Sports Wounds

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Welcome to the masculine journey. We are very glad that you're with us this week. And we're actually, it's not really a, what do we call those pillar? It's not really a pillar, but it's kind of a follow-up show to last week's show in ways, right? Last week's show, we were talking about God surprising us right out of left field and out of left field came a topic out of left field. Was it left field, Andy, or right field? It was left. It was left field. Yeah, it was left field. From catcher to left field. Yeah, catcher to left field. That's right. And then left out. Then left out.

And then left center of the bench. Yeah. Would this be a spin-off show?

It would be a spin-off. Oh, okay. Yeah. So this week's topic, Robby, it's not sports injuries.

Right? It's sports wounds. Sports like father wounds, but there's all kinds of wounds, coach wounds, you know, all those things that you have the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. You know, we've been there and what did that feel like?

And, oh my gosh, you know, what was God, where was God in the midst of all that? Yeah. And so this, you know, we're not going to be talking about the time we twisted our ankle playing basketball, right?

That's an injury. All right. We're talking about the wounding, the wounding of a heart, the wounding of the soul or emotions, all those kinds of things that, you know, men don't typically talk about, but they actually happen. All right.

And so we're going to talk a little bit about it. If it was an injury show, we'd just give Robby the mic and all of us would go home. Yeah.

We'd give him the mic and it would be a series. It would be a pillar, you know, thumb, leg, finger. You take a pick. Brain. Yeah, brain, chainsaw, you know, crossbow, you know, you pick it. We can fill it.

We can fill a lot. Oh yeah. A boat. Yeah.

A boat. Yeah. That's sure.

If you have it with your broken leg, fall it on your boat. Yeah. So back to the topic, Danny, you have the first clip.

So you want to set that up at all? Yeah. The clip is from the show Frasier and Frasier and his brother Niles, if you've ever seen the show, not very athletic. And so Frasier is dating a PE teacher and he goes to the school and the clip extends and shows some of his wounding from a, I guess, a PE teacher and a coach from his childhood. And what you'll hear is her voice.

And then you'll hear this guy's voice and it's Frasier actually seeing his old coach in her place, but he's reliving some of his wounding as the clip goes on. And they're both trying, both situations are climbing a rope. Climbing a rope. Yeah.

That he couldn't do. Okay. Oh, I'd forgotten how it felt to sneak a kiss in school.

It always looked like fun. So I'll be finished here in a second and then we can go. Great. Great. I thought we'd try this new place.

I just read it. Campbell, you're not even trying. I'm sorry. You were saying? Yeah. I read a great review of this new restaurant.

Apparently the chef is from... No one is leaving until Campbell climbs the rope. Excuse me for a moment. Come on.

You can sleep through English. Toughen up. You can do it. Let's go, Campbell. Everybody's waiting. Come on, Crane.

Nobody is going home until you haul that fat bucket of lard to the top. I can't. I can't. Just give me a few minutes and I'll be ready to go. Oh, I just need you to do one thing. Graff, then give me 20, Crane.

I beg your pardon? Sure. Could you just round up the basketballs and put them in the rack over there?

Thanks. You know, we talk a lot about, do you have what it takes? And we talk a lot in the pre-show about how sports is so much tied to that in the masculine soul. So I was not an athlete. I mean, that's why I took up golf because nobody was throwing the ball at me or tackling me because I had it. And I just wasn't an athlete, but it was so much of my, I love baseball.

I love basketball, but I just did not physically have what it takes to do it. And there were so many times when I was Frazier with that coach, you know, he's screaming, come on, you can do it. Or, you know, is that the best you got? And it was the best I had. And, you know, the wounding from that is, you know, are you really a man?

Are you really a boy or whatever it is that because I can't do this and I don't know why. And I've felt most of my life that like, God, I heard this one time that God called all the eight year old little boys of the world together and said, okay, I'm going to explain to you what you need to make it through the rest of your life. And about that time I had to go to the bathroom.

