A Solid 9.5 For Style
posted by Daniel Blackaby
20Oct
The hockey rink. A blissful oasis of joyful memories, where magical moments happen more frequently than within the halls of Hogwarts. A haven of nostalgia, it is a place where friendships are born and battles are won… and for some, a place where we hopelessly attempt to recapture our pre-twenty-college-pound-glory.
Steven Spielberg couldn’t have scripted it any more dramatically. Rallying from a two-goal deficit, my team forced overtime in dramatic fashion. The extra session solved nothing, so the game hinged on the most exciting moment in hockey – the shootout! Back and forth, neither team able to claim the upper hand. Eventually all sixteen players on both teams had tried their luck on the opposing goalie…except for me.
Adding to the storybook tilt was my girlfriend. She was visiting me from Canada and two days earlier had become my fiancée. As I took center ice, the fate of the game resting on my stick, I winked to her, “after killer moves I am about to make she’ll never regret signing on to my team as long as she lives!”
Launching forward with superhuman speed, I took the puck and headed down ice. In the next mill-a-second I gauged that the goalie was weak glove-side, would be fooled by a deke and was of west-Ukrainian descent. My stick entered into a complex pattern of precision moves, spurred on by the infatuated cheers of my fiancée, then…WOOSH!!!
In a blur of motion I realized my skates were pointing heaven-ward and I was hurling through the air at approximately twenty miles an hour. My skates had caught an edge.
Pirouetting across the sky, my body entered into a series of triple salchow and double lutzes not seen since Kristi Yamaguchi’s prime. Bouncing off the ice’s surface, I completed a beautiful double-single-double combination. With a flurry of climactic motion – BANG! – I slammed into the boards. I can’t remember what was more challenging. Avoiding eye contact with my disgusted teammates afterwards, or trying to convince my fiancée to still marry me!
The immense pressure of my fiancée watching had gotten to me, and I had stumbled (to put it inexcusably lightly). We all must deal with pressure at some point. In the 2006 Winter Olympic Games speed skater Jeremy Wotherspoon felt similar pressure. Although heavily favored in his race, he stumbled out of the gate and fell to his face. As Christians we can also feel heavy pressure. With the world constantly analyzing our every action, many Christians can become paralyzed by the accompanied pressure. Fear of messing up and ruining our witness, or else fear of the pressure that comes along with following God’s will can hold us back. The Bible compares life to a race, and urges us to, “run in such a way as to get the prize.” Don’t let pressure hold you back. You will never claim the prize by tentatively walking to the finish line! God never expects us to be perfect, but he does ask us to put our whole self into following him!
1 Corinthians 9: 24 “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”
About the Author
Daniel a 22 year old English Major at North Greenville University, SC. He is an avid reader, and collector classic literature. He also has a passion for music with over 900 CDs in his libary. He plays guitar, bass, drums, and keyboard, and is currently playing in Christain rock band called Echoes in Eternity (www.myspace.com/eiemusic). He loves traveling, and has to date visited 5 diffrent contienits. Daniel’s guilty pleause is that he is huge fan of Gilmore Girls! You can also find him on Facebook.
