The year was 1965. We---my mother, dad, and older
brother, Mark--- had just finished supper.
That’s when Eric called to speak to Mark.
Just a few hours before, I had been playing football
on the sandlot team Mark had formed after I had hounded him to do so. The
sandlot team was my only hope of playing, since I was still too young for
Washington Elementary School’s football team. Eric was even younger than I was. Mark was the
perfect coach for our team. After all, he played football for the mighty
Bulldogs of Altus High. He coached us up, and even scheduled a game with
another team that one of his football buddies had formed.
Then Eric called.
I perked up and tried to hear what he was saying.
Eric had a slight speech impediment and couldn’t
pronounce his “r’s.” Besides that, his voice sounded nervous, like he was
afraid to say whatever it was he was going to say. He could barely get a word
out, as if he were chewing on each letter, stretching Mark’s one syllable name
into three.
“Ma-a-k,”
Eric stammered.
“Yes, Eric,” Mark said.
“Ma-a-k,” Eric repeated.
“Yes, Eric,” Mark said again.
“Ma-a-k,” Eric said a third time.
“Yes, Eric, what is it you are trying to say?”
And then all at once, so quickly I almost missed it,
in a rapid fire response Eric spit out the words, finally stating the reason
for his call: “I wanna quit.”
That was it, not good news, for we would have to
find another kid for Eric’s position, and our game was just a few days away. We
wondered, should we give it up and disband the team? Quitting seemed easier
than finding a replacement for Eric.
Quitting is almost always easier than enduring.
I heard a story about a prominent pastor who abruptly
resigned. He wasn’t leaving for another church: He was leaving the ministry
altogether.
His congregation was shocked. It was a good church;
he was well liked; his salary was sufficient.
When they asked him why, he simply said, “The
relentless return of Sunday.”
For you it may be the relentless return of Monday.
Or the deafening sound of silence at the dinner table, where you meet each
evening with that person you no longer seem to know or care for. Or maybe it’s the
daily screech of the rusty medicine cabinet door, reminding you that your
illness is not going away, that your life is grinding down.
True, sometimes walking away is the best thing to
do; it can even be more courageous than staying.
Some relationships need to die; it’s best to leave
some jobs; and we outgrow some hobbies.
There is a time to quit.
But not often. Or easily.
Quitting can become a way of life, if we let it.
When
Seinfeld’s George Costanza (Jason Alexander) managed to get fired from his
volunteer job at the retirement home, he encouraged Jerry and Elaine to quit and
join him: "Yeah,
I'm a great quitter: It's one of the few things I do well. ... I come from a
long line of quitters. My father was a quitter, my grandfather was a quitter.
... I was raised to give up."
The world most of us live in
doesn’t permit us to do only what we want and give up the rest.
Jay Kesler, President Emeritus of
Taylor University, wrote that his experience in life suggests that maybe 15
percent of our time is spent doing the things we love, and about 15 percent of
the time we do the things we hate but are required to do.
“The remaining majority of the time,” he
observed, “is spent just doggedly getting your work done, going through the
routine, fulfilling obligations, and keeping promises.”
Not every Sunday is Easter Sunday:
Crowds come and go, but the call to obedience remains.
And with it comes joy, when we
refuse to give up.
Maybe quitting our team was the
right thing for young Eric to do. Football may not have been his sport.
But it was meant for us to
persevere and play the cross-town rival on a crisp Saturday in late September. Eddie
Carder did suffer a dislocated thumb; I took a shot on the chin; Jimmy Coker
scraped a knee; and thanks to a girl, Kelly Copeland, who much to our surprise
could play with the best of the guys, we found a fine replacement for Eric.
And yes, we won the game.
But the lesson I learned in the
process was much larger than winning a sandlot football game.
The option of quitting may look
like sweet relief.
No comments:
Post a Comment