Part 4: The Game In Your Head

Ready, Set... Life!

The Game in Your Head

I never liked my name when I was a kid. Let’s face it. There aren’t a lot young men running about with the name “Tracy”, and those of us who are find a lot in common with the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”. There is a somewhat apocryphal story in our clan that lays the blame for my name on my sister. She got to choose and somehow “Tracy” was on the top of her short list. I was never upset with her over the choice and hold no ill feelings.

However, one thing the name selection did purchase for me was a large amount of teasing from my peers when I was a child. It’s not hard to guess why, since even my own children asked me if “Tracy” was a girl’s name when they were young. I have a whole stable of responses raised over time to answer that question and I trotted them out for the boys. Truth be told, in our culture and modern day, the answer is “yes”. It is generally a girl’s name.

The payoff from this difficulty when I was a kid is that it made me pretty tough. You have to balance out a name like that or the sharks of the schoolyard playground will circle slowly and eventually rip you to tiny bits. So by the time I was in the 4th grade it was generally considered that, unless you wanted to get messed up, you didn’t tease the kid with the girl’s name about his name! The funniest thing about that turns out to be that I rarely ever engaged in actual fisticuffs. (Never in shoving matches, which I found to be silly and unproductive. This is an idea I’ve passed on to my own sons. If you’re going to get in a throw down, let the other kid push you and then KNOCK THE CRAP OUT OF HIM!) Because I oozed this air of craziness and the willingness to go straight to a hundred miles an hour I enjoyed a kind of long term respite from harassment.

Ultimately this attitude came less from the need for protection than it did from an early sense of my own worth. No matter the judgment of my peers, I was not the sum of my name. I made a conscious decision to master the misgivings in my self that arose from ridicule, both external and internal. I wasn’t a big kid. I had long hair and long eyelashes. I had a girl’s name. There were plenty of opportunities both from other people and from my own thoughts to speak poorly of who and what I was.

I really do remember making the conscious decision that I would not give in to those belittling words or thoughts. My family and close friends helped me to know who I really was and instilled in me a healthy self-image. It wasn’t arrogance, but it was value of self. That value was unerringly based in learning what God thought of me and how He wanted me to approach the game of life. In doing so they revealed God’s desires for me when making choices, my reaction to circumstances and how to set my mind in particular directions.

As I grew I found a type of pride in the name that I wrestled with when I was a child. I became grateful to my sister because she bestowed me with a name that people remember. It’s uncommon, and served as a key component in forming the person I am today; how I look at life and approach challenges.

If you want to be a master at the game of life, you have to learn how to master the game in your head. Sometimes we sit around wanting someone else to figure it all out for us, or hoping that others will feel sorry for the mess we’re in. In truth, the solution is much closer to home. Read the following passage from the Bible and consider this: Maybe one way to master the inner game is realize that we will not be destroyed by the shifting shadows of life. But if we expect to enjoy the light, sometimes we just need to suck it up and get on with it already.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
II Corinthians 4:7-9