She was the fastest at the foot race in her group. But she thought she made some bad passes when people weren't open and passed sometimes when she should have tried to score instead. She was really looking forward to day two where she was going to play hard, have fun, and work on the areas she thought she could improve at.

And then it rained. And rained. And rained some more.

Day two of tryouts were rescheduled...to this coming Sunday.

Now as part of our religious observance and faith we do not participate in athletics on Sunday.

I was just sick. Pit in my stomach, the whole thing. I was worried about telling her and how she would take it. I made phone calls to the organization explaining the reasons she would not be there and asking if there was some other way for her to be evaluated. I sought reassurance that she still had a chance, or that they thought she had done well the first day. I was told she would not be penalized for not coming to day two of tryouts but that it is always better to have more exposure to be evaluated on. And that was it.

How was I going to tell her? How would she take it? How was she going to feel?

When she got home from school I pulled her aside and said I needed to talk to her about something. She said, "I already know, Challenge was changed to Sunday." I asked her how she felt about it and she said, "Well, I'm not going to do it. I feel sad and frustrated."

I told her I was proud of her for being obedient. We talked about how blessings come to those who are obedient. I told her that maybe that blessing will be she'll still make it. Maybe she wont make it and she'll be blessed with a stronger testimony. We don't know what blessings will come, only that they WILL come. We talked about what a great opportunity this was to exercise faith and trust in Heavenly Father's plan for her.

Not only is this a good experience for her, but for our whole family. When Abby learned what happened the first words out of her mouth were, "I'm going to fast for her." I later told McKenna that and she paused and asked, "Can you fast for yourself?" We've had such great discussions from this. We've united in prayer and faith on her behalf.

One thing I love about McKenna through this is how positive and joyful she has been. She never once asked to make an exception and still tryout. Later when I asked her how she was feeling she said she was feeling good and that she had faith things would be OK. When I look at her and see her calm inner faith and strength, I feel an overwhelming gratitude for her and the strong daughter of God that she is.

There is another single day tryout in the fall as each team will be left with one opening to fill. If she doesn't make it now, she can work hard and try again then. And she would do just that. Already the past two days she has spent hours after school in the back yard. She has set up cones to work on dribbling and ball control. She's moved the cones into goals and practiced her kicking and goals. Not making it right now could actually be a good thing because that would motivate her in to really working on some skill development this summer. And knowing this girl, she would work HARD!

This morning as I was getting ready I was thinking about how truly grateful I am for this experience, even though yesterday I was so upset about it. I thought back to when I was eight years old. I'm sure I must have realized that not everyone was members of our church and held different values. But at age eight I was never faced with a situation where I had to make a hard choice. I never had to take a stand for what I believed in. I never had to choose between something I loved and wanted to do and keeping the commandments. These kids are so good and so strong. They learn early on how to make hard decisions even when everyone around them are doing different things. They learn about what it means to truly live their faith and how that makes them different. They learn that sometimes doing the right thing can be very hard. They learn about how much their Father in Heaven loves them.

McKenna is right in the midst of this faith building experience.

I couldn't be more grateful.

And come what may, this fall she will still be playing soccer.