The goat

Years ago kids sports were just that...kids sports.  Sure, to a degree it was also frustrated adults sports--for those adults who weren't in sports and decided to live sports through their kids.  But things were different then, and usually those parents settled down and let their kids play their game.

Nowadays, kids sports is a whole new ballgame (no pun intended).  Some examples:

• There is a whole lot of "feel good" taking place in kids sports.  Participation trophies for everyone who plays, win or lose.  Do you think the kids themselves don't know who won and who lost and that the losers feel bad about it?  The parents sugarcoat losing with a participation trophy.
• A girls high school basketball game recently ended with the score of 102-1.  One can still hear the howls of angst over how bad a person the winning coach must be to allow the girls of that team to run up a score like that.
• The emergence of traveling teams (which are nothing more than money makers for the folks that set them up) has created a whole new look on kids sports.  Fancy uniforms, top level equipment (at a huge cost to the parents), and the fact that it's a necessity for a kid to play on a traveling team if he/she is going to participate in sports in the public schools (at least that is how it is in our area).  That's collusion and behind the scenes favoritism, as well as an unwritten, though well understood rule.  The terrible part is--what if a family has a kid that is a sports natural, but not the 2-3 thousand dollars it takes to get that kid on a traveling team, thus negating the kids chance to play that sport in the public school?

As adults, and most hopefully as Christian adults, we should have learned one thing about life:

It isn't always fair, and it isn't always nice.

We don't get participation or feel good trophies for doing life.  We win some and we lose some, or as a good friend put it, "sometimes we get the goat, and sometimes the goat gets us."  There is no traveling team in real life.  We all have the same long dirt road to travel as we wade through our lives. And, sometimes, like the girls basketball team, we are simply going to get trounced.  But, when that happens, we have the opportunity to learn some things about life, often under the category of harsh reality.  So the question is...Why do so many of us, Christians included, go to such extremes to shield our kids from the harsh realities of life and expend so much energy on painting a false picture of how life really is?