Irrational Hope and The Braves

Glove ✓
Braves hat ✓
J. Hey t-shirt ✓
99¢ roasted peanuts from Publix ✓
Foam finger ✓
Field Level Tickets ✓
Irrational hope of winning and making the next round of playoffs ✓ ✓ and ✓



I’m used to going to a braves game and watching the Southeast’s beloved team win. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been lucky that way. Even when the braves were notoriously bad, and lost more games than they won, I managed to somehow show up when fate was smiling down on them and Angels were perhaps truly in the outfield invisibly causing a Bravo outfielder to make reaches and catches that on any normal day, he wouldn’t have a shot at. This year however, my luck must of ran out. Or maybe it was because in 3 out of the 5 games I went to, I was with my sister, who has about as much good luck as a 3 leaf clover who can’t find his rabbit foot after a black cat just crossed his path. Bad luck seems to follow her, bless her unlucky little heart. Unfortunately, the power of bad luck seems to outweigh the power of good luck b/c not only did we lose all 3 games we went to together. We got destroyed in 2 out of the 3.

However, Kelly and I kept going back. We had hope. We had hope that our luck would change, that bad luck would run its course and that we would see our boys pull through in miraculous, heaven raining down homeruns and brilliant double plays kinds of ways. So with our freshly washed Heyward shirts on and our cheap roasted peanuts we proudly and confidently enter Turner Field, grab our free foam Tomahawks and make our way to our Field Level seats for Game 4 against the Giants in the first round of the post season. Heyward has had zero hits this series and I HOPE that he’s going to bring that .000 batting average up a few points. Brooks Conrad has almost single handedly cost the Braves 2 games in this series and I HOPE that Bobby does not start him in the field. Matty Diaz is just a cool dude, so I HOPE to see him yards away filling the left field position. At one point I even hoped that Bobby Cox would glance my way and see that I brought my glove and that I grew up on the ball field, that I can hardly remember a weekend when I wasn’t in cleats and carrying around a bat bag and checking out tournament brackets. I hope he knows that in between games, I was keeping my skills alive by playing cup ball with 10 of my closest ball park friends. And I hoped that he would know that I could probably make just as good of a second baseman as Brooks Conrad, and start me in game 4 against the Giants. I hoped he would know that I have my lucky glove, the one I’ve had since middle school, the one that has caught game winning fly balls and blocked line drives from careening me in the face while pitching. The one that has been at every Braves game even when sitting in the nosebleeds, hoping that a foul ball might find it’s way into the old worn out leather. I hoped that he would spot my ridiculously long skinny arms flailing around (I also hoped he could see past the skinniness and notice how deceptively strong I am) in the air trying to get his attention and that he would just give me a shot. I hoped that he would make the at&t call to section 122 and put Lindsey Howard at 2nd base. Irrational? Yes. But hope, nonetheless.

The game went on and my hopes remained. Heyward got a hit. Bobby didn’t start Conrad. And Diaz took the left field position yards away from me. Bobby never made the at&t call to section 122 and the braves lost. BUT, the game ends up being the most fun I’ve had at any Braves game ever. And I didn’t even hope for that. Me and my sister jumped up and down and tomahawk chopped Bobby Cox into retirement, and we laughed and we were free and we didn’t care if anyone else thought we were nuts for our wild antics. I didn’t hope for that, but hope got me to the position to experience the best Braves experience ever and to a closer bond with my sister. Having hope didn’t necessarily get me what I wanted, but it got me something different, possibly even better than what I went in hoping for. In fact, I’m positive the outcome was better than what I hoped for.

That’s why hope is so important and vital to life. Without it, we’re doomed. Ask anyone who’s ever given up hope... if they survived. When hope is absent, you have nothing to live for. I think it is a place of being completely destitute. The hope I have for life has nothing to do with luck. My hope is real, it’s true, it’s rock solid. My hope is in Jesus Christ and His redeeming love. I hope for God to do a lot of things in my life and I hope that He will give me some of what I want. But I also hope that if He doesn’t, that what He has instead, is better in the long run. I have hope that even if my life from this point on only goes down hill, that the spiral ride downward will somehow have an impact in the unseen, eternal story of God. Irrational? I'm sure it looks that way, but God has a way of getting a hold of a person and instilling foolish, unashamed, recklessly abandoned hope in Himself.