And when I come back, he said, and that's what you got to do. And so I spent the rest of my life faking it, figuring I'd figure it out. And, you know, and that's the way sports made me feel. And I'm discovering, I think, in this journey that it stems from so much in my life of not being the one who was picked, not being the one who was good enough to be. And it just kind of just has roots and tendons all over the place. So yeah, well, right at that age that you're at, right, the boy's biggest question right during that time is do I have what it takes?

And so over and over, you know, in that type of situation, when the coaches are doing that to you, they're telling you no, no, no. Right. And it just hits your heart, it hits your soul in a way that you can't articulate because you don't even know you have the question. Yeah. Right.

You just know that you're not measuring up somehow. Yeah. Right. And so that can live with you. Right.

I mean, can set some really tones for the rest of your life if you're not careful. And that's what we're talking about is God can come in whether you're 20 and hearing this or you're 70 and hearing this, you still have some of this in there that God needs to come in and break through in some cases where you've been living under some of these lies of the enemy that says, you know, Danny, you don't have what it takes. And we know you, Danny, you have what it takes. Right. Right.

And God's been teaching it over and over. And so it's pretty cool. But thank you, Rodney.

I want to switch to you and go ahead. And actually, I'm going to play your clip early. You know, it's amazing. We even got your clip into the show, according to you doesn't happen that often. Well, no, but you did play it from one of my favorite movies. So that does help.

It always helps to go with Sam's favorite. Exactly. Yeah.

Well, go ahead. Old Indiana fool you. Yeah, that's me.

Yeah. So this is from Hoosiers. And Shooter is the main character here that I want to focus on, because he has wounds from his past that he needs to get over. And the head coach of his son's basketball team is going to help him do that.

So here's Shooter living in the past thinking, wow, every time they call me Shooter, I think of the one shot that I missed because I was a great basketball player, but yet I live in the moment that I missed. So therefore, he doesn't go to his son's games. He stays on the sidelines. He doesn't engage in his son's life properly. His son's embarrassed by him. And through the coach, having a need for an assistant coach brings him on as an assistant coach, but says, you got to stay sober. So what he's really trying to do is work in this man's life and help him out. And what he does is says, okay, you got to stay sober. And then of course he fails and comes to one of the games drunk. And that's where this clip picks up and has him basically shoving his head into the water, trying to get him sober.

And then there's a promise made that he'll be an assistant coach as long as the coach doesn't get kicked out of games anymore. But you'll see how that goes in the clip. I stuck my neck out for you. You live up here in a bargain or get yourself in a hospital and dry out. You could cut it. I didn't think I could cut it the other night either. But after what Jimmy did, it would take the Indiana national guard to get me out of here. Hey, we're coming together as a team.

But Jimmy, all the pistols are fire. We got 10 games to play. All right, we're going to be a tough team to beat. Now you come along for the ride. Hey, but oh, you got to give me your word that you will not be kicked out of no games. It's got some. It's just a matter of.

I just want to discuss this with them, all right. That pink slap in your eyes. Relax.

I didn't have the screaming like a mad fool. Well, I guess you got your reasons. You're out of here.

I've done it again. You reckon number four will put up their last shot, dad? Yeah, probably.

They've been picking low all night. Yeah. Great. Let yourself get taken out. Buddy, you drop down and take his place. Close that lane.

All right. And this is a moment last minute of the game, a tie game, critical moment. That's when he gets kicked out and puts shooter right in the square of things. And what I love about this clip is the sun comes in and actually makes that suggestion.

Hey, that think they'll pick and roll on us because they've been doing it. And you finally see the sun starting to brighten up towards his dad and that they can have some healing in their relationship. And when I look back at this, I'm thinking, okay, you know, shooter was the guy that everybody went to. He can do it. He can get it done. He's the athlete. And that's what I lived in because unlike Danny, I was the athlete. I could play any sport really well. I could even bowl. Just keep salt in the wound.

