Learning to Lose

Chess has become the game of choice at our home during this season. Joseph Michael has taken a special interest in the game. We have all witnessed something amazing that the chess board has revealed about our passive and easy going child. 

He does not like to lose! 

So as he is working on his strategies, we are encouraging him to work on his sportsmanship. Progress in this area came today. I over heard Whitney gloat, “I've got you! You are trapped.” Joseph's response, “I guess you could say that...” 

In times past he would have not even conceded defeat or allowed his opponent to take his King. Growth is coming to him because he continues to play the game and not throw up the board in defeat!

When life puts me in a corner and calls our “Check!” What is my first response? Do I “throw up the board” denying its closing in defeat? Or do I yield and learn from the loses that gloat, “I've got you!” Is the answer to stop playing all together? NO!

“A righteous man falls seven times, Yet rises up again.” Prov. 24:16

Today, I choose to learn from my failure. Defeats teach something far deeper than the victories of our life. They show us we always have room to grow, and at times, possibly need to change strategies!

 The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is that we shall lose if we flinch or rebel. ~Maltbie Davenport Babcock

At this time, Joseph was 10 years old, and Whitney 14 years old.