Wins and Losses

For over a hundred years a baseball pitcher’s effectiveness has been determined (largely) by one overarching statistic: wins. It seems logical enough. At the end of the day, what matters more than whether a team was victorious or not? And who affects that more than the starting pitcher? Salaries, bonuses, and accolades are awarded based on the number(s) in the Win column. In fact, the highest award a pitcher can achieve is named after Cy Young, who is most remembered for accumulating 511 wins over the course of his career, the most in league history.

However, recent observers of the game have suggested that this stat is not a true measure of a pitcher’s worth. What about the starting pitcher who allows no runs but is replaced by relief pitchers who blow their team’s lead and thus deny the starter with a win? Many say that once the ball is put in play, the outcome is out of the pitcher’s hands and thus he should not be punished for being on a team of less than excellent defenders. These fans and statisticians have created new metrics such as WhiP (walks + hits / innings pitched), FiP (fielding independent pitching), and WAR (wins above a hypothetical league average player). The key theme in all these is that perhaps the outcome of the game (of which a pitcher’s performance is merely one factor) is not a proper metric for measuring a pitcher’s success. Perhaps winning, after all, isn’t everything.

Many of us (and when I write ‘us’, I mean ‘me’) have a tendency to view life in a similar regard. What is more quantifiable than results? At the end of the day, are we not judged by what we have accomplished? Modern logic would confirm this.

Perhaps though, there is more to life than cut and dry results. Perhaps unintended outcomes pulse with just as much opportunity and potential as desired ones.

My father and I set out to hike the Manistee River Trail this weekend. We’ve had it planned for a couple of months. I bought the maps and planned the hike. We calculated our days and divided our snacks. When the day arrived, we drove the four hours north to Mesick, Michigan. The hiking was warm and humid and we were glad to finally set our packs down in a gorgeous meadow beside the Manistee River to watch the swallows dart joyously in the air above our heads. At about 8:30 that evening we were forced to retreat into our tent by the arrival of a rain shower.

 At 8:30am, it was still raining. At 9:00am it was still raining. While we took down our tent it was still raining. When I put on my raincoat it was still raining. I noticed that the rapidly falling water seemed to seep right through what I thought was a waterproof coat, soaking my skin. We had a brief conference about the now-waterlogged coat. The temperature was to drop into the mid-thirties that night. We made the decision to not risk a 30 degree night in wet clothes (and hypothermia) and instead return the four miles we had hiked and drive home.

My first thought as I led the way back over the slippery roots and muddy soil was this: ‘What a failure.’

Hiking has a funny way of eroding and shaping your thoughts over the long haul of a day’s walking.

My mind turned back to baseball (as it often does) and upon wins and losses. We attribute wins and losses in life based upon our expectations of what a desirable outcome would be. To be sure, there are times when we all need the motivation and accountability that this type of thinking brings but it also smacks of hubris and defeatism. Where we might not accomplish a particular goal or outcome, we may at the same time, achieve another desirable result. When our desire for success robs us of noticing other positive outcomes, it becomes a hindrance that we must either shed or use as fuel. We must never drag it behind us like an anchor.

Beyond that, our goals are driven by a severe ignorance of the larger picture. In light of an omniscient God, who lays the plans of this world (and our lives) out before Him in His hand, our personal goals must be held lightly and with the greatest humility. We don’t really know what we need. We only know our personal preferences and desires. We must always be quick to defer to the One who holds our life and knows our needs. These are not excuses for inaction but rather assurances that His plan for those who love Him is far beyond our meager imaginations.

At the end of the day, I spent a day and a half hiking with my father, a fact to which few can joyfully claim. We sat beside a marvelous river in the amber rays of sunset. We marveled at the beauty of a created world; the grasses, the rocks, the hills. We heard the symphony of falling water amid the boughs of silent pines. We spent hours together of a life on this earth that is far too brief to be taken lightly.

We may not have gotten the win, but perhaps we gained something greater.

