Honesty Pants

Ecclesiastes 3:1

There is a time for everything,
And a season for every activity under heaven.

Part I

My life has figuratively and literally been built around a season.
Basketball season.

And unfortunately, what they failed to tell me when I first picked up a basketball as a fourth grader in 1998 is that by 2011, there would be no such thing as a basketball season. Despite what people may say, basketball season no longer exists – if it did, it would mean that you would have to come up for air just like a person who is swimming from one side of the pool to the other. But now, basketball season is a full-time, year round job that doesn’t come with a two week vacation. And every year since 1998, I have grasped tighter and tighter onto the words once spoken by my summer coach – that “there is no offseason” – and in those clenched fists, I unknowingly let go of everything else. I was told, and whole-heartedly believed, that if I wanted to be anything worth watching, I needed to practice all day, every day – and even on holidays.

So that’s what I did.

The atmosphere, the challenge, the leadership, the reward, the memories – all were so intricately woven together and so worthy of sacrifice. The lights that decorated the gymnasium ceiling softly illuminated my sacred sanctuary. I put up shot after shot for hours in the sticky Oklahoma humidity and again when there was a foot of snow outside. I woke up the sun with the sound of swishes and orchestrated a lullaby of dribbles as the sun fell asleep at night and blanketed the sky with darkness.

And it got me where I thought I wanted to be.

But now I’m wondering if it is even a place worth being. A place that justifies the missed sunsets, the inside jokes I will never understand – the moments I sacrificed to finally arrive at the athlete’s Utopia. I’m wondering which special part of life still remains a secret because I was cooped up in a gymnasium, too busy pounding a leather ball full of air on ninety feet of hardwood and tossing it into an elevated circle.

I am realizing, and coming to terms with, that my life has only consisted of one season, one temperature, one landscape.

And I want to take it back.

I want back the part of my life that I missed. I want to start over and make different decisions, be a different person, choose a different hobby. But as much as I would like to give back life my receipt damp with tears of disappointment and demand a refund, I can’t.

I can’t because each day is nonrefundable. So are the choices that I make in it.
So now, since I can’t take it back, I’ve got to figure out something different that I want.

I want to step into God’s creation and inhale deeply the smell of summer. The smell that paints a picture of a family having steaks around the dinner table, the smell that says high school friends are making memories around the slow burning flame of a bonfire.

I want to venture outside and feel the refreshing breeze through the rolled-down windows as my friends and I drive up and down, up and down, our one mile Main Street road in our tiny, sleepy old town. I want to buy a two-piece swimsuit and spend a weekend at the lake with my friends, pee in the water, learn how to wakeboard and be the one who stayed on the tube the longest. I want to dance my heart out every weekend at my friend’s weddings, eat as much fruit as I can, and sleep in on Saturdays.

I want to sit underneath a big tree during the crisp and warm fall and watch as the leaves embrace their fate and wave goodbye as their beautiful burnt orange and crunchy selves descend to the ground. I want to listen to live music in coffee shops and drink hot cider with my friends around the fireplace. I want to hold on to my summer glow as long my skin will allow and I want to wear jeans that make me feel confident and beautiful. I want to go for long jogs at night and finally find the big dipper. I want to play football with my cousins on Labor Day weekend and sneak cookies that are for tomorrow’s dinner.

I want to buy a pea coat for the first snowfall of the winter and wear really cute scarves. I want to be able to spend my entire Christmas break with my family, eat more than my fair share of my dad’s famous scrambled eggs, and wear my pajamas all day long. I want to see a dear friend of mine, my high school basketball coach, more than twice a year and buy her dinner and I ask her what the point of all of this is. I want to read a good book when it’s icy and play outside when white flakes are a gift from the sky. I want to live in a snow globe of God’s goodness.

I want to endure the harsh winds of winter so that I can feel the refreshing rainfall of spring. I want to pitch a tent outside and watch life come from death once again and be reminded of the sacrifice that was sent so my soul could do the same. I want to wear tank tops and lay out on the spotty grass in the middle of the women’s quad with my friends and lie there long enough so that my skin has a chance to turn from extremely pale to only slightly pale. I want to pull back my curtains, slide up my shades, open my windows and wake up to the chirping birds and the soft sun.

I want to smell the seasons, watch the seasons, live in the seasons.
But most of all, I want to appreciate the seasons.

Because I want to believe that no matter what season of life I am in, I am learning something in it and I need to be grateful for it. Even though winter is harsh and cruel at times, sometimes the soft downpour of snow is exactly the pillow I need to lay my head on at night. And even though summer is grueling and hot and sticky, I want to believe that it is filled with memories that couldn’t have been made in any other season. And when spring brings forth life and fall takes it away, I want to believe that both are beautiful.

The stagnant season of something as irrelevant as the game of basketball has taught me this: that seasons are important.
That the change of seasons is important.
Because seasons change us.

So this is my attempt to capture snapshots of the glorious and painful change of my soul as I’m swimming in the lake during the summer, sipping hot cider in the fall, playing in the snow in the winter, and impatiently waiting for the beautiful promise of spring.