A Dream Resureccted

It just took 15 years...

TMU hat. 2011 SWL Champs t-shirt. Apparently… still serious about it.

For those who prefer to listen… I got you -

A Dream Resurrected

Earlier this week I lay in bed flooded with gratitude. When I was in my twenties, I used to dream that my whole job would be coaching soccer. That dream felt impossible since the pay was so low and the time commitment so high. And then, well I became a mom and I soon discovered that coaching high school soccer and raising children were hard to carry at the same time. I know it can be done - Emma Hayes - but for me it didn’t feel right. And so I laid the coaching dream to rest.

Fast forward. It’s 2023. My oldest is playing soccer - that in itself felt like a dream revival since she didn’t love the sport as a 5 year old. But suddenly she loved it. And I loved being on the pitch with her. In early 2024 I volunteered to assist her young coach. I’ll just be a parent helper, I thought.

I remember noticing the delight I hadn’t felt in a long time. Working with the goalkeepers during practice. Seeing a kid try a skill you’ve taught. Find success. Celebrate. There’s not much better.

Also in early 2024 I was accepted into the Transforming Center’s 20th Transforming Community: TC20. Our first retreat fell in April, in the midst of that soccer season. I returned home from retreat one in which we dove into the topic of desire. “What do you want me to do for you?” The Jesus question we were to sit with for four months, lingering in my mind. I found myself awakening to a desire that has been guiding my life especially in the last several years. I wrote about it the day after retreat in my journal:

I love to play and be with my children. When you stop and play, you are with people.

→ I am my best authentic self in play

→ Teach people to play? Offer a way to play?

And then I continued into the quarter. Studying desire. Applying new teaching to my everyday life.

Ronald Rolheiser’s The Holy Longing was especially meaningful during these months of travel soccer and tween parenting. In it, I learned “The Paschal Mystery.”

The Paschal Mystery is the cycle of life, death, resurrection and receiving a new spirit that marks the Christian life.

In June of 2024, the Paschal Mystery and my desire to teach people to play collided. Suddenly, without warning, my daughter and several of her teammates were without a team. I found myself grieving the loss of this dream that had been reignited once again. I remember crying out - Why, Lord would you put it on my heart to coach - even just as an assistant - only to have it all end?

For the resurrection to take place, there must be a death.

Death can be painful and heartbreaking. Remember the mother of the one who suffered on the cross, suffering too.

It was in that painful place that the seed of resurrection was planted.

I have the time and the talent to coach these girls.

And the doors began to open.

A local non-profit soccer club that had only offered in-house recreational soccer was willing to let us put together a travel team. Within two weeks of opening registration we had 18 players on the roster.

By the time I attended retreat two, I was a head coach of a middle school girls’ soccer team.

“It sounds like a dream resurrected,” one of TC20’s leaders said to me as I shared the unexpected journey and landing place of the summer.

I’ve now been coaching and volunteering with the board of Thunder Mountain for almost two full years. We’ve grown. With the addition of a second middle school girls’ team and two high school boys teams this spring, we have created a space for over 130 young people to play travel and competitive soccer in an affordable and life-giving way. Many of these children wouldn’t be able to play for a variety of reasons if we weren’t offering these opportunities. Turns out, God knew of a need in our community, led me to open doors, and my old dreams found new life.

Recently, I’ve remembered those dreams from my twenties. The desire to “only coach soccer” is coming to fruition in really different ways than I originally dreamed it. Helping to run a club. Developing opportunities that are affordable. Emphasizing trauma-informed, child-first coaching so that we are creating truly positive childhood experiences for the young people we serve.

Though these desires are mine, I offer them up to the one who provides the power to make it happen. This story continues with the promise of the Paschal Mystery, stepping into the NEW LIFE being offered and receiving the spirit for this day I’m living.