The older I (Reece)
become, the more I’m reminded that this world is a cold and bitter place. Let’s
face it; life can absolutely suck. We come together once a year to play a game
we all love: a fictional playground that only our friends are allowed to join,
an opportunity to laugh at controlled humor.
It’s easy to understand why one would return to this fantasy
sandbox annually because, outside of these virtual walls, mountains exist.
Walls are so high that even your eyes cannot reach beyond their peaks.
Obstacles genetically designed to crush, again and again, the child-like
naivety that overcoming is a possibility.
“I have no doubts that God led me to you,” she said.
With one month to live due to cancer, the consumer whom
reminded me (Jonathan) so much of my
own mother randomly selected me to help her find a final Nike outfit. This was
week one of my new job as Nike’s Seasonal Athlete position in their retail
store of Woodburn, Oregon; 40 miles south of Anya and I’s home in Beaverton,
Oregon (a suburb of Portland). This woman had been overweight for most of her
life and even more so after giving birth to her six children. When she had
discovered her terminal diagnosis from multiple opinionated doctors, she etched
one goal into her dying mind: lose the weight, add the Jesus. To make matters
more challenging to acquire this self-set goal, her husband of many years left
her for a younger woman when learning of her final diagnosis. Not to mention,
her children were so wrapped up in their own careers that they were not able to
make time for their only mother during this crisis.
Let me (Jonathan)
interject here to add one more detail to this saddening story. This woman and
her family are Adventist. Why does this last detail matter so much? Because
when I am completely honest with myself, I cringe at the word ‘Adventist’.
Again, why? Probably because I have been deeply hurt by the associated church.
And if I were even more honest with myself, it is hard to admit that I have
fallen quite a ways away from the same associated church. The further I have
fallen away, the less community I seem to acquire. This past summer embodied
that fact as I faced unemployment. The phrase, “it is not what you know, but
who you know” highlighted the fact that I not only didn’t have community, I no
longer valued Jesus in my personal life.
Throughout the Summer Olympics, I (Reece) watched countless races where competitors poured their
blood, sweat and tears into performances that were effortless crushed by the
likes of empyrean-like Olympians. I’ve experienced it. I’ve compressed my
absolute best into executions that resembled crumbles in the face of adversity.
Every year I consistently see that trials only grow bigger and stronger. Life’s
existence is defeated without Jesus.
So, it was the month of June and I (Jonathan) cannot tell you how many wasted hours I had spent in
filling out applications and going through interviews only to read the dreaded
sentence, “We have decided to move forward with other applicants.” And those
were from the courteous companies whom at least communicated to me that I
hadn’t made their cut. Most others didn’t feel like my 6-8 hour job interview
process was worth a 6-8 minute copy and paste email or a 6-8 second phone call
to tell me that they had “decided to move forward with other applicants”.
I (Jonathan) walked
into the conference room at Goodwill’s Job Connection on a Nike tip-off from
one of my recruiter’s emails earlier that morning. And then I saw the familiar
colors of green and white of the temporary agency, Kelly Services, instead of
the orange/black swoosh of Nike. At that moment, I already knew I was wasting
my time. Two things need to be understood to fully comprehend this moment.
First, one of my life goals has been to acquire a job with Nike. Second, the
process to acquire said life goal takes a long time. Why? Because Nike uses a
lot of third party companies to acquire its employees. Kelly Services is just
one of those third party companies. The problem with third party anything is
that it is like dealing with off-brand marketing. Long details, short; third
party anything sucks hardcore. It’s like trying to talk through marital issues
with your wife but you never really talk with your wife, just her agent. I
guess that is why divorces, lawyers, and the whole mess can be so traumatic on
people. Anyways, I digress.
I (Jonathan) waited
for the typical Kelly Services introduction, the same one I had heard many
times during my five month stint as a production operator at Nike’s in-house
manufacturing plant. I proceeded to share with the other applicants in the room
that this job was not for the faint-of-heart. I then answered any questions they
had about the position I had previously held. Essentially, I had done the job
the two Kelly recruiters were being paid top dollar to do within five minutes.
