Number 7

Do you have a favorite number?

I don't, but there is a number that has given my family a lot of grief lately.

It's number 7.

My older daughter signed up for softball with our city's recreation department. She never played on a 'real' team before, only with our homeschool group in a more informal setting. But she really wanted to play this year and spent hours honing her skills. Hey, even I went in the backyard with her to play catch, and believe me, my softball skills are more than a little rusty. :-)

She was picked on a team and faithfully attended all practices. In fact, she was always the first one there.

Finally, the day came to get the jerseys. Of course, she arrived before anyone else did; in fact, she was a half hour early. The team manager asked if she had a preference and she said she wanted number 11, but unfortunately that size didn't fit.

She took the number 7 she was offered and proudly came home with it.

That was probably the last time she smiled about that jersey.

Two days later, one of the coaches asked her to trade the number 7 with his daughter because "she always wears number 7, ever since she was a little girl". My daughter didn't feel inclined to trade, so she politely said no.

He asked again at the next practice.

His daughter asked just before they took their team photo.

The answer was always no, but now my daughter felt uneasy. She noticed she was being shunned by the coach's daughter and her friends.

When it came time to actually play, she was sent to far away right field. Now and then a ball would come her way, but no matter what she did right, the coach would find a way to yell at her.

Yes, yell at her. Invariably, the first words out of his mouth were, "What's wrong with you?" I wonder where he learned his coaching technique.

When the other girls were up at bat, he would cheer them on, calling them by their names. It was different for my daughter. When she was at the plate, he referred to her as "Number 7". Was that a cheer or a jeer?

Okay, you probably know how this story ends. She quit. She stuck it out for several weeks, but the pain of not having any friends on the team and having a verbally abusive coach wore my teenage daughter down.

She came to play ball and have fun; she didn't expect the coach to make fun of her.

So now a number 7 jersey hangs in her closet and will probably never see a ballfield again.

But what's worse is that my daughter has seen the seedier side of softball.

This coach 'stole' her self-esteem, instead of teaching her to steal bases.

Maybe to him, all he lost was a number 7 jersey and a less-than-perfect player. But he lost a lot more than that.

He lost my daughter's respect.

Softball isn't about winning and losing; it's about how you play the game, both on and off the field.

The number 7 will always remind me that everything I do and say impacts another person.

The Gospel of Matthew has a wonderful description of Jesus:

"A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench..." (Matt. 12:20)

It's a shame my daughter's enthusiasm for softball was quenched by a man who loved a number more than the game.

Flood

Quick...what comes to your mind when you hear the word 'flood'?

Water, right. Maybe something like this photo. No this isn't Niagra Falls; it's the Passaic River in New Jersey.

We recently received over 9 inches of rain in a 2-day period. This storm was dangerous and deadly. Many people were evacuated from their homes, including my husband's parents and his brother's family.

Isn't it amazing that water, which is so necessary for our lives, can cause such destruction?

Too much of a good thing can quickly become a bad thing.

Yet, wouldn't life be absolutely amazing if we could have a 'flood' of other things? Like kindness... or love... or honesty?

I wouldn't mind getting immersed in stuff like that. :-)