Up and Out

Football with my son. I guess I never really thought about when that day would come but it is here. This past week we were playing catch with one of the neighbor boys in the front yard. We were doing that offense/defense thing, you know which one I am talking about. I was all-time quarterback and they took turns with four plays each to score a touchdown.

We huddled up and I called out the play. Now I realized that my son was new to this route thing so I tried to put the play in a language he could understand. Of course I didn’t want to do too good of a job or the neighbor boy would overhear and all would be lost.

So I did what any sandlot quarterback would do, I drew the play out on the front of my shirt. It was a finger animation that Walt Disney would envy. I new using words like button hook and fly pattern wouldn’t compute with my son.

I walked him through the pattern, sound effects and all. Here is what I told him as my animated finger traveled the front of my shirt. “I want you to go up here, by that tree. You see the tree don’t you?”

“I want you to turn when you get to that tree and I will pump fake like this.” I gave him a little arm motion with the ball and explained that I would act like I was going to throw it to him.

I understood my son didn’t know a lot of this so I tried really hard to make sure I was explaining it at his level. I told him that after the pump fake I wanted him to cut behind the tree and I would pass him the football.

I asked if he understood. He nodded his head in agreement. My son is a Dallas Cowboy fan, it hurts me to this day, so he wanted me to be Troy Aikman. We broke from the huddle and it was one of those slow motion NFL film moments. You know the ones I’m talking about. The music, the faces, I saw my son and he looked like this was the beginning of his gridiron future.

We stepped to the line and I said hut, then I threw in a few more hut huts because that’s what the big boys do. He was off like lightning in a bottle. He went to the tree, glanced over his shoulder, and kept on going. I pumped but it was to no avail, my receiver hadn’t even broke stride. He did give me the glance over the shoulder but that was as close as we got to our animated front shirt finger drawing.

I looked at my son after I forced a pass into coverage, Jake Plummer style, and said, “Don’t understand what a pump fake is do you?” My son looked at me and nodded his head no.

I then showed him what I was looking for. I walked him threw the route and showed him exactly when to turn. I showed him what I would do when he turned, and then I walked him past the tree to show him exactly when I would have thrown him the ball. After walking with him through the play he understood and was ready to go again.

Afterwards I couldn’t help but think of all my attempts to couch church phrases in ways that nonbelievers could understand. All the times I have attempted to explain what this following Jesus thing is all about, and I realized what would probably work best would be my willingness to walk with them and show them what I mean each step of the way.

No matter how much I work on phrases they can understand, actions still speak louder than words.