One of the few memories that I have of my dad is when he coached my soccer team when I was younger. If anyone knew my dad, they would kind of cringe; he was very much a tactician, a stickler for following commands, and he did not like people wasting his time. These are great qualities if you are in the military (which he was), however, it becomes a little much for a youth soccer league and my friends, especially my friends. My friends knew not to mess around with my dad. He could get order in a room with just a quiet stare, unfortunately I have inherited his natural scowl. He would not hesitate to call people out if they were being bone heads. This article is not about tearing my dad down, it is about showing how he found opportunities to teach life’s lesson in some of the most obscure circumstances.
It was during a game he was coaching, and I was playing forward if I remember correctly. It really didn’t matter which position because I was all over the field, and I could have been playing any position. It was during a play where the other team had the ball, and they were breaking away and I got my face in between where one of them kicked the ball. It hit me right on the nose. My nose began to bleed. So, like any responsible player, I hustled over to the side, and my dad was screaming at me to get back into the game. I showed him the blood coming out of my nose. He yelled at me, “I don’t care that your nose is bleeding, get back out there!” So, I shrugged my shoulders and ran back into the game. A moment later the ball was kicked out of bounds, and I headed back to my dad to see if I could get some tissue for my nose. He subbed me out, I got some Kleenex, twisted it up and stuffed it up my nose. I got some water and cleaned the blood off of my face and got what I could off of my uniform.
Shortly after I was cleaned up, I walked over to my dad. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “you don’t stop playing until the whistle has been blown.” He saw that I was capable of continuing to play, so it wasn’t a matter of me being hurt, it was about continuing to play the game until the referee blew the whistle. If I had walked off the field our team would have been down one player, and the team we were playing was good, so they could have scored with that little bit of a shortage. My dad’s mind set was, we are in a game, we are playing to win, so we need to be at our best and continue fighting even when we are hurt (if at all capable).
This is a hard lesson for people to understand. There are many difficult times in our life where we get hurt and we want to stop, we want to get off of the field and fix ourselves. There are extreme situations where that is prudent, but most of the time, we just need to keep playing the game until we are told we can stop. For instance, if anybody has had surgery, you are highly encouraged to start walking soon after the surgery is over. People who do walk soon after surgery, have a faster time healing, and coping with the pain than people who just lay in bed and don’t want to hurt. There are very few instances in life where we have to completely stop. I do not mean vacations, sleep, and other recovery methods, I mean where someone is in a coma, or they are in a body cast and can’t move. In all other circumstances we take a breather and keep on moving.
There is that cliché phrase, “use it or lose it,” but that is a true statement. The longer a person stops exercising in terms of weeks, that person has the potential for their muscles to begin to atrophy. That is the same as learning. Many missionaries go around the world to learn and speak different languages. Once that missionary comes home, if they do not continue to use that language, they begin to forget much of it. I still remember a few words of Korean, and can read some of it, but I have forgotten most of it because I don’t use it. Even if I tried to speak Korean to a native, that person would have a very hard time understanding me. I know this because I have tried and failed repeatedly, when I returned to Korea 14 years after my mission when I was in the Air Force.
There are many days where I would like to quit and escape, but I won’t heal or continue to get better if I do that. I must continue to work, learn and fight. The Lord has not blown the whistle for me to stop playing. There is much for me to do, even though life is hard, and I am tired most of the day. However, I have to keep persevering if I want to return to my little boy. I have to keep fighting, the whistle has not been blown for me to stop.
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