Keep on Swinging

            If you don’t know this about me already, I love to play tennis. I’ve never played it competitively, but I’ve taken it up as a hobby and something to do just for fun. Needless to say, I am no professional. I really don’t even have much knowledge of the fundamentals or the correct form. But I do know this: when the ball comes at you, you have to swing. Complicated right?

            As a beginner tennis player and someone with awful depth perception, there are many times when the ball comes flying at me, I swing, and the only contact the racket makes is with the wind…A complete miss. But the next time the ball comes at me, even if I missed the last one, I keep on swinging.

            If you’re going to play a tennis game, you can’t avoid the ball. In the same way, you can’t avoid challenges in life. When a challenge is thrown your way, you have to swing. Because even if you miss completely, you’ve learned better for the next ball that comes your way. There is absolutely no harm in swinging. What good are you going to get out of not swinging?  Taking a ball to the face is not a better option…Letting the obstacles interfere with where you want to go is not a better option. The best option is giving it a shot.

“I have fought the good fight. I have completed the race. I have kept the faith.” -2 Timothy 4:7

At the end of the day, I’d rather say I swung and I missed then that I didn’t swing it all. At the end of my life, I’d rather be able to say that I fought, that I faced my challenges and that even if I had to keep on swinging over and over again, I still kept the faith. Although in tennis it’s pretty important that you actually make contact with the ball, maybe in life it isn’t all about where the ball goes, but it’s about the swing.