How Come the Outcome

Just when you think you've got it figured out...

Never fear, friends, the competitive spirit is alive and well in our household.  In a society that has become afraid of crowning winners for fear of wounding self esteem, we have daily rivalries over everything from who got dressed first to who is sitting closest to mommy at breakfast.  Truly, I sometimes find myself moving just to be able to eat in peace.  The most popular competition is who can get their seat belt on the fastest.  Funny enough, my younger son cannot even buckle himself in yet.  While I'm buckling him in, my older son is working quick to be first.  All the while, they are smack talking to each other about who is going to win.  "I'm almost there.  You're going to lose. I'm going to be first." As the tension rises, so does the screaming and loss of control of emotion, which usually brings about the inability to maneuver hands and effectively buckle.  Then, whoever finally can open their eyes long enough to realize they lost or won, will cry all the more if the outcome did not go their way.  I'm not exaggerating.  It all culminates with me saying, "That's enough. Quiet!"

Competition is stronger in some as an innate compulsion to win.  It's an awesome self-motivating spirit of someone who is willing to make self sacrifices in order to reach a desired outcome.  It also comes with a strong desire for constant self improvement. I know this because the man I'm married to possesses this admirable quality and it shows.  I get to witness it.  I have grown to not only understand it but love it about him.  A great competitor understands that you win by excelling in the process not by willing the outcome.  Right now, my children do not understand this.  They're kids, but as they grow to be excellent men, they will be able to comprehend the power of the process.

I relate sometimes to their thinking, as children, when I desire a certain outcome in life.   I don't want to make the right choices, get control of my emotions, or have to bear the burden one moment longer but I cry when the outcome doesn't go my way.  These are the moments that I have to make the painful choice to look in the mirror and make necessary adjustments.

...everything changes.

But what about when the outcome requires more than my daily disciplines?  What about when it requires me to believe the best even when I don't feel like it?  These outcomes involve things I cannot control. Suppose you gave your best and believed with all your heart, but it doesn't go your way.  These moments of disappointing outcomes can be the hardest to overcome.  It's easier when we can identify something within our daily routine or behavior that could have altered the result.  But when it just isn't clear, we begin to doubt what we thought was true.  How does this not affect what we will believe the next time?  We've all been there before unsure why it didn't go our way, why our prayers weren't answered.  We feel forever changed unable to believe with our whole heart again.  It just leaves us questioning everything.

Maybe the answers to the questions are far more simple than we realize.  The answer could be as close as an Alan Jackson song, "Faith, hope, and love are some good things He gave us."  To correctly quote the source of these words, it says "Faith, hope and love will remain."  When all outcomes pass on, the money earned, the degrees accredited, the business built, even the days we live, the unmeasurable substances-faith, hope and love- will prove to still be there. Sounds a bit unfathomable but if this is true, that these thought processes to apply faith, hope and love in all things actually continue to live on, then they live on in other peoples' hearts who were encouraged by you to believe this way.  Then they pass it on to someone else.  You know, it only takes a spark to get a fire going.  (I'm sorry, y'all, for the cheese but it just applied here).  And if you believe in Heaven, these substances live on when the new heaven and the new earth come.  Every outcome that we are fighting for will be gone, but faith, hope and love are the only currency that actually has a measurable attribute in Heaven.  This belief doesn't change the will to win but it frees you to compete all the more when you're not afraid to lose.

This life tool is to never stop believing for the best outcome possible.  To apply faith, hope, and love in the process, when it's all said and done, might just be the most rewardable (yes, i made that word up) outcome of all.   If society could understand this, that self worth is built in the process, not destroyed by the outcome, then maybe we could raise a generation of children not afraid of losing but afraid of not trying.  There is far more to be lost by not trying than by not winning.

What's up with you?
Where have you given up that you need to re-energize your belief in the best outcome possible?