own it.

after an outstanding weekend as a sports fan and osborne last week (uni, iowa, the vikings all win!), this weekend turned sour. lock in friday night (that was good and fun, thanks chaperones and kids!), no sleep, 9 a.m. soccer, then home for the big game. thanks to the big ten network, lack of cable, money doing the driving, i got to listen to the iowa/isu tussle on the am dial. i planned to snooze thru the game, wake up in the 4th quarter, eat some leftover barbeque wings and celebrate another hawkeye victory. well...guess what.

1) no sleep -- after sleeping 2 hours in my office, i think the cold medicine, bacon cheeseburger for lunch, and play by play by gary dolphin and eddie podolak kept my from sleeping. i stared at the ceiling for an hour, then got up.

2) iowa state simply beat iowa -- outplayed them, out intensity-ed them, and wanted it more. came down to a field goal, and they won it. straight up.

so...as an iowa fan, it would be easy to pass this off as 'iowa didn't play well enough, isu got lucky', etc. and iowa fan has a reputation for being this way -- blame the other guy, pass the buck, be arrogant. i say this because there is a bit of that in me, too. here is the bright spot, the lesson learned, and the reason i can say this morning that i'm glad isu won...the kid who won the game for iowa state, bret culbertson, deserved it. he kicked really well, and led the team to victory. this is a kid who has missed some big kicks through his career, and has never passed the buck to anyone else. when he came up short, he OWNED it. he would talk to the media, endure criticism, and go back out and do his thing. as he kicked the winning field goal saturday, i turned to kari and said, 'good for him'. and it was a beautiful thing to see him praised by the coaches and media afterwards...the young man is a stand up guy and truly deserves to be the hero for a day.

so what? i've been thinking a lot about 'owning it' lately. it is so easy for us to blame others, point the finger, and pass our shortcomings and screw-ups onto someone/else. but isn't part of the christian deal admitting where you need help, and then trusting God and working hard to make those things better?!? and when we are willing to own our stuff, i think we are on the road to making those things go away for good...

i hope my kids will be willing to own the things in their lives that they need to...and i hope i can too.