I’ve had a great life with many highs and lows and in betweens. My life isn’t currently spiraling into doom, but if it does, I hope that I still have hope. And if I run out, someone remind me that I need to keep hoping in God Almighty and His plan and His Shepherding ways and in Jesus Christ crucified and His redeeming power. And if the walls of your life are crashing down all around you and the bottom is falling out (heck, maybe life is just boring and normal and you’ve had enough of that), know that He is near, He is HOPE, He will respond when we call to Him in our worn out, fragile state of mind; He will respond. Even if hope in an unseen God feels as irrational as my hope that Bobby Cox would put me in the game, try Him out anyway. Give Jesus a chance to prove you wrong or right. I truly believe that if you seek for and turn to the Living God, He will not let you down, He will rescue you, He will reveal His truth and give you life. What do you have to lose by testing him out? It all starts with hope. I hope He gives you hope.

Fall Festival Failure

Eight month pregnant Stephanie and I pulled into the Ingles parking lot after a long day of failed attempts of Festival going. By this point, we had decided that whatever attempt we made at doing anything, was going to be unsuccessful or met with some sort of obstacle. After driving through North Ga most of the day and finally making it back into the greater Gainesville area, why would we expect anything less than the odd luck of the first part of day to continue?

So back to the nearly empty Ingles parking lot. I pull the car down an aisle and I’m turning into a parking space so we can run (I use run loosely, you know with the very pregnant Stephanie and all) quickly into Ingles and grab bread and gravy for the pot roast. The pot roast the we believe will actually be ruined due to some freak happening like Namche, her dog, getting famished during the day and diving into the crock pot for a treat; or Kaden her 2 year old, sneaking away from Dad Shane and somehow climbing onto the counter and dumping an entire bottle of Tabasco sauce or a bucket of saw dust from outside into the pot. But we were stopping anyway and getting our gravy and bread on the off chance that the roast will in fact be tasty and delicious and not ruined.

Anyhow, as I’m pulling into the Ingles parking space, a truck is pulling into the space that is connected to mine from the other aisle. I think nothing of it at first, I figure, he’ll just stay in his space and not do the pull straight through thing b/c I’m currently pulling into that space. And I’ll stay in my space and not do the straight through thing b/c that was the plan and I know how to reverse out of a parking space. Mr. Old guy, however, in his decades old F-150 apparently had different plans. He had his mind made up that he was not, under any circumstance about to have to back out of a parking space after his Ingles shopping experience and decides that even if he has to push me and my Ford Escape out of the way with his front bumper, he’s pulling through and taking my spot. I just stopped and stared at him in awe (our eyes actually met) and with a feeling of “of course, why would something bizarre not be happening” coming over me, I had no choice but to put my sap covered, worn out from driving all day Escape into reverse and take another parking space. It was quite funny and ironic and very fitting of how our weekend was going. And really, the perfect way to end our adventure of Fall Festival Fiascos 2010. Oh wait, did I say end of fall festival fiascos? no no, we decided to give it another shot on Sunday at Mule camp in 90 degree, October weather. What were we thinking? Maybe we refuse to believe that we can experience such weird luck for another day in a row. Maybe we’re just the kind of people that have hope that things will eventually go as planned and that there must be some explanation to all the seeming randomness of the past 2 days. At least I know Steph feels that way, b/c on our long drive back from Failed Festival #1, she was coming up with spiritual and life lessons to be learned from our 2 previous days together. And to prove that she always has some positive spin on everything she said as we walked into Ingles “maybe the old guy’s old truck’s reverse gear doesn’t work”.

I wonder could it all be providence? Could the traffic, failed Apple Festival attempts, blockaded roads, friends who get sick and you can’t hang out, 90 degree October weather, and old guy’s parking preferences be part of a bigger plan, a weaving together of seemingly random incidences ordained by God to create a story that we can’t see today or possibly ever this side of eternity, but is necessary to creating the life that He actually has planned for us? I like to think so. So I’ll take Steph’s perspective, “the old guy’s truck probably doesn’t go into reverse”. And I’ll take these occurances as they come and do my best to trust the Author of my story with each seemingly random circumstance that comes my way.