Lessons from the Basketball Gym

Tonight I was downloading some pictures off of my iphone and I found this beautiful one of the snow.  You know the snow is gorgeous when an iphone through a window looks this good. 

This picture is the sun coming up over the mountain on the beautiful snow.  We certainly live in a beautiful part of the world.  I love it.

This is a somewhat blurry picture of Kyle's AAU hoops team after they won the fifth grade championship this past weekend.  I love the guys on both of our teams and their families are our extended family.  Travel basketball (or any sport) is a huge commitment but we are together as a family making memories.  What touches my heart is that several of the guys called David over for the team picture after they won the championship.  It made me tear up that they chose to include David. 

This weekend I was watching a sweet little third grade team with several of our friends on it play in their first game ever.  They were so cute and we were just cheering them on with every ball they threw near the goal.  It hit me that if I would have planned David's future he would have been a "mini Kyle" and would have been out on that court playing hoops. 

God however, had a different plan for our son.  Instead of being on a third grade AAU team learning how to play competitive basketball like his brother, he instead is sitting on the sidelines cheering him on.  His low IQ, slow reflexes, and low muscle tone do not allow him to be competitive with kids his age.  Then I look at his blonde baby chick hair from chemo, the scars all over his body from the hell he has endured over the last year, and I got a lump in my throat. 

I, as a parent, would  NEVER have chosen this life for my son.  He has suffered so much in the last year and things that come naturally to you and me are difficult for him. To our human eyes he is far from perfect. 

Our Amazing God; however, looks at my son and sees that he is made in the image of Jesus and that his disability does not hold him back from doing the Lord's work. His disability and cancer have been used by God to touch us all.  We never want our children to endure hardships but God, our amazing God, has used my son to touch others and that makes me overwhelmed. 

So instead of hosting a pity party for all the things like competitive basketball that my son will not excel at, I am overwhelmed and amazed that our God has used his disability and stage four cancer to teach me and to teach you How He Truly loves us.  That was the lesson that God taught me this weekend in the basketball gym. 

Jeremiah 29:11

For I know the plans I hvae for you, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.