Life is like a basketball game. More specifically, the last regular season game of your senior year, two days before the state tournament. It’s the fourth quarter. You’re up by 15 and smugly sinking jump shots when your left side is smashed in by a competitor 50 pounds your senior. Your ankle cocks outwards like a Michael Jackson dance move and then you hit the floor. 

You try to get up quickly, act like it was just a quick spill. You’ve recovered! But the pain throbs all the way up to your kneecap. It’s gonna swell, you already know. And the coach jogs out onto the court in this final hour to kneel beside you, and you say the thing everyone says.

 “I’m fine.” 

The lie is obvious. Even your uncle on the third row of bleachers can see that you’re going to need ice. But you straggle-limp off the court like you’ve never known pain and collapse on the end of the bench. Yeah, it hurts a little. But you’ll rest it and be back in the game Saturday, no problem.

When you’re finally home and no one’s looking, you ice the throbbing balloon of flesh. You bum an ankle brace off the local physical therapist and you head to States. Because, you know, you’re  fine. 

And then you stumble through the tournament, occasionally fighting back tears and wondering if the damage you’re doing to your body will extend into your geriatric years. You win the next game by the breadth of a green bean string and somehow you’re entering the Championship game.  

You grit your teeth. You take the shots. You play defense like your mother’s life depends on it.  But the final minute of the final quarter arrives and all the air is gone from your lungs. You’re tired. You hurt. And the enemy is leading by six and using a box-and-one defense on you. 

This is it. This is the last game. You push and push, but pushing never changed the score.  Isn’t that the hardest part? It’s the thought that counts, people say. But is it? All who succeed have tried, but not all who try succeed. 

The buzzer shrieks and the sick feeling hits. You lost. Not just this game, but this last game. The one that really counted. Humbled at the end by the frailty of your own bones. And at twenty-six, my ankle still hurts.

That championship was one of the few times I cried over a game. I didn’t care much about basketball. I was a bookworm and a homebody who preferred to spend my evenings scribbling out French homework and plotting my next novel. I hated having practices every evening and games that took me on a shuttle bus to the far reaches of rural West Virginia. I hated that diesel-reeking bus. I despised how cold the seats were when you got on and how hot they felt when you got off. 

I didn’t enjoy the pressure during warm-ups when all eyes were on me (is she making her foul shots?). Hated when the opposing coaches squinted at my underwhelming size and matched me up with the roughest defense player they could muster. It was only after jump ball, when the clock had started ticking, that I could relax and just play. Drown out the screams, the trash talk, the frustrated coaches, and just listen for that ball smacking the floor, bouncing off rim.

Years and years have passed since that final game, and I regret not loving it while I had it. Now I only play in my dreams (literally) and the slow-motion disaster of dream-play is infuriating. Either I can’t find the basket, or I can’t tell who’s on my team, or I forgot to pack socks and they won’t let me on the floor. 

Life is like basketball in that way, too. We take it for granted. Complain about it, roll our eyes when duty calls. But when it’s gone, we reminisce like it was the one who got away.  

Maybe that’s why that final game haunts me so deeply. It was only after losing that I realized how much I wanted to win. 

I don’t want to live life like that. Take people and moments and opportunities with such little weight that I shrug them off and say – maybe later. Maybe next year I’ll be assistant coach. Maybe next week I’ll check in with Grandma. Maybe tomorrow I’ll apologize. Maybe never. 

I can remember sitting on the back swing behind our house, listening to my sister’s iPod shuffle and wanting to be left alone. The heat of summer in my hair and cool rocks scratching my bare feet. Then hearing the thump of a basketball. From my vantage point I could see my dad coming out of the garage with a Tarheels ball heading for our basketball court.

I can remember the thoughts in that fifteen-year-old head of mine. How much I just wanted to sit and be with my music and my daydreams. But then another thought presenting itself, more of an awareness than a fully-formed idea. I won’t always have this moment. 

And so, I wrapped the ear buds around the iPod and took off through the grass, reaching the edge of the driveway just in time for the ball to hit my hands and my toes to lift off the concrete to take the shot. Swish. My dad grinned at me. “Want to go to the library later?”

I’ll never regret that choice. The hours spent playing in the driveway. When you realize how delicate Time is, you treat it differently. It becomes something you pay attention to. Something you stay up late thinking about. It made sense to savor that moment with a sick dad, but I failed to connect awareness and appreciation to all the other pieces of life that fade with time.

I didn’t understand that my life was bound up not in just that moment, but in all the other ones, too. The hours on the stinky bus and in the locker room. The conversations with my teammates about math class and the best-looking options on the boys’ team. The nervous minutes before warm up when Dad and I would sit in the Rav-4 and blast the soundtrack to National Treasure.

Maybe I deserved to win that final game, but maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just didn’t care enough. Technically, you can be the best. The fastest runner, the quickest strategist, the most accurate shooter. But you’ll still lose. At the end of the day, MVP doesn’t matter. 

I thought my way to the championship was laid out like the perfect pair of tennis shoes, fitted just for me, until one toothpick of an ankle got in the way. Instead of a trophy ceremony, I watched everything I’d worked for, and hadn’t worked for, drift away with the clock.

And I still regret that – waiting until the last hour to care. Because by then it was too late. 

So, if basketball taught me anything, it’s this: 1) Life is full of surprises and doesn’t always play by the rules. It reserves the right to smash you with a technical foul when you least expect it. 2) Don’t wait until the last hour to care. Don’t wait for a bum ankle to wake you up and force you to acknowledge that this is the last game and there won’t be another one. Don’t do that. Not with marriage, with friendship, with dreams. Not with anything. Love it while you have it. 

And 3) You can try really hard, care a whole lot, and still lose. That is also life. God is probably using it to change you. Accept that, too.