What I learned about defeat while watching my son’s basketball game

My son has been playing basketball since he was in Kindergarten. Until this year, he played Upward basketball, which is a league where the kids learn the basics of basketball as well as a little bit of discipleship through Scripture memory and prayer.

Honestly, my son usually ended up on a losing team. The earliest years were especially hard to watch because the kids didn’t have much coordination nor did they understand the game yet. But over the years, he learned the game and each year he improved in skill, coordination, and perseverance.

This year, a friend asked us if we’d be interested in coming alongside them to form a new team in a county league. We said yes and asked other friends to join in. We started with excitement and trepidation. Quickly, we learned that the other teams in the league had been playing together for a long time.

We were playing with the big boys, and we were way behind. And yes, those big boys were supposedly the same age, but were in reality much bigger than our own sons. We fretted before the season started. How bad will we be? And then the season started, and we lost game after game. We were 19th in the league and 0-6.

The season ended, and we had one more game in the year end tournament. We played the one team we had come even close to winning against. We scored 2-0. Then 2-2. Then 4-2. Then 4-4. Then 6-4. And we sat there for quite a while, leading at the half. The game momentum was high. The energy the kids were giving was high.

I watched the boys intensely. I saw their hope and excitement.  I watched my son. He was giving it his all. He’d gone from being a starter (not exactly a star but at least a lead player) in Upward to a bench warmer and team supporter in this league. When he came into the game, he moved like a winner. He moved as one who was part of a team. All of the kids seemed to be hopeful and ready to win.

After the half, we started losing our momentum. The score went to 6-6. Then we fouled a player on their team, and he got to shoot a free throw. For the first time, we were not in the lead and the other team was up 7-6. The spirit of the boys changed. They stopped seeing themselves as possible winners and saw themselves as losers They moved on the court with more and more defeat in their bodies.

God had been teaching me to look up at Him when I felt a sense of defeat. The words I’d been studying in the Bible were teaching me that Christians are victorious, so much so that we can be as steady as Paul in our worst trial. We, Paul says, are more than conquerors. So when I saw the boys, I saw myself.

I too, had looked at challenges with an already defeated mentality. But the thing was as soon as the boys viewed themselves as less than winners, they became losers. As soon as they allowed the thought of defeat to enter in, they walked in a posture of defeat, they played less laser focused, they worked as a team less. I wanted to yell across the court the lessons God had been teaching me.

Walk in victory. It changes the way you move and whether you lift your head.

But of course, I didn’t.

The boys never ended up regaining the lead. We lost 12-6. Defeat births defeat.

But hope births hope. For the Christian, man or woman, we don’t have to walk with our head down, in a posture of loss and defeat, no matter what trial or struggle stands at our door. Nothing can separate us from His love. That same love makes us more than conquerors. We can walk in hope even while we walk in the shadow of death, in the darkest place, or in the deepest valleys. This love makes us winners when otherwise life would be kicking our tails.

Walk with head up, undefeated, as Christ says you are.