Practice is a drag man

In life, most people can relate when I say that there are always going to be difficulties that are very difficult to overcome. For some, it's a specific person, for others, it's the significant number of curveballs that life throws at you, for me this week, it was facing my biggest weakness and attempting, yet again, to overcome it.

I find a lot of value in the difficulty of my life and schedule that I balance day to day. Even on the worst days, I find myself smiling at the end of it knowing that something good always comes out of it. If you are at all familiar with the Bible, you know the verse "I can do all things through God who gives me strength" from the good book of Phillipians. Most days, I am repeating this to myself over and over again until I actually believe it. For those that don't know, I am a student athlete here at CMU. Most days, the order of that should really go athlete then student because lacrosse rarely ever escapes my mind.

As an athlete, every day consists of some sort of practice, lift, conditioning or even all three. Each present their own challenges but in different ways. Particularly this week, it was practice that produced the biggest challenge. If you were to ask me my greatest weakness right now, it would be the ability to humble myself and take corrective criticism...or maybe just criticism. Normally, the path I take when this happens is I get angry, then I yell at myself to listen and take it in stride; then I get frustrated with myself for not being able to let it go and move on (normally there's another mistake mixed in somewhere because of my reaction and then that frustrates me even more), and then frustration leads to tears of frustration, then frustration from crying of frustration. After 3 years, you would think that I would be able to handle this more appropriately, but I don't. Isn't it funny how 1 bad thing can upset your whole day? For me, I shouldn't be worried about how I'm playing for my coaches sake but how I'm playing for God's sake. If I kept my focus on him the whole time, there would be no way to get frustrated because He never gets angry at me. The thing is, it's so important to take what people say in stride because if you put all your emotion on what they think of you and none in what He thinks of you, then you're setting yourself up for failure. Striving to please the people of this world is exhausting and quite frankly unrewarding. But trying to please God is so great because He loves us regardless and there's no need to try and hide our imperfections to Him because He is already aware of them. (Maybe someday I'll learn this haha).

Lastly, I have this picture up on my wall that states "Live by grace, not perfection" and I just think that it is so suiting for this post... That's all 🙂

McVey Home Visit

This week has been quite the week of practice, events and class. I first want to give a shout out to CMU SAAC for their awesome job this week with it being diversity week. Monday, I went with a few others to the McVey Home to visit some awesome people with special needs and spend an hour with them. We posted a picture on social media with all of their smiling faces and received a lot of love back from the community and the good we were doing. This is something that I would have never imagined myself doing, but it is so rewarding and I love it. 

There is a women that lives there that is one of my favorites. I got the opportunity to work 1 on 1 with her Monday night for our activity we were doing. We read them the very beginning chapter of the Bible, Genesis, and described to them how God made the Earth. We then asked them questions like "What has God created in your life that you love?" or "Who is God to you?" There responses were great and so real. After, we did an activity with them with black paper and chalk to represent the darkness and light of God. Some wanted to draw themselves, others wanted help from us and some wanted to just eat the chalk... haha. I worked with Denise and she had me draw for her while she came up with some ideas. At the end of the night, she had the sun, stars, the words "happy" and "joy", a smiling face and a heart all on her paper. They all represented the things that she associated with God and His light. She then told me to keep it so I would always think of her when I saw it. It is AMAZING the love they have in their hearts and how innocent they are. In a way, I envy their simplicity and how they live in each and every moment and absorb every ounce of it.