Baseball Family #5
No Pinch Hitters
When it comes to baseball hitting is key. Fielding can get you only so far. Many a great fielder has fallen short of great dreams because they just couldn’t hit a curve ball. In a game if you cannot get a hit, then they look over at the bench and pick someone to bat for you. It is called a pinch hitter. All of the sudden you are not batting but someone else takes your place in the lineup and they are taking your swings. It can be a discouraging thing in baseball to be pinch hit for; but it is nothing compared to being pinch hit for in a marriage.
We have all see it happen; hell it might have even happened to you. We are struggling to get a hit; we are in a slump that seems to keep going. Our marriage is just not going the way we wanted it to go. Sometimes when that happens we find ourselves looking down the bench or the bar to see if there is a pinch hitter available. We need to think about a few things before we call down the bench for a pinch hitter.
Batting a thousand is impossible. Even in Major League Baseball a .300 hitter is an all-star caliber player. It was a chase for .400 that catches everyone’s eye. I was once asked to give advice to a soon to be bride a few days before her wedding. The guy pouring drinks asked me on my 25th wedding anniversary what I could tell someone who was going to get married the next day. I paused for a minute, reached deep within the recesses of 25 years of marriage. I simply looked her in the eye and told her: “Just don’t ever want to get divorced on the same day.” The bartender looked at me and said that deserves a drink on the house. She said I will try to never forget that. I wished her luck and just remembered, no marriage has ever batted a thousand.
Even the Bible understands this. Romans 12:18 says “Do your best to live in peace with everyone.” When two people are together as much as a husband and wife there are bound to be days that just don’t end up with us on base. We both slump back to the dugout after a strikeout and take our seat trying to figure out how we missed that curve ball again. We have days that we just have to struggle through to make it. I know that is not all happy days and great news, but it is simply the truth that we live with every day in our marriage. So, if we understand that we won’t bat a thousand we can endure the strikeouts and groundouts that will come to our relationship.
When we realize that we cannot bat a thousand then we understand that slumps are a part of life. The Bible says several things about marriage. 1 Corinthians 7:3-4 in the Message gives us some value advice when it comes to handling a slump. “The marriage bed must a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out.” A slump comes to a marriage sometimes because we forget that we are supposed to be here for each and to fight for our marriage. It is a decision to serve each other, to place the team above our own needs. You only get out of a slump once you decide to put in extra work and find common ground together. Players can quit when they slump, or they can dig their way out of the slump. It is the same with spouses; we can quit when the days are bad or we can dig our way out and know that this is just a slump that we will survive.
When it comes to working our way out of a slump there is the thought that we stick with someone until the days are better. To put it another way is this: If they are in the lineup, then stick with them. A guy who had 100s of wives gives us this lineup bolstering advice in Proverbs 5 in the Message Bible. “Do you know the saying, ‘Drink from your own rain barrel, draw water from your own spring-fed well’? It’s true. Otherwise, you may one day come home and find your barrel empty and your well polluted. Your spring water is for you and you only, not to be passed around among strangers. Bless your fresh-flowing fountain! Enjoy the wife you married as a young man! Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose—don’t ever quit taking delight in her body. Never take her love for granted.”
A slump nor when we are hitting it out of the park is not a time to pinch hit in marriage. If we take care of our own swing and our teammates then we should not be tempted to ever to pinch hit our partner. If we don’t take our marriage as serious as a hitter does their swing and their game then we might be surprised when we are pinch hit for. You better make sure you take care of your swing and your partner if you want to survive any slump.
The most important thing to remember is that once you pinch hit for someone they are out of the game. We need to always remember that once we make the decision to pinch hit we will not get the chance to take it back. Hebrews 13:4 says “Marriage should be honored by everyone, and husband and wife should keep their marriage pure. God will judge as guilty those who take part in sexual sins.” God doesn’t wink at things like this. It is a serious choice that will have lasting results in our lives. Once we make the choice to pinch hit for someone we love our lives and the lives of all those around us will forever be scarred. It will change everything. A momentary decision of bad judgment will cost us more than sticking out a slump. But the decision to stand by our promise we made to each other. To be true to our vows no matter what happens. That is the decision that creates a great marriage.
So what will we do? Will we stay with our original line up and not give up the hope that we have in each other? We need to keep swinging the bat and looking to survive the slumps. Knowing that it will one day turn around for us again if we don’t give up the hope we have in each other. That is when a team does not need a pinch hitter but sticks with the one who we love.