The Cut List Taped to the Dugout Fence With My Grandson's Name Missing From It
The Cut List Taped to the Dugout Fence With My Grandson's Name Missing From It
I stood behind the backstop Tuesday evening, watching a coach half my age tape a single sheet of paper to the chain link fence by the dugout, and I felt my own stomach drop before my grandson's did. He had practiced his glove work in my driveway every evening for three weeks and told his little sister at breakfast he was going to be the starting shortstop by spring. I watched him jog over to that fence with the rest of the boys, read the list twice like a second reading might rearrange the letters, and walk back toward the car with his chin doing that trembling thing boys his age try hard to hide. His name was not on it. Mine would not have been either, most days of my life, and standing in that gravel parking lot brought up every disappointment I thought I had already made peace with.
I am sixty-one years old and have buried more hopes than I can count, jobs that fell through after the second interview, a proposal I once gave that got a kind no, dreams for my own children that rearranged into something different than what I had prayed for. I used to think a man gets better at absorbing disappointment the more of it he survives, the way a muscle strengthens from strain. What I have found, watching my grandson carry that folded cut list to the car without a word, is that disappointment does not build calluses. It reopens the same tender place every time, no matter how many times before it has already been struck.
Solomon named the mechanism behind that ache with a precision that still catches me off guard. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). A sick heart is not a dramatic exaggeration for a missed roster spot. It is an accurate diagnosis of what happens inside a person, young or old, when something longed for does not arrive on schedule, or does not arrive at all. My grandson's heart was genuinely sick in that parking lot, and so, quietly, was mine on his behalf.
My own reasoning offered nothing but hollow comfort on the drive home. I could tell him accurately that he is only ten, that there will be other seasons, that plenty of great players got cut once before they got good. Every sentence was true, and none of it touched the actual grief sitting in the passenger seat beside me, because disappointment was never really a facts problem waiting on a better perspective. It is a heart problem, and no accurate accounting of future possibilities has ever once healed a heart in the exact hour it broke.
This is precisely what abiding in the Spirit offers that my own well-meant pep talk could never finish supplying. David wrote a promise that does not wait for the sting to fade on its own timetable. "The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit" (Psalm 34:18, NKJV). Near, not eventually arriving once the disappointment has run its course. Jeremiah, writing from a grief far heavier than a cut list, still found a steadiness his own circumstances could never have produced. "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23, NKJV). I have never once talked myself into that steadiness by force of will. It has only come from staying close enough to receive it, the same way my grandson leans into me after a hard inning instead of working it out alone in the dugout.
Paul takes this further, and the first time I read it I thought he was overstating the case. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). I cannot manufacture that kind of hope through positive thinking, and I have tried. It is not a mood I talk myself into. It is love poured into me by a Person who is actually present, a different category of comfort than anything my own reasoning was ever equipped to generate. Paul says it again in a sentence I have leaned on through every disappointment I just named. "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28, NKJV). Not that every disappointment is secretly good in itself, but that God is skilled enough to work good through it anyway, including a cut from a travel team roster, and including whatever your own list of missed callbacks and closed doors looks like.
I watch a world groaning under disappointments far larger than a Little League roster, nations hoping for a peace that keeps slipping past the next summit, families hoping for reunions that keep getting postponed, a whole generation growing weary of promises that do not seem to land. Scripture never pretends that ache is new. "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful" (Hebrews 10:23, NKJV), and Peter points that same hope toward an ending no cut list, no closed door, and no failed summit will ever touch. "Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13, NKJV). I believe we are watching the early edges of that promise coming due, and I find that steadying rather than frightening, the way a man feels steadier once he knows the season is almost over.
My grandson and I got ice cream on the way home and did not talk about the roster once. He will try out again next spring, and so, in my own way, will I, for whatever door closed on me most recently. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly whose name was missing from whatever list you were watching for yours on this week. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that one door opening, and He will never leave you standing alone at that fence. He is coming back to finish every good thing He has ever started in you, and to close the book on every disappointment this world has ever handed any of us.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; Psalm 34:18; Lamentations 3:22-23; Romans 5:3-5; Romans 8:28; Hebrews 10:23; 2 Peter 3:13.
