Comparison and Team Work





Team sports can be either a great experience, or a horrible one, depending on, well, your team! If you have a great team who supports each other and balances out each other's weaknesses, the experience is incredible! On the other hand, if everyone if about ready to wring each other's necks, it makes for some tense moments and a less than fun experience! Fortunately for me, I have an incredible team this year!  I love the fact that we can joke around AND play competitively. Not all of our games are pretty, but I think my favorite part of this team is that, working together, we can balance out each other's strengths and weaknesses. I love these ladies!

 







One of the things being part of a team has taught me these last couple years is that different  doesn't equal less-important or more important. Just because someone has different strengths than me doesn't make them better or worse than me!We need all the parts of the team for it to work well... we wouldn't score very many points if it weren't for our awesomely tall hitters! But they wouldn't be able to score any points if it weren't for  our setter, Mary Frances, who can chase down the ball and set it over to them to spike! But she wouldn't have balls to set in the first place if there weren't people in the backrow to get them up! 

 

It seems so obvious in a team setting that each player is important, but in other situations in life, I know for me, at least, it's easy to compare myself to others. When my peers are better athletes/scholars than I am, I feel like trash. But if I can find someone who is worse than me at these things, suddenly I am comforted. Because their strengths aren't my strengths, I somehow feel gratified. Yet, it is BECAUSE we have different strengths and weaknesses that we balance each other out so well! God gave us all gifts to be used for His glory, and many of us have different gifts. Sometimes when I look at my gifts compared to others, I am so busy complaining that I don't have as many or the same kind of gifts as someone else, that I never USE the ones God has given to me! Can you imagine what would happen if all the spikers on our team started crying mid-game because they didn't have Mary Frances's beautiful sets? Or if Anna Keeley and I (backrow specialists) decided to sit the bench because we felt useless since we couldn't spike? The whole game would be in shambles, even though together we could have a lot of fun. We would be making ourselves miserable.

 

 I am a habitual comparer, and by no means am I saying that I have this "no-comparing thing" down. But this is something I have been thinking about, mainly because comparing never makes me content.I guess my point is, I think I would be a whole lot happier if I chose to be content with my gifts, and happy for other people when I see theirs. I would waste a whole lot less time, and have fun doing what God made me to do in the first place.