The Futility of Regret

Darkness has a way of filling the void around us and boxing us in. There is something about the darkness that isolates us in a way that is divorced from reality. In the dark our inner world becomes the only world, or at least that’s the way it feels.  Those of us who have dealt with insomnia or altered sleep schedules know that one of the most frustrating and trying thing is to sit patiently yearning for sleep when sleep will not come. Blaise Pascal once said that “all of humanity’s stem from man’s inability to sit in a quiet room alone.” Those of us who know the debilitating power of darkness know these words to be painfully true in a number of ways. Too often the isolation of darkness releases our assailing demons. Ideas and fears stifled by the daylight often prevail in the sequestration of the night. The lusts of the flesh and doubts long stifled burst suddenly to life in the quiet hours.

Such has been my experience. Working overnight shifts have been difficult on my non-working hours. Often I find myself awake at unusual times battling the losing battle of imposing sleep that will not come. It seems so often that it is in times like these that the doubts and fears of our past take the opportunity of our weakness to show themselves like some shadowy slithering menace. We all have fears and regrets about our lives. Though we may successfully (and rightly) bring them into the light of Truth through Scripture it is in our times of strife that they reemerge, causing us to question our choices, our promise of hope, and indeed our very lives. I found myself battling regret in wee small hours of the morning yesterday. My intent had been to go hiking later in the morning but the darkness lingered on interminably and sleep seemed an insurmountable mountian. Assailed upon by hopelessness and regret, the very choices that I have made over the years became a bitter reminder of my own insufficiencies and failures. Lost in the tedium, of course, like the very light of day, were the blessings which the Lord has shown me; the ways in which He reveals Himself and His will to me in ways small and large. That is the power of darkness: isolation and fear. We all have things in our past that we wish we could have done differently. We all have areas of our pasts that we would prefer be secret even to those closest to us; expanses of our minds that we fight to crucify daily that would shock even those who know us best. Regret, as it so often does, fermented into bitterness and it was in this spirit that I set out to hike a nature area on the west side of Ann Arbor.

The park has an inclusive, almost claustrophobic feel, even in the leafless days of late autumn thanks in part to the numerous hills and ridges that bring the hiker in and out of gullies and small valleys. I traversed in the earliest daylight hours aimlessly only having the vague goal of reaching the farthest extremes of the park; anything to get away from the turmoil of my own thoughts. Hiking so often is just that for me, a chance to escape the troubles of life and the pressures of polite society. Most of the hike was a display of grey and brown as fallen leaves crunched underfoot with a crust of frost and leafless trees filled the horizon, however every once and a while the rising sun peaked over the buffeting hills and cast away the shadows. Hiking east I climbed a rise that was slightly more difficult that I had intended and was greeted with a view of the Huron River Valley, smoky in the morning air and glinting with the rays of the sun. Now I’m not stupid, I knew the geography of the area. I hadn’t misplaced the river but still it came as a contrast to the bland forest and its skeleton trees. There it was: something so beautiful and shimmering amid the brown monotony of the rest of the hike. I had thrown a Bible into my jacket pocket out of habit as I had left and now pulled it out and sat down. I have been (slowly) driving my way through Isaiah and turned to the day’s reading: “And yet, Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all formed by your hand.”

It struck me in that moment the futility of regret. A thousand choices and sins might lay behind us like a vast wasteland, but if we know the Lord and set our sights on Him, nothing; not our past; not our doubts, can stop us. The Holy Spirit rescues us from the wreck of our lives. Decisions, good and bad, wise or unwise are meaningless unless done for the Lord. Conversely, even our limited, faltering steps move us closer if we have on our horizon the glory of the Lord. We are limited in our very nature: created things seeking to have the insight of their Creator. Of course we see only dimly the path before us, that is the point: to trust fully the one who draws us along, who leads us on. He has shaped us, molded us, and gifted us for His purposes. Even when those purposes seem elusive and shrouded in mystery our response should not be to lament our foolishly limited perspective but rather to trust in the Hand and Mind guiding us. Without Him, even our shrewdest decisions are nothing but a lesson in futility.

As I sat, the daylight exorcised the shadows from the wood. Unencumbered by the leafy canopy it immersed the forest in blazing light. The world seemed to swell as I viewed it but not in a way that isolated or frustrated. The expanse of blue sky, the shimmer of sunlight upon the river, the boughs of trees stretching out all spoke to me of the Lord’s providential will--- a plan free from shadows, darkness, and doubt. I would have sat there all day but the allure of the trail led me on. The promise of the unknown path before me led my steps. I think there’s a lesson in the walking.