Bottom of the Ninth #46 - Time Won’t Wait
by Levi Walters - Valor Sophomore; Outfielder; Pitcher
Time won't wait. You can't stop father time or press rewind on a clock. Seconds become minutes, and hours become days, then months soon become years, but there is no going back. What happens if your life clock hits zero and you realize that you never got to appreciate what you had? The saying that you never appreciate what you have until it is gone is sadly very true but it does not have to be. I recently got a big life lesson when it seemed as though my mom's life clock was nearing zero. On January 11th of this year my mom was told during her annual exam that she had some concerning masses associated with her ovaries. The doctor said that she needed an MRI as soon as possible in order to determine whether or not she had cancer. The very next day, Mom had an MRI and when the results came back, the diagnosis was still unclear. Doctors gave her a 50/50 chance. Hearing that, I felt hopeless. Think about it, that is the flip of a coin, heads it is cancer, and tails, it is not. I wanted better odds. Not knowing if it was cancer or not made treatment options or proposals seem impossible. Surgery? Chemotherapy? Radiation? Doctors scheduled surgery.
I was born January 13, 1998. I celebrated my 16th birthday this year and all I could ask for was that my mom did not have this terrible disease. On January 20th at 5 AM we walked into the hospital on "game day" as Mom and I called it. If you have not been through surgery yourself or been with someone having surgery recently, there is a cool device attached to the patient's IV fluids that sends information to a monitor in the waiting room to give friends and family up to date information about each patient. Patient 7130 (my mom) was "in the pre-op room being prepped for surgery at 6:15." At 7:00 "pre-op is finished and patient is being transported to the O.R.." Then at 7:59 "surgery has started" and soon after "surgery is going well" and until 10:23 AM, I can't tell you how many times I looked up to the monitor to see if it was over. I know I checked to see if mom's surgery scheduled to take two hours was over two minutes after it began. Finally, at 10:23, "surgery is complete and patient is preparing to leave the O.R.." I was very relieved to see these words but still anxious to see my mom. A few hours later we got to visit her. Well, we really didn't visit, but I got to see her, I mean. I sat in the hospital with her until 9 o'clock that night just watching her sleep.
What if Mom does have cancer? What if she were to die? Where would I be without her? Have I done everything in my power to ensure that our time together is the best it could have been? I've been thankful, mostly. I've been a good kid. But faced with life and death, cancer or not cancer, had I lived and loved the best way I could? Had I lived for Christ?
What if time zero is close for you in baseball? Everyone has a baseball time clock ticking down. Some of us will get cut from our high school teams, others will play or ride the pine, some will go play beyond high school, a few will go beyond that. Fewer yet will play 16 years in the bigs, but even Coach Timlin has put an x in that last box on his baseball calendar. Are you doing everything you can every day that you are blessed with your opportunity to play this great game? Have you done everything within your power to ensure that if baseball were taken away tomorrow that you were the best that you could be? Do you glorify God every time you step on the diamond? Every time you step on the mound? Every time you put a bat in your hand? Every pitch?
Thank God that mom's pathology report was clean and not cancer. It seems that struggles and hard times are opportunities to learn life lessons and grow in faith. You never know what you have until it's gone doesn't have to be our way of doing things. We can live and play with great appreciation and gratitude for our daily blessings, and our opportunities and for the greatest blessing of all, our savior. Are you living your life and playing your game to the fullest and to glorify Him? If not, why wait?
"So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12