When life throws me a curve ball, I have no idea how to hit it.  I almost jump back from the plate as I swing and hear the bat whistle through dead air.  Then I hear, “steeee-rike!”

It sucks.  I don’t like failure and I certainly don’t like strikes.  I always forget that I’ll only be able to learn how to hit by practicing swinging.  Yet swinging requires energy, patience, and a strength that I feel I lack.  I like to consider myself a well-rounded person with a general knowledge of lots of things.  Yet when I was hit with something yesterday that I have absolutely zero knowledge in, it shook me to the core and left me feeling helpless.  How can I give advice when I have none?  How can I approach a nitty-gritty topic when I don’t even know anything about it?

I am left feeling an overwhelming defeat again.  As if strike 1 and 2 aren’t bad enough, with strike 3 comes the final judgement: you’re out.

So I fight against this judgement call and I cry to my best friend and I feel every emotion imaginable: sadness, anger, defeat, pity, bitterness, sympathy…  I soak in these feelings as if they were the bubbles in my scalding bath, letting them cover me from head to toe.  When the last bubble pops, all that’s left is cold, milky water and a sadness of still not having the power to reverse the call.

I watched this little girl play t-ball last weekend and I keep going back to these photos because this is how I want to attack life.  I want to attack it so hard that it doesn’t even matter if it’s a home run; her glory lies in the fact that she popped the ball and knocked the t-ball stand over.  That’s how hard I want to play Life.

I have many things to learn, no doubt.  But someday, someday, life it going to throw me a curve ball, I will swing, and instead of dead air, I’ll head a resounding “clack” as my bat makes contact.  That, my friends, may not be a home run, but a hit is a hit.