Luke’s Notebook

Last week, we played six softball games.  Of those six, we won three of them, including the last two games of the week.  I don’t know what our team’s record is in 2009, but I believe it’s a little bit under .500.

So we are having a decent year.  Record-wise, it’s not overly impressive, but some of these games are truly incredible.

Since we still lose plenty of games, it’s sometimes hard to realize how much progress we have made and just how good everyone has gotten.  Sometimes, when we beat a really good team, I’ll marvel at the game and compare the other team’s player to ours, and it will just amaze me that this team of Arndts has just beaten this intimidating and talented team.

One reason we are improving is fairly obvious.  We have plenty of young players, so each additional game provides valuable experience for several guys at once.  The softball games basically serve as on-the-job training for many of us.  So one reason for our success has been the younger guys maturing, working towards reaching their full potential.

It’s not hard to understand how, as younger guys continue to grow up and gain strength and coordination, a team will improve.  But I recently realized that we have something else going for us, which I think gives us an enormous advantage.

We are a team in the truest sense of the word.  We are unified.  We know each others’ strengths and weaknesses, and we all work together to get the job done.  And as a team, we are gelling together so well.  Each game we play together, the more familiar we become with the guys playing next to us.  I think being so unified makes us play much better than we would if we were just 11 casual friends with the same skills that the 11 of us have.

One thing I love is that we don’t have egos on this team.  People are willing to do the humblest of tasks for the good of the team.  And this is just something that you aren’t going to see in a lot of other groups.  People would be more interested in trying to inflate their own stats, trying to have the best personal performance, instead of doing what’s best for everybody involved.

This is one area where, even though I try my best to always do it, I just don’t always feel it.

It really struck me a few weeks ago.  Our team had just played a great game and beat a tough team, yet I was very frustrated after the game.  Why?  Because I played terribly.  I may have batted 0-4 or 0-5.  I was just upset that I did so poorly, and that was starting to overshadow the fact that our team had just had a great win.

But… shouldn’t I have just been happy that the team won, regardless of my own performance?  The answer is obvious:  Yes, I should have.

So why wasn’t I happy?  Why was I upset with myself?  Why would I have felt better if we had lost but I had managed to hit three home runs in the game?

That’s something that bugs me, the very fact that I was so focused on how Luke performed.  And this is one of the hardest things to balance when you’re competitive.  If you’re always trying to better yourself, always trying to improve, then how to you handle things when you fail?  How seriously should you take it when you aren’t doing well?  Part of me thinks that you don’t improve unless you allow a sub-par performance to bother you.  I think you need something driving you.  But it can definitely be taken to an extreme, where you become selfish and self-focused.

Again, this is something I need to work on.  I know that I can get to be extremely competitive and hard on myself when I’m not doing well.  I don’t want to lower the standard and accept mediocre playing, but… I also don’t want to be too self-centered.

It’s hard.  I’m still learning.  That was definitely a wake-up call, though, when I found myself upset despite the team’s great accomplishment.  I realized that something isn’t quite right if I don’t really enjoy something like this.

Maybe it is an ego thing after all, but I really don’t think it is.  I think the main cause for the frustration in a game like that is I feel like I let the guys down, like I didn’t contribute as much as I should or could have, like I didn’t reach my potential.  I would feel that I’m underperforming, that I’m not doing my part.

I don’t yet have the complete answer to this, but I am trying to find the perfect perspective to look at it from.  I want to be able to have fun, win or lose.  Also, I want to be having fun even if I strike out five times in a game.  There is just something in that competitive nature, though, that makes this extremely difficult.

In this all, though, I don’t want to miss the obvious:  That I am so blessed to be able to play softball with nine of my brothers and my dad.  And the fact that we are healthy enough and athletic enough to do this is absolutely remarkable.  While there may still be some rough corners that need to be rounded out, a panorama view of the entire situation is phenomenal.  I know that, while it’s okay to be competitive and to want to improve, I need to make sure to have a blast while out there, win or lose; success or failure.  The most remarkable thing is that I get to play softball with all these great guys.  I get to be a part of this incredible atmosphere.  If I mess up here and there, who really cares?  The important stuff goes way beyond the box score.

