It’s sports season again in our household – and you know what that means. Me and thousands of my closest friends will come out in droves to frequent the local public school gyms to watch our kids show of their skills they have honed in the hourly practice of the week. Honestly, it’s adorable to see little kids in matching uniforms trying their hardest to make a slam dunk – or just make a basket into the right team’s hoop.

Even though he hates it, we make Hayden come with us to at least a few sporting events per season to show support for his brothers. Heaven knows I have spent many years dragging his brothers to appointments they did not want to go to, so Hayden can do his brothers a solid and attend an event or two and show support. We are a family. That is what families do – they go to events they don’t care about and put on a smile and suck it up and deal… then their therapist thanks me later for the unending material. 😉

The part I hate the most, though, actually takes place well before I enter the building. It’s the PARKING LOT nightmare! Recently, there was a tournament going on for both of our younger boys and we had to split up the parenting duties. My husband had our two boys with him and I had Hayden with me. I had stayed back home to complete Hayden’s morning treatments and bowel management routine, missed the first games and then Hayden and I were planning to meet up with the rest of our family at the gym.

The two of us pulled into the parking lot in our handicap plated, beaten up, wheel chair deploying van looking for that “golden ticket” of a handicap spot with the lines painted on the right hand side of the parking spot for our ramp to deploy. I call this spot the “golden ticket” because without those lines in the correct spot, Momma has to back “the beast” in to a non-ideal spot to get the ramp to deploy with enough space, and no one wants to endure that fiasco of backing into a parking spot, let’s just all be honest.

This particular [insanely windy] day, there were NO handicap spots available at all! No “golden tickets,” no spots near the end of a row I could make do with, nothing, nada, zilch! So I had to park wayyyyyy back in the lot and deploy the ramp there and then push Hayden from back there. Obviously, the basketball game was over when we made it to the front door of the school. (Did you really expect this story to go any other way?? ha!)

But that experience got me thinking – wouldn’t it have been so much easier if the parking spot I needed was just like what everyone else was using? Just a plain Jane, run of the mill parking spot. No particulars necessary. No need to stand out like a sore thumb and have only a specific handful of spots that would work? But that’s not our lot… Hayden and I, we were destined to drive around and forced to be picky about where we landed. We have to have special license plates, even, granting us permission to park in the “special areas.” And I’ll tell you, for an introvert trying to fly [quietly] under the radar, parking lots just make me sweat. Profusely. (And I’ll save my anger issues for those citizens who take advantage of handicap parking spots for another post or, perhaps, for my tell all book….)

Here’s the deal, though. I was called to stand out. I was called to NOT match all the other cars in the parking lot. To not blend in so nicely. The parking lot was full of people just blending in and not sticking out. All the cars look the same, park the same, and fit between two beautiful and straight white lines. But not my car. You can spot my car from afar. Special license plates in a special area of every parking lot with crazy diagonal lines all over the place and signs posted that essentially read, “Look out world! Something different is headed your way!”

But you know what? If you’re following Jesus, He told you to stand out too. Me and you. We have got to be the salt and the light of this world. We cannot go through life just blending in with everyone else, flying under the radar. He did not call us to that. He did not tell us to do our best to blend in and find a place in this world that’s just perfectly easy and laid out, and then land there and never look back. What in our daily lives is making us look contrary from the entire world? Something about us needs to be screaming, “Look out world! Something different is headed your way!”

I am so thankful to be in a life and in a set of circumstances that FORCE me to stand out because it makes it so much easier. It almost feels like I was gifted the easier version of “Salt and Light 101.” If these difficult circumstances that I wake up to everyday make it easier for me to stand out in the world and to point others to Christ, then I welcome this scenario. And once I am out of my comfort zone, it is so much easier to look around and find even more ways to keep standing out in this world. I do not want to conform to the world. I want to look like the opposite of the world so that others might see me, struggling in the wind to unbuckle my son’s wheel chair from the van floor and rush into a basketball gym only to miss a game, and go, “What is the deal with this girl? Something is different here – Who is giving her this joy and resilience that not even a rough Saturday morning in the suburbs has the ability to dim her light?”

And I want that for you, friend. Because the joy isn’t in the perfect circumstances; the joy is in Jesus.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” – Matthew 5:14-16