I then thanked them and left the conference room to pursue another interview
that same morning. Such is the life of an unemployed 26 year old in the city of
Portland.
I (Jonathan) felt
the tears slide down my five o’clock shadowed face. This woman whom had cancer
struck a deep chord from within my hardened, out-of-tune heart. You see, my own
grandmother has the same amount of time to live in her own life. She is dealing
with the same exact issue as this woman was going through: the struggles of cancer.
I consider myself lucky to have such a sweet grandmother as some people do not
have the luxury of knowing a grandmother at all. However, this fact doesn’t
lessen the pain. So, here was this sweet middle-aged woman looking for a Nike
outfit and all that would come out of my mouth was a sigh of grief and empathy.
I spent the next hour looking for the perfect outfit finale, from shoes to the
perfect sports bra. As I hit the green ‘checkout’ button on my mobile device
and swiped her credit card, she asked if we could pray together. Honestly, I
cannot remember when the last time was that somebody asked to pray with me;
maybe over a year ago? As another droplet filled my left cheek’s pores with
more sodium-sediment, my sentiment to this woman shown in us both kneeling in
prayer on the sales floor of the Nike factory retail store, right there in
Woodburn, Oregon.
The older I (Reece) become, the more I’m reminded that this world is a cold and
bitter place without Him. Every day is one more down, one more play and one
more opportunity to trust Him with life. It’s impossible to win the game
without Him. It’s impossible to gain a yard, foot or even inch without Him. You
will get hit. You will get crushed. You will lose so many yards after contact,
but every day you listen to His play calls. There is nothing outside His
huddle. You memorize the playbook, go back to the line, and fight once more.
“I have no doubts that God led me to you,” I said.
My phone rang later that evening of the day I (Jonathan) went in on the Nike-tipped,
Kelly Services-turnout conference room. It was an unknown number but an Oregon
number all the same. Anyone whom is unemployed knows better than to ignore an
unknown number of the same state you have been applying to endless job
opportunities. Thus, I picked up. It was a man by the name of Owen; the same
name just so happened to be of one of the recruiters for Kelly Services I had
been in the conference room with earlier that day. Long phone call, short; he
offered to meet over coffee with his wife and my wife. Fast-forward to two
months later and Anya and I now have a community to be a part of here in Oregon
that will eventually lead to a church fellowship.
Fellowship is the fantasy vocabulary word of this opening
NFL season week. Why? Because I (Jonathan)
believe that it is essential to our personal growth in Jesus Christ. If I
have learned anything these past two months of summer unemployment, it is that
fellowship and community are extremely hard to find. However, it does not take
long to spark it. If a fellowship can spark within an hour of a shopping,
gut-heart-wrenching moment with a mother figure in Nike and if a community can
be sparked within a ten minute conference room moment with another ten minute
phone call to schedule an hour long coffee date, what is our excuse as an
“elite” fantasy football league?
(Reece) Each time
our eyes open, it’s a reminder for us to put forth our best line up for the
day’s opponents. With Jesus, mountains will slump, walls will fall and
chromosome obstacles will split apart. There’s a championship to be won
outside of this Never land we call football. It requires everything yet nothing
at all but surrender. We don’t ever give up because He’s never given up on us.
If Jesus is our goal, we’ve already won.
(Jonathan) Our
challenge to you gentlemen is to set a personal goal for yourselves this
football season: make this Elite League truly elite. Not just in football
competitiveness but in a brotherhood of fellowship and community. Some
underrated words that we hear all of the time but hardly ever act upon are:
prayer, time, and devotion. I get it, life is busy and our family is our
priority. But then again, we consider you ‘gents’ family too.
This is where we open the floor to you for ideas. How can
we, as individual men, elevate this league to be more Elite spiritually, in
both fellowship and community?
