Saturday, August 6, 2011

our gods

today was my first taste at "soccer mom". we woke before 7am (and for our family that is huge)( i know i have strange children who sleep) . anyways were on our way to a soccer tournament before 7 :20. apparently people do this all the time. and when we arrived at our destination i felt as if i entered another world entirely. a world full of pop-up tents, coolers that you pull, banners, car decals saying how amazing your child is and what team they belong to, team blankets,jackets, hats ( and that's just the parents). a world full of concession stands, soccer mom chairs that match and screaming fans. did i mention screaming fans?
this world isn't all that new to me. you see my husband has been a part of it for years. on the other side a part of it. coaching. traveling from one city to city. state to state. tournament to tournament with this crazy world. yet this was new today. he. i mean we came as fans. kaiden had decided that he wanted to try it out. try out this thing called travel soccer. and since tim works for this organization we could afford for him to play. that is the only way he could play, believe me. i know how much these parents pay for their 7 year old to play. ( yep 7) . and it doesn't come cheap.
so as i sat there on my blanket (so don't have a chair) listening to the parents i was sad. ok maybe a little sad but more mad. mad at how every conversation revolved around who was the best, who should be cut, who had the better coach, who needed to practice more, who transferred to another team. yep five full hours of that. five hours of listening to what their world consisted of. and what made me upset was that this is it for many of us. we make our kids sports our gods. we give more money to play soccer, football, gymnastics, hockey, dance then we do to save a child dying of starvation. we spend more time watching, driving, scheduling than we do serving our neighbors. we rearrange our schedules for a sport but not to meet a family member who needs some help moving, the sports can become our gods.
this makes me sad. it makes me mad. it makes me scared.
scared that this is what we think is ok. that we think this is normal. that this is who we are teaching our kids what god is. who god is.

1 comment:

ESolgos said...

I'm afraid you are a modern day prophet, my friend. You are so right. Our priorities are so messed up. Let's show people that there is another way to live.