Dust or Diamond

Pressure is a part of life.  Hopefully, it’s something that drives us each day to achieve more and to do greater things and to be better. Pressure comes at us from different angles. Where do we feel pressure from in officiating? Answer: ourselves, family, crewmates, supervisor, coaches, players, fans, media, friends.

Think about how to deal with pressure and to be better from it…..”it’s not the pressure that I’m presented with, but how I decide to deal with that pressure and channel it.” People cope with pressure on completely different levels and by completely different methods. Michael Jordan probably felt more pressure than most athletes (taking the final shot multiple times with his team counting on him) once said “I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games; 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

If you put enough pressure on a piece of coal, then what do you ultimately get? The answer is a diamond. There are also those pieces of coal that just crumble and turn into dust, but that’s because they can't handle the pressure imposed on them, but then there are those that fight through it which turn into diamonds. If you look at the way we as people view pressure, it is not much different, we are all just pieces of coal starting out, through time we develop into something. There are those who crack and turn into nothing and then there are those that become diamonds.

James 1:  2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 

Take two things from these verses:  (1) know that we will face trials/stress/pressure and (2) finish-don’t give up under pressure so we will be “mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

God changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls and coal into diamonds using time and pressure. He’s working on me, too.

The last thing to remember is that life is a game of cards; each one of us is dealt a hand. No one remembers the person who folds, we only remember the person who manages to turn a hand perceived as a losing one into a winning hand. Embrace pressure, take in change and keep our head up because we will either be a piece of broken coal or a diamond.

A diamond is just a piece of charcoal that handled stress exceptionally well.