One by one, they each get picked. The one to your right. Then the one three people to your left. She’s fast. He’s got good feet. That one is just fun to have on your team.
The sun-drenched wall of bricks digging into the small of your back. Burning. Like fire against your skin…You’ve been standing there for so long. Waiting.
And the wall just keeps getting hotter.
A strange irony as it’s the thing that keeps burning you.
The guy on the end pushes away and jogs to the team on the left… growing in size, like a mass of bodies all swarming around, waiting… waiting to see who else will be one of them.
That one brick, digging in deeper with each name called that doesn’t sound like yours.
The girl who sang the solo in the school musical last fall and you thought wasn’t any good at sports moves from the wall to the team on the right.
And Tracy…
Andrew….
Both taken. One on the right, one of the left.
And you stand in the middle… the hot bricks almost drawing blood.
Waiting.
Waiting to be picked.
And as you glance nervously to the left, and then quickly to your right you realize there is no one else there.
Everyone was chosen.
And you’re still on the wall.
Waiting.
And the day comes when you no longer want to feel the heat off the bricks burn your back, and the humiliation of being the last one picked ends because you decide it does.
Kickball maybe just isn’t your thing.
But you make a mean German chocolate cake, or you play the flute with wild abandon.
So what if your feet don’t lift a ball correctly and you fall every time you try to not roll over it…
You have the answer for the most difficult riddle ever posed to the human race, and your incredible knowledge of plants could change lives.
You beat everyone you know in trivia games.
Your poems were chosen as the best in the world.
We all have a list of things we are good at, and perhaps also a list maybe even longer, of the things that just aren’t strengths.
Being the last one picked today means you will be first for something else.
And that…. Well…. That is how you find and develop purpose.
If we were good at everything, choosing our path would be almost impossible, and our greatness would die inside.
Being good is very different than being great.
The good ones get chosen quickly. The great get chosen first.
There are many things that I still stand on the wall for…
But I don’t care…
I know some things aren’t for me to be great at…
And I have found a comfortable place amongst the bricks.
For my sister Amber, one of the best moms I know…..