We'll pray over you later. Yeah. It just, a lot of things came real easy, but then also with coming easy, what everybody has expectations, right? That you're supposed to be something that maybe you're not. And where I always lacked was in the leadership category of freshman year of high school, me or another kid could be quarterback.

He had already played peewee football for a couple of years and was quarterback. I didn't really care. I didn't really need to be quarterback. I mean, shoot, you're in charge of everything. I didn't want to go step into that. So I just kind of laid back and just did kind of okay.

And yeah, let him have it. It turns out it's for the best because I was a much better receiver anyway, but when went and played, you know, and then on basketball senior year, our very last game, we got beat by a team that was nowhere near as good as us. The rest were calling fouls on us the whole game, not on them.

It was not a good situation. Our coach was a little ticked about that, but I remember the end of the game. We're up one point.

They got a fast break on it. Somehow I came down. I got the ball away from the guy. I'm coming back up court. I stopped to hold the ball because I know there's just a few seconds left.

I think we win the game. Well, they come up and follow me. I make one of two free throws. The kids shoots from they, the second one I missed, they shoot a half court shot, make it, and then beat us in overtime. So that's kind of my wounding is I could have stepped up and led and I didn't get it done.

Yeah. I can see why that spoke to you. Go to maskonjourney.org to learn more about us. What has bootcamp meant to me? That's a really tough thing to articulate. It's so deep inside me. It's ingrained in every part of me. Understanding woundedness. That's where God really caught me at my first bootcamp and also helping me step into healing and restoration from those wounds. It's kind of cool. It's like an onion. He keeps peeling back layers and it's, it's exciting and sometimes frustrating to go there with him, but I enjoy the process and the way God leads me to freedom.

Register today at maskonjourney.org. One of my favorite things about bootcamp. Well, the favorite thing about bootcamp is every time I go, I encounter God. And as anyone that has encountered God knows, generally speaking, it's nothing we expect. A real encounter with God out of the blue. He knew what I needed. I knew what I wanted.

And those two were rarely the same thing. Register today at maskonjourney.org. Welcome back to Mask on Journey Herald. Okay. You have to, you know who that is, don't you? Who's singing that?

I've heard the song a lot of times, but I can't tell you who it is. Oh, of course. It's Bonnie Raitt. Yes. Yeah. That's one of them.

I know how much you like Bonnie Raitt. Yes. Yeah. Didn't register for some reason. That's okay.

That's okay. I, I knew who it was cause I picked the clip. So it made it a little easier to point out who that was, but yeah, it could have chose a sports theme, right? They threw around center field from John Fogerty. Andy, you were going to play, we are the champions, right?

From queen. Right. But I'd already beat you to the bump and that's okay.

Once he has his bump in, we're not getting it. Oh yeah. It's, it's not going to go.

It's not going to go. But the reason I chose that is, you know, there's things that we do. She sings about, you know, walking, you know, limping on a cane, right? And sometimes you just got to trust God and enter into that valley of pain. And it's through those times with him that you get the healing on the other side. And that's what we're, you know, we're talking about today, whether that, that, that wounding was yesterday, this morning or 50 years ago, you still have to take that journey through the valley of pain to get back into the place where you can get healing restoration and get your heart back. Right. That's really what's happening. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about some, some sports wounding and not injuries, but sports wounding.

And I think I'm going to switch. I'm going to go ahead and play my clip if that's okay. Robby. My clip is from not a movie, believe it or not. It's from a pastor, a guy named Mark Driscoll. I don't know anything about him.

I saw him on YouTube and he's talking about father wounds. And so you're going to say, okay, how's that really tie into sports? Well, hold on. You know, I'll get to it. You know, I know on the edge of your seat, Rodney, you can hardly wait. Danny's still kind of crying from all your assaults on him, you know, earlier, but yeah. He'll get over it. He'll get over it.

