Wednesday…
Wednesday is one of the days that my 10 year-old son has practice for his club lacrosse team, Laxachusetts. It’s a great club, and they play at such a high level, that all of the driving is worth it…BUT…Wednesday is a tough one. On Wednesday, I (or my wife) have to leave work at 2:15 to get to school early enough to be at the front of the pick-up line so that we can get to his practice by 5:00 in Weymouth - fighting I-95 rush hour traffic a good chunk of the way. Luckily he gets to do two practices to make the drive worth it and we get home around 8. I often think about this nearly 6 hour mid-week, mid-day commitment…for PRACTICE… and it gets me thinking about a few things.
The first thing that pops to mind is the clip now made famous by professional basketball player Alan Iverson:
The gist of what Iverson is saying is that he’s getting grief for missing a practice, and how silly that is because practice doesn’t really matter.
And then one of my favorite shows, Ted Lasso, puts this theme on its head with his take on practice:
Ted Lasso flips the script in preaching how valuable practice is. I could talk a lot about the value of practice for players - the determination and character built, assiduously, day-by-day out of the limelight. But that’s for the players.
What does practice mean for the parents? Especially the practices that are so far away that you have to stay because it’s too long to drive home and come back. The practices when your highest and best use as a parent is as a mode of transportation. It would be easy to complain about that and treat it like a burden - something you HAVE to do. I admit I fall into that mode from time to time, but generally, I’m grateful for those practices and feel like they are things I GET do to. I’m grateful for them for a lot of reasons:
because my boys are learning, growing, and gaining confidence and skills - maturing as players, athletes, and young men
because I get to spend a LOT of time in the car with my boys (and torment them with Dad music)
because my boys know I’m there, even if it’s in the car in the parking lot, they still know I’m there, and that means something.
But I think more than anything else, I like these practices because they are a bit of an escape for me. There’s nowhere else to be and nothing else to do. I can be present. I typically go for a jog or walk in the woods around their practice facilities - and there are some nice trails at both clubs. I’m not in the office to go to meetings or finish a report. I’m not at home to complete some chores. I’m in this nowehere land where no one needs anything from me, and generally no one is asking me for anything. I sometimes bring my computer with me, but I rarely do any work. I occasionnaly get work calls, but I often block the time on my calendar; so people generally leave me alone. So that’s time I can fill as I like.
The overall point of this, though, is that the gratitude I feel is a conscious and deliberate choice. I could certainly be resentful that I have this burdensome obligation, but I chose not to. Henri Nouwen, in his book about the famous painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son talks about the dichotomy of resentment versus gratitude in this passage.
So - yes - while practice is PRACTICE, it can still be a gift filled with grace.