I really have so many wonderful memories from growing up.  There are so many special things we did as a family.

One tradition I remember well is our family outings to Pantera’s Pizza for their lunch buffet.  They had a very good deal at Pantera’s, and we all loved to eat there, so Mom and Dad would take us every now and then, when work would allow.

At Pantera’s, they had a small video game arcade area.  They had your usuals — Ms. Pacman, Pole Position, a pinball game, and a few others.  Mom and Dad would sometimes give us each a few quarters to spend.  When we were out of money, we would typically just pretend that we were playing while the game cycled through its demo video.

Sometimes, on racing games in particular, you would be turning the wheel, hitting the buttons, and managing the gas pedal, and the car’s movement would be corresponding perfectly with what you were doing.  It was so accurate, in fact, that you might think there were some extra credits on the game, because you feel like you’re in total control.

So you’re feverishly turning the wheel to dodge bombs and to avoid other obstacles.  You’re flooring the gas pedal, to go as fast as possible.  You are about to break a sweat from the intensity, and all of a sudden, something pops up on the screen:  “Insert Coin(s).”

It’s at that moment that you realize that you weren’t actually in control.  Even though you thought that the well-being of that on-screen car was in your hands and your hands alone, you find out that that wasn’t the case.

The animation loops on the screen, and this time your hands are off the steering wheel.  You see the same car, following the same paths, performing the same maneuvers.  Everything is the same, with one important difference.  The first time through, you were convinced that you were in full control.  If you let go of that steering wheel for even a second, you were sure, you would crash into a fiery heap of pixels.

The second time through, you understand that your efforts aren’t going to change anything.  You simply sit back and watch this time around.  It’s kind of embarrassing to realize that all of your stress and strain were for naught.  You thought you were doing a lot, when in fact your efforts were totally useless!

It’s not the perfect analogy, but I think it’s pretty appropriate.  This is how I feel oftentimes.  I will be straining and trying my hardest to avoid “crashing,” and then I will have the revelation that I am not in control and, in fact, never was in control.  God will do something that shows such a massive gap between the fruit of my best efforts and then what He can do.

I should realize by now that the key to life is to find out what God is doing that day, and then to follow that.  Instead of trying to barge in through locked doors, life is so much simpler if I just look for those “doors” that God has opened.  That way, if something doesn’t seem to be on that day’s agenda, it’s probably simply because God doesn’t want it to happen at the moment.

Psalm 127:1

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

My mistake is that so many times, I don’t take that literally.  I believe it and all, but not enough to apply it to real-world cases.  It’s silly, but I think that God may need a little bit of my help or a little coercing in order to get the ball rolling.

As if God isn’t already billions of light-years ahead of me!  Somehow, in my 24 years of living, I have become arrogant enough to think that I know better than God at times, to think that I might be able to manage things slightly better than He does.

It sounds so terrible when I call it what it is.  An old song that I haven’t heard or sung in years has just come to mind:  Be Magnified

I have made You too small in my eyes
Oh Lord, forgive me
And I have believed in a lie
That You are unable to help me.
But now, Oh Lord, I see my wrong
Heal my heart and show Yourself strong
And in my eyes and with my song

Oh Lord, be magnified
Be magnified, Oh Lord
You are highly exalted
And there is nothing You can’t do
Oh Lord, my eyes are on You
Be magnified,

Oh Lord, be magnified
I have leaned on a wisdom of men
Oh Lord, please forgive me
And I have responded to them
Instead of Your light and Your mercy
But now, Oh Lord, I see my wrong
Heal my heart and show yourself strong
And in my eyes and in my song
Oh Lord be magnified

Such a beautiful song.  And it’s my prayer, too — first off, that God would forgive me for not giving Him the proper respect and trust.  Secondly, I’m asking Him to humble me and to teach me to lean on Him like never before, to realize how powerful He is, how much He loves me, and how all I need to do is seek Him first.