Yeah. But let's listen to this and then we'll come back and talk about it. The good dad is not perfect, but he's present. The good dad doesn't get it all right, but he wants to. And the good dad says things like, I'm sorry, that's my burden, not yours. What can I give? How can I help? How can I bless?

How can I add value to your life and not take energy from your life? That ultimately we all have varying kinds and degrees of father wounds. Now, a father wound is an unhealed hurt from a physical, spiritual or other father. What a father wound does, it opens you up to an orphan spirit. Jesus says it this way in John 14 eight, I will not leave you as orphans. If you have a father wound, you have an orphan spirit. An orphan spirit is one of two things. You either feel lonely or needy. Lonely, you can be in a crowd, you can be loved, but something in you just feels like you're always out, not in. Or needy, some of you are gathering people because you need a family. You've got a wound and you're trying to just create a family and it's out of a woundedness.

It's not a healthy place, it's a broken place. That's an orphan spirit. And then number three, what happens is a father wound on earth blocks your view of your father in heaven. Your father in heaven is very large, but your father on earth is very near. And if the father wound is in front of you, it obstructs and blocks your view.

It creates a soul equivalent of an eclipse, the inability to see your heavenly father. So how does that tie in? If you've listened to the show very much, I know I've told the story before, but growing up, my dad was probably the biggest baseball fan I ever met.

Well, let me rephrase that. He was the biggest Cincinnati Reds fan ever met. I can still go through and tell you Cesar Geronimo played center field, Joe Morgan was at second, Dave Concepcion was at shortstop.

I could go through the whole infield lineup. I mean, I listened to the... I even know Marty Brennan was the broadcaster with Joe Knoxall. I remember, I heard him so much growing up, it's ingrained in my brain that those names are all still there from the early seventies. And so my dad absolutely loved baseball. He loved it so much that he'd fall asleep watching TV. And I kid you not, I could turn the channel and he'd wake up and tell you what the score was, what inning it was in. I mean, he was focused on the Reds, so he absolutely loved it. So growing up as a kid, I had baseball cards. I enjoyed baseball.

As soon as I could get into little league, I got into little league. Then the father wounding started. My dad was not a traveling father. He didn't travel to work. He worked locally all the time.

He was home every night. Through my time from about five to age 13, whatever number of years that is, eight years, through that time, my dad came to two ball games my whole career. And so as a kid and thinking like a kid, I knew it wasn't baseball that he didn't wanna be around, so it had to be me. And it wasn't a fact that I didn't think that he loved me. I knew he loved me. He was very good at showing it in other ways, but I always felt like I was never dad's priority.

The horses were more important, this was more important, that was more important, the Reds were more important, all these things. And the real shame of that is, and I'm forgetting my dad a long time ago, is it did that point number three that Mark Driscoll was talking about. I projected that on my Heavenly Father. I've never ever doubted God loves me.

I never have doubted that. I just have always struggled for a long time, that's not current now, to feel like I was a priority to him. And that was the real damage that we all can share stories and you can have the same story line that I had, but the enemy didn't use it in the same way. That's where he got his hooks in me and really did damage between me and my Heavenly Father for a lot of years until I could process through that. I could process through the anger at my dad, and then realize, oh, that's really anger at God that's misplaced. And so what a big thing that was to get the relationship between me and my Heavenly Father back.

My dad's been passed since 84, so there was no opportunity to re-enter into that with him in person. But for me, that was a sports wounding that ran really, really deep, because when you don't feel like you can trust your Heavenly Father, where do you turn? So Robby, we do have time for your marathon clip.

It is a very good clip. Darrell Bock Yeah, we'll jump in. It's Dave Busby. You need to know as you're listening to this that he, at this point in time, has cystic fibrosis. He had polio as a child, and so he's very, very small. In fact, he had to carry about 100 pounds of equipment that he had to breathe with before he ever gave a talk.

