A fresh and different coaching experience.

….when i was growing up in a sleepy, backwoods little community in middle tennessee – other than december which held christmas – june was always my very favorite month for two reasons:

1. it always meant the end of the school year – we had none of that bureaucratic belly aching demanding that school calendars spill over into summers…june meant no school whatsoever…june meant swimming, staying up later, ice chips to cool you off when you tried to sleep in a much too hot house, and homemade ice cream by the gallons…

2. and june brought my birthday

But, now that I am much older and all but grown up, I have found that school has been out far too long and birthdays come much too quickly. It only seems fair to me that if one makes it far  enough in years that one should have the option to choose to have a birthday  a bit less often…maybe every year or so….and not be helpless and have birthdays forced upon you just because of one little date in time.

So, today’s June is quite different from the lovely, lazy days of Tennessee Junes.

So….i went for an early morning run  and this occurred to me…(it’s bit long and rambly so hang in there if you like)

I have an insidious voice inside my head. I have great voices as well…but, this insidious one keeps trying to drown out the good ones.

it is an insidious voice accompanied by an even more insidious ticking of a very loud, very obnoxious clock…

“Tick, tick, tick…not enough time…not enough time…too late…too late.”

This ticking clock sounds much like the one swallowed by the devious crocodile in the old Peter Pan film. Yes, that’s it. It is the sound of the croc haunting old Captain Hook and reminding him that his days were indeed numbered and that his death would be ugly and violent and painful.

Oh, the fear! The terror!

The captain – so bold and arrogant – before little Peter Pan was daily reduced to pirate rubble, running frantically from the croc’s clock.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Me, too….

There is sometimes a mean, scary croc following me reminding me that my days are less than they used to be and I am less than I thought I would be….and I am missing key body parts.

Lies? Truth? Lies….

But, here’s the thing….

Why didn’t that silly old Captain Hook just take aim at the croc and do away with him altogether? Why did he allow his torturer to continue to torture? Couldn’t he have called upon his ragtag pirate crew or even used his own rusty musket to eliminate the source of his greatest fear? Having already lost his hand to the devious croc, why continue to dabble with such danger? Why didn’t he once and for all remove the croc who stalked the waters beneath his ship and so forever silence that infernal ticking clock?

While it is true that he could never regain his lost hand, the appetizer of choice, it is also true that he did not have to hang around to become the chosen entre’.

But, I kinda understand.

I have lost body parts over the years. Many of the ones I still use creak and groan and remind me of crocs and sharks and wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I just could never seem to find my musket quickly enough.

But, so what?

I mean how many body parts does it take to keep a heart beating and brain thinking?

Just two.

A heart and a brain.

It’s not about hands and feet and hips and legs and backs and bellies and chins and cheeks and lips and eyes and ears. So, if I’ve still got some of those other body parts, then maybe it’s time I realize that I am indeed blessed.

Blessed. Blessed. Blessed.

So, I can quit pacing the deck of my ship fretting about a stupid, aged, wrinkled, powerless ole bully of a croc.

Easier said than done.

It’s a bit ironic that Captain Hook was so obsessed with destroying Peter Pan and not the ticking croc. Peter was a threat of sorts but it wasn’t Peter who gobbled Hook’s hand. And it’s also a bit ironic that Peter grew to be a man on the Island of Lost Boys but he didn’t seem lost at all.

Do you know who seemed the most lost to me?

Hook.

Hook was really the  little lost boy. Peter loved and was loved. He grew to be a warrior – albeit in green tights – but, still a warrior he was. Able to fly through cannon ball fire as well as through the lovely night skies of London, gently embracing the children who loved him so dearly carrying them all to worlds unimagined.

There was absolutely nothing lost about Peter.

But, Hook?

Now, there was a lost soul if ever there was one. Who loved Hook and whom did he love? Certainly not his ragamuffin crew who only did his dirty work out of fear.

And fear is the cruelest of substitutes for love.

Certainly not the croc who had tasted Hook once and only wanted more – but not for love – more for lust.

Poor Hook.

Why didn’t he do away with that bothersome old croc?

Maybe Hook never really believed he was worth saving and so he never tried to be saved….

Don’t know….not sure….easier said than done……

sometimes you just need someone to remind you that you’ve had that musket all along…that you are more than worth saving…..so you get to pick and choose which voices you believe…and just because something sounds scary…

scary doesn’t make it true….