Early this morning, I drove over to Chesterfield, Missouri, for a videotaped deposition of a psychologist.  The attorney taking the deposition, who was heading to North Carolina, told me he needed a copy of the video right away, and asked if he would be able to get it Monday morning.

I told him that that should be no problem.  The depo ended around noon, and I knew it would be a bit of a squeeze to have a DVD produced and ready to be FedExed by the end of the day, but I was confident that we could make it.

Fast-forward to the end of the day, around 6:00, when I run out to drop the envelope into a nearby FedEx box.  The typical pick-up time for that box is 7:00 or 7:15, and the green not-yet-picked-up flag was showing on the box to let me know that I had beat the drop-off time, and that it was safe to drop the envelope in the box.

I was just about to let the package go when my eyes happened to fall on a small note posted on the box, saying that there was no pick-up on Friday, July 3rd.

Shocked, I pulled the envelope back and closed the lid.  I immediately called John, and we spend the next half-hour or so on the phone or online with FedEx and UPS, trying to figure out a way to get this overnighted.

“Overnighted” in this instance meant Monday delivery, as they don’t have anything going on Saturday, the 4th of July.  We eventually found a FedEx facility in downtown St. Louis that had an 8:00 pick-up time, so it sounded like our worries were over.

I went ahead and drove on over there, arrived around 7:05, and walked out the door a few minutes later, with the package safely on its way.

It was definitely a relief to have fulfilled our commitment.  It was a bit more involved than we had thought, because we didn’t think that the 3rd would be viewed as a half-day or a holiday.  So when we went on our end-of-the-day run, we were surprised to learn that no FedEx box (or UPS, for that matter) in the area was available at that time.

With this all, what amazes me is the fact that I happened to see that little notice posted on the box.  I had the lid of the box open and was a second away from dropping the envelope into the box when I saw the notice.

I can’t explain how I managed to catch it, but I don’t think I can take credit for it.  I think God must have just brought it to my attention just in the nick of time.  A second later, and I would have dropped it into the box, confidently thinking that it would arrive in North Carolina by Monday morning, when in fact it wouldn’t even leave that box until Monday morning.

I’m so thankful that God kept us from making what would have been an embarrassing mistake.  I just never really considered that the shipping services would take a half-day.  I imagined it would be an all-or-nothing deal; either they do business as usual, or they don’t.

So tonight was one of many examples of just how good God is.  Occasions like this really bring God’s love down to a personal level, where you just want to say, “Wow… thanks so much, God.  You didn’t have to do that, but You did it anyway.”  It just shows how much God cares for us in the most practical ways.

Life can get pretty complex; that’s for sure.  Trying to figure certain things out can leave me feeling scared, frustrated, and totally confused.

But Proverbs 3:5 just set me straight:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

That’s it!  That’s the solution!

It doesn’t feel natural for me to not rely on my own understanding, but God is telling me — promising me — that if I just humbly trust Him and seek Him, essentially the rest will fall in line.

It’s a difficult task, especially when I am so accustomed to having to use my brain to solve other problems, and it can be really scary to not be able to figure something out, to not know the answer.  But God is reminding me that I shouldn’t even be trying to figure things out.  That’s not my job.  That’s His.  My job is to love Him and obey Him first.

So really, it should come as no surprise to me if I find myself puzzled and unsure of the solution to something.  My task then is not to tense up and not rest until I crack the code.  Instead, it’s to just give it to God — who loves me like crazy, as it is — and trust that He is, in fact, trustworthy.

I would like to expound on this a little more, but I have an early video depo tomorrow morning, so I need to put both my laptop and myself to sleep.