They would disconnect the equipment, then he would speak for the hour or whatever and then reconnect it. But he shares this story here, and it's in a sermon series called Taste and See. And so what he's talking about is tasting what it's like to be chosen by Jesus, but he does it in a way that gives us what we're really looking for in our sports life.

Dave Busby It happened 32 years ago, and I still switch it around in my mouth, and it tastes good. When I was a 12-year-old boy, I was the worst basketball player that God ever created. That's true. Probably somebody in here saying, no, I'm worse than you. Then you'd be wrong.

Dead wrong. I was 12 years old, seventh grader. My brother was a senior in high school, five years older than me, an incredible basketball player. One time I saw him sink 105 straight foul shots.

He was a real hero to me growing up. Saturday morning, 10 o'clock, 25 big hairy high school guys would descend on our asphalt court, play a little ball. And one Saturday morning, I awakened with an attitude, and I had the smirk. I just walked down to the kitchen table.

My mother was reading the paper, having a late breakfast. I remember just kind of strutting over to her, and I said, Mom, I'm going to go out. I'm going to play a little ball with the boys.

But I would not be denied, man. We lined up. We started shooting foul shots. I remember it was my time. I was a two-hander. I remember praying something like, Lord, I'll be a missionary.

And that ball went, well, then I won't be a missionary. I was done, and I was over there in the recheck pile, and they kept shooting out and finally got down to two guys that ended up being the captains, one of which was my brother. Then as we did it in our backyard, you shot out so you would get first pick.

Finally, the other guy missed. My brother was captain with first pick. 32 years ago, I was 33 years ago now, 23 high school boys, one little seventh grade boy, two high school captains, one of which was my brother. 33 years ago, about 11 o'clock in the morning on a blue sky Saturday, my brother took his big long arm and his long index finger, and the draft started.

He went all the way down that long lineup in wonders of wonders. His finger stopped, and it was pointing at me, and out of his mouth came these unbelievable words in front of his peers. He said, David, I got first pick, and I choose you. I remember as a little old boy, I started walking toward my brother, and I didn't stop by his side and be all dignified. I walked right into his chest, and I remember putting my arms around him, and I remember wetting his t-shirt with my tears that morning, and my brother just threw his arm over me in front of his peers and just continued choosing.

Don't miss this. Under his arm 33 years ago, I tasted something. So, you know, in my own case, you know, my father had polio, and he had a number of medical conditions, so when I heard this and realized that from my father's perspective, this was what he was looking for, right, that he didn't actually get.

His brothers bullied him, and so when you're on the other generation of that, he really didn't know how to deal with a six foot five kid that was, you know, 120 pounds and walking banana pants if people know the story. Tripped over my own feet, you know, it was just in, and he didn't know, you know, much about sports, didn't know much about how to deal with coaches and all those kind of things, and so he did, he backed off of it, didn't come, didn't show up, and I walked into that having to figure it out on my own and thinking, well, it's up to me, you know, and that orphan spirit that Sam talks about, you know, it kicks in that this lie that it's up to you, and it's not, it's not, but it's really cool for me to hear that, realize that that taste in your mouth of being chosen that Dave shares so clearly there is really worth more than any basketball game I ever played, right? Something that to know that your Heavenly Father really is, he picked you first. Yeah, thank you, Robby, and he's picking you to come to boot camp.

He is. I know, you know, I'm going to get the plug in. We're picking you to come to boot camp. It's coming up March 31st through April 3rd. We'd love for you to be there.

God would love for you to be there. Download the After Hours podcast. Listen to it.

We're going to continue on this topic. Harold's got a story about tennis that you don't want to miss. Andy's got a story.

We'll make Wayne give us a story. Yeah, something about a tennis skirt. Not sure what it all entails, but there's wounding. That's all we really know, so you definitely want to download that. But in the meantime, go to masculinejourney.org. Register for the upcoming boot camp March 31st through April 3rd. This is the Truth Network.