I found your essays really moving, especially with the batter-count motif and the essays posted so they could be read normally, top-to-bottom. Plus, the baseball metaphor is very, very powerful with me.

Growing up, I absolutely loved baseball. From about age 10 to 16, it really was my life. I played it in the local youth league, in the back yard with my brother, in the street with my neighbors. I collected baseball cards religiously, never missed the Braves on Channel 17, and made the pilgrimage to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium whenever I had the chance. I wanted to be a baseball player more than anything.

Only thing was, I had trouble throwing accurately or hard, was extraordinarily slow around the bases, and couldn’t hit a fastball under any circumstances (as in no pitches hit fair in the first two seasons and no basehits in the first three seasons of at-bats). Apparently, the coaches in Boys’ Club league kept track of how skilled the players were, and every season I ended up on one of, if not the, worst teams in town. This tendency to end up on spectacularly bad teams has somehow followed me through many seasons of slow-pitch softball. So through the years I’ve learned something about the “timeless” quality of baseball that you (mercifully) don’t mention in your essays: an eternity of torment is being in the field with the bases loaded, 10-15 runs in, and still nobody out.

That’s just an observation, not a metaphor, but this one is: even after hearing strike three smack the catcher’s mitt, there’s another trip to the pate coming. It’s not my intention to sound sappily motivational here, but it’s simply a fact. I was halfway through my fourth season of playing Boys Club baseball (somewhere I still have the batting statistics I scrupulously maintained) before I ever got a base hit. And somehow, after that first one, I started smacking the cover off the ball–literally batting .500 for the rest of the season.

I don’t say this in any way to try to suggest what course of action you ought to take. In fact, this whole thing has been more cathartic than anything else, but I thought you might appreciate the baseball story.

By the way, the odds are good that you, like most of us, are neither Crash nor Roy. But you just might be Jim Morris or even Hoyt Wilhelm. Just a thought.

I will offer you this advice that has kept me well in ministry, even if I have not always kept it as well as I should: God comes before family and everything else, but family comes before church, even if church is paying my salary.

Peace, and thanks for sharing your story and struggles. I’ll be praying for you for guidance, wisdom, courage, and peace.

Milton