play your part

Cleaning out my basement, I found a blue ribbon.

It's from a fourth grade school track meet. A relay race. I was an alternate; I'd only run if someone on the track team didn't come to school.

"Where's Andy?" I asked my teacher when I got to class. He wasn't at his desk. "He's not here today," my teacher replied. The knots of excitement and reticence stirred in me.

He would've ran first in the relay dash. This meant I'd run first in the relay dash.

I have zero memory recall from this day, save for one:

All I recall: frantically running off the starting line when that starter pistol fired. I had the inside lane. I could see every other team's first runner in front of me in their lanes. Dashing forward, as fast as my 10-year-old legs could advance me, to get to our next runner  -- cannot remember that dude's name whatsoever. Executing a mildly awkward yet sufficiently successful baton pass. And then walking off the track, onto the grass near the high jump in the springtime sun, to watch the rest of the race develop.

We won!

All four of us could've run farther than we did. But we ran our part, and that's it. We were better as a team, because we let others do their parts. We stuck to our  We didn't have to completely exhaust ourselves to finish our portion of the run. 

"And he said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." -Mark 4:26-29

This relates to the above parable. We really don't have to take everything on ourselves to ensure that anything gets done. Sometimes, we have the equivalent of a cameo or walk-on role in something happening. It's OK to not have a bigger role sometimes. God's got this too. We get to scatter seed. How the rest works out, we don't always need to know every detail (sometimes, of course, we really do. But not as often as we think). 

You study well, and do the best you can do, and go play your part and take that exam.

You work hard in a role or an office. You do the best you can do, and then you hand off responsibilities to someone else.

You clean up the portion of the relational or actual mess that's your responsibility. Then you let someone else tend to their portions.

You speak your heart in love, put yourself out there. You can only do so much, and then you wait for someone to reply in kind.

We can't run every part of a relay race.

We can't play tennis on both sides of the net in the same match.

We can't pitch and catch at once (only Bugs Bunny can, and it was a stretch even for him).

So play your part.

5K Race-1, Me-0

Disclosure: some years back before I was married, I participated in a charity 5K race [Actual Full Disclosure: I was trying to impress a girl who was into running; in hindsight, I can attest that wise outcomes seldom follow these sorts of motivations]. I had hopes of clocking a decent (ie ... impressive to the girl) time. Even though it was my first 5K, I thought the race would be a cinch.

Nope.

For starters, the solitary bowl of stale corn flakes cereal I hurriedly consumed beforehand (because I overslept) wasn't near enough to sustain me.

Secondly, the evening before the race, I stood up as a groomsmen in a dear friend's wedding. So my nutritional intake ... diverged (shall we say) from the norm. Catered, high-sugar food; boiled shrimp and crab dip galore; celebratory glass of champagne; subsequent toasts to the bridge and groom to follow; all-night reception dancing in rented shoes; (certainly) not drinking enough water; ears ringing from the music.

"I should've gotten to sleep earlier, but it'll be OK," I told myself as I crawled into bed mere hours before the 8AM race. "How rough could it get?"

Rough.

Atrocious finish time. "I didn't realize a 5K could feel this long!" I wheezed. I felt so [EDIT] hungry. And bleary tired -- coffee could not put me right.

[And yes, for those wondering, of course the girl I longed to impress finished ahead of me. Way, way ahead of me. I tried to console myself by thinking that perhaps her spirit was moved by my gallant effort to slough through this impossible event, though I knew this scenario also seemed improbable.]

Trouble is, I just wasn't thinking about cause-and-effect. I thought of myself as able to get the outputs I wanted, regardless of inputs. How often do you sometimes live as though you're cobbled together this way?

Turns out that the way we're created, all that comes together and stays woven together.

When Scripture talks of growing in wisdom, it always includes growing in the relational sense of who God is, and how we are to enjoy God. But there's more. It's not limited to that though. We also incorporate wise living into our routines, to make less challenging the pursuit of wise, loving, and Godly matters.

Our emotional/spiritual/overall health never untethers from what we eat/when we eat. Sleep? It's forever influenced by that too. It's connected by how and when we pray, what/when we consume for entertainment/news, what physically surrounds us, our friends/family, and their moods. 

It's just how we're created. 

It's OK to be reminded of this ... everyone needs reminders. Maybe this is some of why we're advised to think about stuff that's pure, right, true, lovely, admirable, praiseworthy ... it affects everything else we have going on.

With life experience, we grow in discerning this, which is truly happy news. Instead of disconnected quadrants, we begin to see ourselves as an adapting layout of pulleys, levels, buttons and switches ... you don't know what all the switches do or exactly how everything works, but you're learning all the time that it's all connected.

Take heart, friends ... getting wiser in these ways takes the slow pace of time for everyone. As for me, if I should ever choose to participate in a race again, at least I know some of what not to do beforehand -- and that's not a bad place to start.