I stood behind the backstop Tuesday evening, watching a coach half my age tape a single sheet of paper to the chain link fence by the dugout, and I felt my own stomach drop before my grandson's did. He had practiced his glove work in my driveway every evening for three weeks and told his little sister at breakfast he was going to be the starting shortstop by spring. I watched him jog over to that fence with the rest of the boys, read the list twice like a second reading might rearrange the letters, and walk back toward the car with his chin doing that trembling thing boys his age try hard to hide. His name was not on it. Mine would not have been either, most days of my life, and standing in that gravel parking lot brought up every disappointment I thought I had already made peace with.
I am sixty-one years old and have buried more hopes than I can count, jobs that fell through after the second interview, a proposal I once gave that got a kind no, dreams for my own children that rearranged into something different than what I had prayed for. I used to think a man gets better at absorbing disappointment the more of it he survives, the way a muscle strengthens from strain. What I have found, watching my grandson carry that folded cut list to the car without a word, is that disappointment does not build calluses. It reopens the same tender place every time, no matter how many times before it has already been struck.
Solomon named the mechanism behind that ache with a precision that still catches me off guard. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). A sick heart is not a dramatic exaggeration for a missed roster spot. It is an accurate diagnosis of what happens inside a person, young or old, when something longed for does not arrive on schedule, or does not arrive at all. My grandson's heart was genuinely sick in that parking lot, and so, quietly, was mine on his behalf.
My own reasoning offered nothing but hollow comfort on the drive home. I could tell him accurately that he is only ten, that there will be other seasons, that plenty of great players got cut once before they got good. Every sentence was true, and none of it touched the actual grief sitting in the passenger seat beside me, because disappointment was never really a facts problem waiting on a better perspective. It is a heart problem, and no accurate accounting of future possibilities has ever once healed a heart in the exact hour it broke.
This is precisely what abiding in the Spirit offers that my own well-meant pep talk could never finish supplying. David wrote a promise that does not wait for the sting to fade on its own timetable. "The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit" (Psalm 34:18, NKJV). Near, not eventually arriving once the disappointment has run its course. Jeremiah, writing from a grief far heavier than a cut list, still found a steadiness his own circumstances could never have produced. "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23, NKJV). I have never once talked myself into that steadiness by force of will. It has only come from staying close enough to receive it, the same way my grandson leans into me after a hard inning instead of working it out alone in the dugout.
Paul takes this further, and the first time I read it I thought he was overstating the case. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). I cannot manufacture that kind of hope through positive thinking, and I have tried. It is not a mood I talk myself into. It is love poured into me by a Person who is actually present, a different category of comfort than anything my own reasoning was ever equipped to generate. Paul says it again in a sentence I have leaned on through every disappointment I just named. "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28, NKJV). Not that every disappointment is secretly good in itself, but that God is skilled enough to work good through it anyway, including a cut from a travel team roster, and including whatever your own list of missed callbacks and closed doors looks like.
I watch a world groaning under disappointments far larger than a Little League roster, nations hoping for a peace that keeps slipping past the next summit, families hoping for reunions that keep getting postponed, a whole generation growing weary of promises that do not seem to land. Scripture never pretends that ache is new. "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful" (Hebrews 10:23, NKJV), and Peter points that same hope toward an ending no cut list, no closed door, and no failed summit will ever touch. "Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:13, NKJV). I believe we are watching the early edges of that promise coming due, and I find that steadying rather than frightening, the way a man feels steadier once he knows the season is almost over.
My grandson and I got ice cream on the way home and did not talk about the roster once. He will try out again next spring, and so, in my own way, will I, for whatever door closed on me most recently. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly whose name was missing from whatever list you were watching for yours on this week. He has a plan for you that was never contingent on that one door opening, and He will never leave you standing alone at that fence. He is coming back to finish every good thing He has ever started in you, and to close the book on every disappointment this world has ever handed any of us.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; Psalm 34:18; Lamentations 3:22-23; Romans 5:3-5; Romans 8:28; Hebrews 10:23; 2 Peter 3:13.
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