The Tattered Binder

Eight members of our speech and debate team are at the National tournament this week in Virginia Beach. It hit me yesterday how much I miss being with them. Last year was a really beautiful time of connection and bonding between the members of our club that went to Nationals, and while my mind knows there's no way I could have gone, my heart is regretting staying behind. The decision to not go to National's was made out of wisdom, but yesterday I had to come to grips with the fact that there really is a part of me that desperately wants to go back.

In order to help relieve my wishful thinking, I found the two blog posts that I wrote before and after Nationals last year. The first post (below) entitled, "The Tattered Binder" was written the night before I left, and it was posted on my previous (since been deleted) blog and never reposted when I began this one. The second post, which never actually made the published post stage of blogging was written "After the Fact."

The first entry is below, and I'll post the second entry tonight if I can remember. (I'm leaving myself a sticky-note, we'll see if it works.)

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The Tattered Binder

In just a few hours, I'll be at the airport, waiting to fly to Greensville South Carolina. Nationals has been a long time in coming, but it's actually here now. I'm scared, unsure, and excited all at the same time, but overall, I trust God.

Earlier this evening, as I was prepping my speech and debate binder. This is a ritual that happens before every tournament. I stock it with stickynotes, paper, speech scripts, and notes from friends. I finished it up, and closed it, and then examined it a bit closer. It began in January as a new binder, completely without wear and tear. But as I looked at the split seams, scratches, and fingerprints, I realized that this binder represented a journey. A journey that began in January when I first went to the Clarion qualfier, and it's ending in South Carolina, at the National NCFCA tournament.

I starred at the binder and realized how ridiculous it is for me to be nervous. The line that had been a theme throughout regionals, from the song "I Cry" by Rescue, "Because You've been so faithful every other time", rang in my mind as I thought back to all my adventures and challenges of previous tournaments. God's done so much in my heart and in my life through the last few months, that there is no reason that I should fear walking into another situation that is governed by His direction, purpose, and righteous will. The tattered binder was a reflection of God's faithfulness to me through everything that He has, by His grace, brought me through thus far.

Its been a long year. And there are times when I just feel like I want to be done, I want it to be over, I don't want to do it anymore. And I look at the binder I and think, "I'm taking it to tournament again?! Just look at it! It's so torn up, but I'm here loading it up to bring it with me again!"... I want to be done because I feel like that binder. I feel like I've been used to my max, I feel like I can't survive another tournament, I just want to be finished with the whole thing for a while. And yet, then I think about the scripts that are inside that binder, and the messages that are, by memory, engraved in my mind. I still have a message. And after realizing how important that message is, I think, "Okay. This binder can survive another tournament."

God's given me a message. And even though I'm tired, even though my endurance level is low, God can still get me through another tournament. ..."He's been so faithful every other time." So tomorrow, I'll put that binder into my backpack and carry it onto a plane and take it to Nationals... where it will be used again... and more memories will be added to the journey as God proves His faithfulness yet again... at a tournament... one more time.