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“You’re Bryce Shaker.” His name rolled easily off her tongue.
“Bryce Shaker the baseball player.”
“You were a baseball player?” She tapped her fork on her plate. “I might have heard that.” She grinned. “Were you any good?”
“Some people said I was. Then I had an accident. This happened.” He pointed to his face, making a circular motion around it. “Then, someone hacked my social media account and put a racial slur on it. The media heaped on, and I was canceled. There was no way with the physical issues I had to overcome, with that on top of that, that I would ever get back to where I was. So I retired. That’s what it was called, but...I guess I quit.”
“Everyone has to have a stopping point. Professional sports are notorious for young retirement ages, although baseball is a little more long-lived than some of the other sports, like football.” She spoke mildly, like he hadn’t just poured out his life.
He admired her even keel, but maybe he wanted her to be a little shocked and angry that he had been so grossly mistreated.
“Most of the time, people get to choose their stopping point. I didn’t.”
“No. You didn’t. God did.”
He just stared at her, wanting to argue but knowing that she was absolutely correct. He could blame other people all he wanted to, but they were not in control of the universe. God was.
She gave him a gentle smile. “We like to think we choose. And God does give us free choice about some things, but there are things in life that He gives us that we can’t get out of. Everything that happens, that God allows to happen, is designed to make us better. Unfortunately, all too often we decide to get bitter.”
“Was that a slam?” he asked, and he admitted there was some anger in his tone. He wanted to direct it at her.
“Not at you. I was just thinking of myself and my divorce. My husband found someone else, like it happens, right? And he walked out. The funny thing was, we lived in the house with his mother. When he left, he left me and his son living with her. She was pretty angry at me. I guess she thought it was my fault.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Was it? I wondered. After all, he blames me. Said that it was my fault that he had to go find someone else. If I had known there were any problems, if he would have talked to me about them, I would have loved to try to work through them.”
“That’s just a line people use when they don’t want to take the blame for their own actions.”
“Yeah. I figured that out eventually. But I was still bitter and angry. Why did that happen to me? Why my marriage? My husband? I wanted to celebrate a golden anniversary. I wanted to have a stable home for my son—and I wanted more children. I never intended to raise an only child. I wanted him to have siblings. To have a big, happy, fun family where we laugh and play and love.”
There was no bitterness or anger in her voice, and he kept listening, wanting to know what changed to make her not be angry that her dreams had been shot down by some jerk who didn’t appreciate what he had. How she got over it.
“I was angry at God for letting it happen. I trusted my husband. And I was the best wife I could possibly be. I was constantly trying to be kind and forgiving and nice.” She huffed. “Nice didn’t seem to get me anywhere. And I could look around at marriages where the wife was really terrible, commanding and bossy and derogatory and never happy and the husband patiently put up with her. Some of those marriages are still together. But my husband left. I can look around at all that unfairness and just be angry.”
“Life isn’t fair. It stinks.”
“Well, yeah, but then I just realized that I could have that attitude, or I could just look at every day as a gift. Do I want to waste my gift being unhappy and miserable? Or should I accept the things I can’t change? Realize there’s a lot of good and just focus on that. You know, the Bible says to focus on things that are beautiful, just, good, virtuous, and praiseworthy.”
That’s the conclusion he’d been coming to. That he’d allowed his negativity to rule his life. To run it, to change him into someone he didn’t like.
