What a journey baseball is. It can take you places you’d never thought you’d be, bring you around great people you never knew could exist, and make you struggle emotionally, day in and day out. Whether it’s good or bad, those feelings are always extremes, it seems. Over the moon or absolutely heartbroken.

It feels so great to be here to experience these things with my new husband. You can only experience or support so much over the phone. Even being here, you get those phone calls. The hard ones. Right off the bat you know that tone, that low, slow, hurting-inside tone. I thought I’d escaped those phone calls, and boy have I had some tough ones. Some 3-o’clock-in-the-morning-crying calls where you just want to catch them in your arms but can’t. At least now I can give that.

Every day you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. REALLY. Everyone in your life will ask and you can’t even explain it to them. Baseball is good in that way. It is the absolute greatest lesson of “taking life one day at a time” and “if you woke up today you should feel grateful to be alive.”

I don’t know if there’s any other profession that will throw you for a loop on this consistent of a level.

I hear constantly in this game among the ladies that “we must not compare ourselves to others” but are we reminding the guys that? No really, are we? We sure should be because the “hopefully that other guy screws up so maybe I can be 2 steps ahead of him” mindset is more unhealthy than comparing myself to the gal in the stands carrying a Louis Vuitton handbag.

We see those cycles, the struggles they go through. It’s painful to watch first hand because you swear you can see what’s going wrong, but how can you find the words to say it? He can correct a minor pitching error in just a few throws, which blows me away, but can’t get out of his own head on the mound.

I can say “let go and let God” only so many times before it feels like it means nothing.

We hear all the time to stop planning because you can’t count on your plans in this game, which is another way of saying we cannot plan for tomorrow. For tomorrow is God’s will and not our own. As soon as we surrender our own will for His, and have that faith He is going to pull through for us, THAT is the moment we will see blessings multiply in our lives. I know in my heart that I surrendered my will for His the moment I stepped into this game. Now I’m holding out my hand for my husband on the mound and hoping he’ll take it.

I’m strangely so calm through all the hard, through all the what if’s. That’s kinda our job as wives in baseball. We have to have it all together and be the calm in the storm. These ladies are true warriors through it all. Sometimes it can be too much though, and it’s OK to admit that it’s hard. To say sometimes this totally sucks, because at least twice a week it does, even though we wouldn’t give up these moments for anything. I think I feel so calm because I genuinely know in my heart that God has placed me, and my husband, in this position for a reason and our story has just begun. Sometimes you just know that without having to wonder. You know when a chapter feels like it’s starting, and when it’s coming to a close. What a blessing that feeling is!! You go God! Thanks for quietly guiding me through life! Just a quiet whisper, that if you are just still enough, you can hear it.

Oh, baseball. What a whirlwind of emotions.

It is not for the faint hearted. It does not pity the weak. It does not have a “beginners level,” even though it works on a level system. Where is the 5 step how-to guide like in the beginning of a video game to get you through it? How do you steer the controls? I want to believe that if I’m right with God, and if my husband is right with Him, that He will steer us through it exactly the way we want Him to. But I’ve realized He didn’t create it that way. As believers inside and outside the game we want to think that He will make life easy on us if we follow Him, but The Bible says otherwise. Life won’t be easy, so why would the game be any different?

Sometimes baseball feels like “life” times 10.

That’s exactly why the people I’ve met through the game are the best people I’ve ever come across in my life. I find it hard to connect to people a lot of the time because I genuinely want to surround myself with people that will push me to be better. You come around baseball people and they are all those things. I have flourished around everyone I’ve met in baseball so far. I’m not afraid to put myself out there because I know they will understand me, and that’s such a beautiful thing.

I feel so blessed every minute that the Lord trains me to be the best version of myself through the game. I know that’s what He is doing for me, and I believe that’s what He is doing for all of us through the game. Through all the tough times, our attitude towards it will determine our success. That’s what I believe.