Come and listen...

     For those who have not figured it out, I normally don't post a status on facebook after my team loses a game. I am a person who loves to win and I have found that in order to achieve things you can't sit there a dwell on the past, you have to pick yourself up and move on. And one way I pick myself up and move on is by not posting the fact that I just lost. I think that as an athlete you should try to never use words like lose, fail, give up, etc. when talking about yourself because it can bring down your confidence and make you not achieve as much. It's the same sort of thing about people who say, "Kill me." and other phrases like that. What are we always taught in school? If a fellow student starts saying things like that we are supposed to go and report it to someone who can help them. Everyone at some point tells themselves that they are going to probably lose a certain game, but I feel you should never verbalize that thought.
     Now having said all of that, I will tell  how our season ended in Atlanta this last weekend. (I guess this is contradicting myself, oh well. The whole point was for me to say that I hate to admit that I lost.) We arrived in Atlanta on Thursday and got to our hotel rooms. I felt very much like a professional because the rooms were extremely nice! Well, they were extremely nice for someone who has been an MK in Africa most of their lives haha. Friday our girls played against Georgia Perimeter College and lost in a golden goal overtime. I felt so sorry for them because they had literally played their hearts out and we had cheered so hard for them. I think their loss was the most dramatic of the weekend. If anybody deserved to move on to the finals, the girls should have. The next day we were facing GPC as well and I could sense in my teammates that every one of us was extremely focused and nervous at the same time. Finally we were playing in a game that truly meant something. We were all really focused and quiet in our warm ups but at the same time filled with energy. everything was quiet from our team until coached called us to huddle up before the game got under way. At that moment when he called us all of our players started yelling and screaming and clapping our hands and beating on our chest.  It was like some one had just unchained the beast... For the first 30 minutes of the game our team totally dominated. We couldn't get a goal but we had all of the possession and it was clear that we had come to play. Then we had a goal disallowed because one of our players was "offside." That's what makes soccer so dramatic is that there is no instant replay and no goal line technology, once the ref calls it, it is done. He wasn't off, but the ref made a bad call. And for some reason, after that call our team attacking mentality was down. For some reason the scale started tipping to GPC's favor. I really have no way to describe what happened... I do truly feel that God did not want us to win that game for whatever reason. I still can't explain it and I may sound crazy but oh well, but I was praying the whole game four our team to have good attitudes and keep our heads up and all of that stuff and at some point I just felt at peace about the game. It felt like God was telling me, "Not this game James. You're starting over new. It's time for this season to be over."
     So now I've begun a new personal season. I begin on Wednesday, a new workout schedule and I'm going to continue to become the player that I once was but way better. (That's my plan. Obviously God has His own, the story above should prove that.)
     I labeled this post "Come and Listen..." after a song by David Crowder. It is amazing to me how God speaks to us while we go through out our day as long as we listen.