Coaches are professional escape artists. Not from effort, but from location. We’re always looking past the field we’re standing on toward the next job, the next level, the next season that’ll finally be the real one. This year is just the bridge to get there.
I’ve done it plenty myself. Head down, grinding through a hard year, telling myself the good part starts once I clear this stretch. What if the hard stretch is the assignment, not the obstacle to it?
Lydia’s Riverbank
My church, NorthStar, just wrapped up a series called “Made For,” and it landed on a story in Acts 16 that I haven’t been able to shake. Our pastor, Mike Linch, also runs a podcast called Linch with a Leader that’s become one of my go-to listens, and he walked through it like this: Paul is traveling through Asia trying to preach, and the door keeps closing. He’s forbidden from going one direction and blocked from another until he gets a vision of a man from Macedonia asking for help. So he redirects, crosses over, and ends up in Philippi, a Roman military town with almost no Jewish presence.
There’s no synagogue there. So on the Sabbath, the small group of believers in that city does the only thing they can: they gather down by the river.
That’s where Paul meets Lydia. She’s a businesswoman, a dealer in purple cloth, in Philippi, trading from her hometown two weeks away. Scripture says the Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul was saying, and she and her household were baptized that same day. Her home became the first church in Europe.
None of that happens without a string of closed doors first. Paul didn’t choose Philippi. He got redirected into it. Lydia didn’t choose the riverbank over a synagogue. It’s just where her faith and her trade route happened to intersect that week. Charles Spurgeon preached on this and put it as plainly as anyone has: “providence brings her to Philippi at the right time.” Every closed door, every trade route, every displaced congregation meeting outdoors instead of indoors, was doing something neither of them could see yet.
We’re All Standing on One
Here’s the transfer to coaching. We all have a riverbank, some ordinary, maybe unglamorous place we’ve been placed where we’re positioned to reach somebody. It might be a ball field. A classroom. A business. A program that isn’t ranked, in a town most people couldn’t find on a map.
The temptation is to treat that place like a layover. Something to survive on the way to the job that matters. But Lydia’s riverbank wasn’t a layover to her. It was the whole assignment, and she didn’t know it going in. The hard, unremarkable stretch you’re in right now, the rebuilding year, the JV gig, the school nobody’s heard of, might not be standing between you and your purpose. It might be your purpose, disguised as something less than it is.
The Mountain Was the Assignment
I think about this every time I hear John Wayne Walding’s story. Joby Martin and Denny Thompson had him on their podcast, Built 4 More, and I haven’t been able to shake it since. He’s the Green Beret who lost his leg in the Battle of Shok Valley, one of the worst firefights American forces saw in that war. He tied off his own leg with a tourniquet and kept fighting until every one of his brothers made it off that mountain alive.
He woke up the next morning missing a leg, and he had a choice nobody would have blamed him for getting wrong: be a victim of that mountain, or let it be the place his life actually turned. He chose the second one. Ran the Boston Marathon on a hand cycle. Became the first amputee to requalify as a Green Beret sniper. Got sober and stayed sober. Surrendered his life to Christ. His answer for why he lives the way he does now is simple: he owes it to the men who didn’t make it off that mountain to live well.
That mountain wasn’t supposed to be anything but the worst day of his life. It became his riverbank instead. He didn’t get a better circumstance. He got a reason to stop looking backward inside the one he had.
Burn the Boat
I’ve had Kenny Chesney’s new song, “Burn My Boat,” randomly looping on my headphones at the gym most mornings lately. The whole song is about finally landing somewhere you’re supposed to be and being done hedging, done keeping one foot out the door in case something better shows up. You commit. All the way. No exit plan.
We preach that exact thing in athletics without ever saying it that way. No excuses. Don’t waste energy looking behind you. But it applies past the scoreboard. If the field you’re standing on is your riverbank, keeping one foot out the door waiting for the next job is the same as never showing up to this one. You can’t fully coach the team in front of you while you’re scouting your own exit.
The Book I Wrote for the Wrong Reason
I’ll be honest about something. Part of why I wrote Red Letters and Red Dirt was for me. I wanted credibility, something that would open doors when I applied to speak at conventions. That’s not the noble version of the story, but it’s the true one.
A family member of mine read it recently, somebody I never would have guessed would pick up a book like that, let alone finish it. It cracked something open in them. My wife has since encouraged them to find a church, try something different than what they’ve known. I didn’t write that book for them. I wrote it half for the game and half for myself.
Maybe that doesn’t disqualify it from being a riverbank anyway. Lydia didn’t plan to meet Paul that day either. She just showed up to trade purple cloth in a town without a synagogue, and it turned out to be the place her whole life pivoted. God doesn’t seem to need our motives to be pure before He’ll use the place we’re standing.
What This Means for You
“The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said.”
Acts 16:14, ESV
That’s the whole hinge of the story. Not a better location. Not a clearer sign. A heart made ready to notice what was already in front of her.
So here’s the ask. Stop scanning for the next field, the next job, the next level that’ll finally feel like the real assignment. Look at where you actually are this week, the program, the classroom, the family member who surprised you, the town nobody’s heard of. Name one person there you’re positioned to reach that you’ve been putting off because you were too busy looking past this season toward the next one.
Then do something about it before you leave for the next thing you’re convinced is coming. Send the text. Have the conversation. Show up like this riverbank is the one that matters, because it might be the only one you get.
If you’re anywhere near Acworth, Kennesaw, Marietta, or Canton, come find your own riverbank at NorthStar. Pastor Linch is the real deal, and we’d love to have you.
Greater Together
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