Honesty Pants

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog post about letting go.

I titled it "breaking up with my boyfriend" and posted the link to my Facebook page.

Within 20 minutes, I had a little over 85 hits. It is now my most-viewed post.

People didn't click on the link because they believed I was a good writer or that I had insightful, life-changing things to say. They clicked on the link because the tempting (and incredibly mis-leading) title suggests I am absolutely ignorant about appropriate self-disclosure and that I have no problem airing all of my dirty relationship drama on the world-wide web.

Suckers.

It was actually a post about my decision to not play basketball my senior year at Tabor College, when basketball was all I had ever known.
It was a reflective, scared-to-death, gutsy, transparent, purposeful post about faith.

And a little over a year later, as I take time to reflect on and describe the landscape in the rear-view mirror of my life, I'm writing to say singleness has been so incredibly sweet.

God's grace and Holy Spirit equipped me with the courage and power to step out into the unknown despite my fears and lack of understanding. The Lord has given me so many wonderful opportunities within the past year -- three of which include performing my poetry in chapel both semesters, going to India in January, and buying a guitar and learning how to play it.

Everything I have been involved in this past year has given me so much life -- when what I was doing as basketball player seemed to have the opposite effect - taking life away from me.

Perhaps the reason why I feel so full of life is because I am actually doing what I was made to do. I was made to communicate honestly and transparently, to befriend and include, to write, to observe, to learn, to think, to wholeheartedly engage people and tell them about the God who has, and currently is, transforming my life.

But I didn't always believe that.

In the valleys of basketball, when it seemed as if the Promised Land was some kind of sick joke and life was really only about wandering aimlessly in the desert, I would constantly imagine what my senior year would look like -- my Promised Land, so to speak.

My Promised Land always included a refreshing basketball experience --- a final season with a new coach and a new mindset that reminded me why I started loving the game in the first place, simply because I had forgotten.

Obviously God had different plans.
Perhaps He never intended me to remember --- maybe because He is making all things new, not patching up what has been broken.

I wholeheartedly believe God called me to be play basketball at Tabor College for a certain amount of time and for a certain purpose. I clearly see that now more than ever, which has transformed the diffficult times into a rich and meaningful season of life, even in its darkness and pain. It is the kind of appreciation you slowly gain for crutches after using them for six weeks after an injury -- even though they remind you of the pain, they also symbolize the thing that helped you heal.

Perhaps appreciation is the rain that allows the hard things in life to bloom into something beautiful.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the thing that held me back, the thing that made my face uncomfortably twist as God called me to answer the phone call of faith, was fear. I was afraid, because fear rises out of not knowing the outcome.

I was afraid I wasn't going to happy without basketball.
I was afraid I wouldn't know who I was without it.
I was afraid my senior year would be boring and lack purpose.

The kind of Promised Land God had for me was flowing with whole milk and organic, rich honey when all along I thought the Promised Land just carried expired skim milk and factory made, generic, can't-quite-call-this-honey kind of honey.

So many people have asked me, "So how is life without basketball?"
Everytime I reply, "It's like I never played.

My life as a basketball player seems like decades ago, which is weird and probably abnormal. But I am choosing to believe it is that way because of God's grace and mercy and higher plan for my life has created necessary distance between what was and what is.

Perhaps it is because God's ways are indeed higher than our ways, just like the heavens are higher than the earth, God's thoughts are greater than our thoughts, and his Promised Land is so incredibly better than one I could ever even attempt to dream up.

So this is what I know to be unapologetically true:
The Promised Land looks incredibly different from where I am, especially considering where I was.

And even though certain experiences were sharp in their pain, dark in their fear, and frustating in their confusion, I wouldn't change anything about the process or the outcome.

Why?

Because I like the milk and honey here.