Just This Once

We didn't hear the end of the story—did Clay's team win or lose the championship?? If they won, they didn't need him anyway. If they lost, maybe his choice not to play contributed in his team's loss. Did he incur scorn from his team after the game was over? That would have been tough to endure. Could his greater test be that sometimes showing up for God means showing up for the team? Only Clay will know the answer, but it sounds like he had no regrets. Looking back on my life, I know that I have made promises to myself that I certainly didn't keep. It's as if, as soon as I make a strong commitment to something—some ideal or some boundary—Life offers me a temptation to break my commitment. I have watched myself cave to such temptations again and again. When I caved, I felt like I failed a test. I understood that my commitment was only talk; I wasn't ready or strong enough to really put my money where my mouth was—to really make a sacrifice. But other promises to myself, business partners, and close friends I have, even surprisingly to myself at first, been able to keep. One of those promises came after I had a dream about drinking alcohol. Mind you, I don't think anyone would say that I had "an alcohol problem"; alcohol never really did anything for me, so I just drank with friends, and seldomly, and never more than a glass or two. But after a dream one night showed me vividly what happens to us when we drink—how we become disconnected from our intuition after the first sip, and shortly afterwords, from our sense of judgment—and how, by imbibing alcohol, we unintentionally cut ourselves off from the divine spark within us and, through that spark, to connecting to an entire spiritual community—I decided to never knowingly drink even a sip of alcohol again. At first, I received a great deal of social pressure from friends. "But this is exceptional stuff! Just have a sip!" and "Oh, you can break your promise now, for US." Nope. It's not worth it to me to give up that connection I saw in my dream. And my friends don't ask me anymore. They know I'm serious and adamant, and they know that I won't judge them for drinking, either. I had that dream in 2019, so it's been over six years now that I haven't touched alcohol. A couple of years later, my wife stopped drinking too. We both feel better for it, certainly. And I have a greater sense of myself, too: I know that I can hold fast to a commitment, make a sacrifice, and hold a boundary—at least for something, and at least so far. So I resonate in that regard to this story. But I also feel just how much of a sacrifice he had to make. Playing on a team is another kind of commitment, and that one, he dropped, and likely incurred the anger of his coach and friends in the process. If they lost the game, some might never forgive him. That's a very serious sacrifice to make.