Tip of My Iceberg

What goes together better than soccer, loads of candy, and three young boys?

When my daughter and son-in-law amped up their courage to take their son and two of his besties to a Colorado Rapids game, they had no idea what they were in for.

Courtney said they should have left at half.

Soccer is a wonderful sport to watch; there’s more movement than baseball, more action than back and forth on a small court like basketball, and fewer pauses in the action than football.

But when you’re six years old, it’s dark, and candy has been offered, staying focused is tough.

They’d gotten a massive bag of cotton candy, and the boys were eating it by the fistfuls. The sugar surge made them too antsy to sit for much of the second half. They did their best, and as they were leaving, one of the venders told them he didn’t want to put away all his candy and chips, so he offered the boys as much as they wanted.

With great wisdom, Courtney limited each to one bag of candy and one of chips.

Does it get any better than more sugar at 10 at night?

When Courtney and Michael dropped the two boys off at their respective houses, the calmly behaved boys they’d picked up had become little rowdies who weren’t even close to being sleepy.

Do we ever know when we’ve had too much of a good thing?

It gets better. When Courtney took them for a brief walk to unwind during the game, a man with a basket of stickers offered some to the boys. They saw business cards that had been thrown in. They thought they were credit cards, and each boy grabbed one. They all went to bed that night holding onto their “credit cards.”

As a child, all I could think of was becoming an adult so I could stay up as late as I wanted. Now, as an adult, all I think of is never getting enough sleep. I used to love olives until one day when my parents had a gathering of their friends, I polished off almost an entire jar of olives. I became so sick that I’ve not been able to look an olive in the eye since.

Living a life of balance is one of the greatest challenges for people of all ages. Everyone talks about the need for a work/life balance, where we’re not all work or all play but equally responsible for knowing when we’ve done our best and then requiring space to rest.

The apostle Paul understood the challenge of enough/not enough, He’d been shipwrecked, flogged, beaten, and jailed and still felt a sense of wholeness because he had seen Jesus in His glory and knew what he was living for.

“…I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:11-13.

It’s human to want more, to be assured of what we have so we don’t have to worry. God is truly our sufficiency, knowing our needs better than we do. It’s why we can ask Him daily for our necessities. We don’t have to horde, stuff ourselves, or be fearful of not having what we require.

God knows. He supplies.

We simply need to learn to enjoy the moment.