Built For Battle
I was nervous all week. Like, get over it… You aren’t even in the game, girl. “So what’s it looking like? How was practice? Is the weather going to affect us?” The anticipation grew each day.
Watching the game, I came to the realization that I have no idea how my own kids will ever play sports while I keep my sanity. Every second left me nauseous. I watched successful plays and perfect tackles and coaches and players fight until the end. The final second left me sad. As we walked onto the field, I found my boys… not the biological ones, but the ones with which I spend my days. The ones I see my own little boys inside of, who teach me the qualities I want my boys to possess… and sometimes the qualities I wouldn’t mind if they skipped. But anyway…
My boys. They are serious. They are tough to crack. And sometimes they drive me absolutely crazy. But when they get on the field… They remind me that this is the kind of boy I want my boy to grow up to be. They are built for battle…
I found many of them crying. And goodness, it hurt my heart. But strangely, I saw it as a moment of strength. Not of weakness. This is what they had fought for, trained for, put their passion into, and according to the scoreboard, they were not successful. However, I beg to differ. They are caught up in a legacy and tradition that speaks volumes in their fight, their training, and their passion. They are built for battle…
My mom looked at me and said, “There’s got to be a blog in this somewhere…” She knows everything well-processed turns into writing…
And so, here it is.
As a society, I think we are failing in teaching our boys to be built for battle. Boys are built to be passionate. To go into war. To be strong and courageous and to find something worth the fight. There lacks, however, significant opportunity to teach our boys to be brave and wild and proud in a way that means something. Somewhere along the way, we have stripped them of that.
“Don’t climb on that, don’t break anything, don’t be so aggressive, don’t be so noisy, don’t be so messy, don’t make such crazy risks. But God’s design–which he placed in boys as the picture of himself–is a resounding yes. Be fierce, be wild, be passionate.” (John Eldredge, Wild at Heart [Side note: READ THIS BOOK. So good.])
We must remember that God’s design for boys is all that was left out on that field. He designed them to be fierce. To be wild. To be passionate. Their tears spoke of all that they had invested in that passion for months on end. It was a burning desire to compete and to win and to fight for something.
To some, high school football does not seem all that important in the scheme of things. To me, I say it is building exactly what we want our men to be. We want them to learn the value of caring for something. We want them to be courageous when meeting their opponent. We want them to fight. We want them to take months of training and passion and sweat and injuries and recoveries and leave them in the grass. They will learn other things along the way, but this foundation of strength, honor, courage and sportsmanship… It is a foundation that will be just the thing to allow our boys to grow up knowing how to be strong men. Men who can be leaders. Men who can lead families and fight for goodness.
We must remember to build our boys for battle…
