We all have them. Moments we'd rather forget. Moments that make you want to rent a bulldozer with a backhoe and dig a huge hole so you can jump in and hide for a while.
The summer after my 9th grade year I had one of those moments. I was playing summer baseball for an all-star team and we were in some sort of tournament. It was a loser out game and I was pitching in the bottom of the last inning. The score was tied and there was a runner on second base so our coach told me to intentionally walk the batter. OK. Fine. No problem, right? Wrong. I remember not feeling real comfortable with the catcher jumping out to catch the lobbed balls I was throwing out of the strike zone in order to walk the guy. However, the third pitch was a little off target. Lobbed, right down the middle. I have to give the guy credit. It's actually harder to hit a lobbed ball for any distance then it is to hit a ball with some velocity behind it. Well, it didn't really matter because he hit it off the right field wall and the guy from second scored easily and we lost the game. Not cool. I think I came home and stayed in my room the rest of the weekend.
Fast forward to last Tuesday night. I was on-call and was the back up for a new chaplain student. Everything was good...we did a practice run to one of the local hospitals and I explained some stuff and showed her around. She called a little before midnight to ask my opinion on a call she got. She expressed how she was nervous to respond to a trauma in the ER and I said that those are rare and if that happened I would be right there to support and back her up. No problem, right? Wrong. At some point during the night the battery in my phone went dead. So, I wake up figuring that it was a quiet night. Do my workout at 5. Take my daughter to school. All the while, having my dead phone in my pocket unaware that it is dead until my daughter wants to call into a trivia question on the radio. I flip open my phone and see that the screen is OFF. SWEET MOTHER OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY. I try turning it on and it only has enough power to tell me that I have a new voicemail and then shuts off. OH #(!#%. Drop my daughter off, speed home, and check my other phone (which I had conveniently left in my kitchen drawer on vibrate) and find texts and voicemails on that phone as well. Long story short the student ended up getting a call to the other hospital in town to their ER. Nice. Thankfully, she was able to get a hold of her mentor chaplain (who is apparently much more reliable) and she was able to walk her through it. The part that bugs me the most is that she called me at 5:15am. I WAS IN MY GARAGE WORKING OUT!!!!! DUFUS.
Sadly, as the two stories illustrate, this is probably not the last time this will happen. I hate those moments when you know you have let someone down. Intentional or not, it sucks. But that happens right? We all have those STP moments when we "screw the pooch" and simply fall flat on our face. I am thankful for the understanding, forgiveness, and grace when I have those moments. It is humbling and a reminder that I need to extend that understanding, forgiveness, and grace when others need it too.
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