A must-read: Bill Sanders’ life-changing 30 seconds at the ballfield

You’re in for a treat today.

Remember Bill Sanders? That young man whose memoir changed me? He’s the guy who worked for twenty years as an award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and editor for several daily newspapers. The man who wrote Staying, A Multi-Generational Memoir of Rescue and Restoration. (If you missed Thursday’s post, click on Let me introduce you to The Great Stayer.) 

Today we get to enjoy a short essay Bill wrote, one of his personal favorites. “Author Anne Lamott is one of our time’s best writing teachers,” Bill says, “brilliant at telling individual anecdotes and making you think you’ve read a cohesive life lesson. And you have.”

Bill has done just that in his story below—he has written an anecdote with a gift inside—a cohesive life lesson for you and for me and for all readers.

If you’ve read his memoir, you know one of his joys was coaching girls’ softball for 12 years. He says, “If I could make a living coaching rec-league girls softball, I would.”

So, settle in and enjoy this gentle man’s conversational, warm anecdote about his love of coaching and a life-changing 30 seconds at one of his favorite places, the local ballfield.

****

When little Marissa saw me at the ballpark one night several years ago, her face lit up with that big toothy smile of hers. She took off from 30 feet away for a full frontal, torpedo-action hug.

If she weighed more than a bag of feathers, I might have had to brace myself. Thankfully, she is a bag of feathers, because had I braced myself, or guarded myself—had I done anything other than take the full force of her enthusiasm—I would have missed out.
           

It wasn’t until the day after that I fully processed what this 30 seconds of life had meant to me. And now three years later, I’m beginning to doubt I'll ever forget it.

I saw lots of friendly faces and was on the receiving end of a handful of hugs and handshakes and “we-miss-you” sentiments. I had coached softball at this park for 12 years, and a couple of months earlier, I had finished my career in a less-than-ideal manner.

That didn't matter to 11-year-old Marissa, though. She greeted me like the Father greets me, like his prodigal son. She celebrated seeing me with a totally unexpected and wild abandon.

For all she knew, I had quit on her and her teammates in the middle of a difficult all-star summer season. I think she probably was old enough and savvy enough to know there was something more to it, but after talking to her mom that night, I also knew that her parents had shielded her from the specifics of what had been a particularly ugly case of ballpark politics, one in which I was not completely blameless.

Marissa would have been just if she’d looked at me and said, “Hey, where’d you go; where’ve you been?” She’d have had every right to withhold her love until I’d satisfied her sense of right and wrong and offered up an explanation. If that even occurred to her, she didn’t show it. She simply hugged me, smiled and asked me if I’d coach her again next summer.

Holy cow, God. Thank you for sending Marissa my way on this night. 

I knew when I walked back into the ballpark where I’d coached some 25 teams over the years that I’d probably run into people that didn’t like me.

           

Most of those years, the fields had been my primary place of ministry as well as the primary place where I’d come under assault from the enemy of my soul. On a spiritual plane, I was convinced that something was at stake every time I walked onto those fields.

           

Battles for teenage girls’ hearts were raging, I’d reminded myself. True, but as importantly, a battle for my own heart was raging.

Spiritually speaking, I’d lost a lot of blood on that battlefield. I had taken direct hits, been blindsided and ambushed for the sake of the ministry, for the sake of girls’ wounded hearts, for the sake of Christ. I had been abandoned by many of my trusted allies. If I'm counting the cost, then that's the tally, pure and simple.
           

But along the way, I—this prodigal son who has seen the light but is still prone to wander—created some of the collateral damage of my own. When the assaults got intense, I spent too much time preparing my defense and lining up witnesses to testify on my behalf in the invisible, but real, court of public perception. I was self-protecting, making sure my account of how others had acted was discreetly spread throughout the park.
             

I am always at my worst when I’m in self-protection mode. Don’t get me wrong; I’m pretty adept at it. But wouldn’t I be better off fighting the fight, which in this case, and in most cases, means loving with more of my heart, and letting God take care of protecting me?

           

Instead, I do the things I don’t want to do and don’t do the things I want to do.

           

So, I walked back on the fields that night as a spectator and a visitor. I wasn't coaching a team and I knew my time doing that had reached its end. But no win in a softball game meant as much as the time when the Father, in the form of that 11-year-old freckled-face sack of feathers, met me with open arms, and said, “Welcome home.” 

****

What a moving story—light-hearted yet multilayered and weighty.

Did you notice how Bill took time to reflect? Reflection is that all-important aspect of memoir.

Most of us need to work hard to reflect well because,

as Richard Foster observes,

“The sad truth is that many authors

simply have never learned to reflect substantively on anything.’”

Bill made time to reflect, to look below the surface and discover the deeper, richer story. He then tells us how his pondering paid off—it changed his life. He realized he could have missed that special gift from God and Marissa. That, in turn, led to his thankfulness that he hadn’t overlooked it.

Look at how Bill writes tight. Each word counts. He gives us details, but not too many—just enough so we get the picture and grasp his message.

And rather than going down rabbit trails, he stays on track, giving us only enough background to provide clarity and perspective. 

Note how skillfully he carries out the “Show, don’t tell” maxim: Instead of telling us Marissa was a skinny little girl, he shows us: He describes her so that we, the readers, conclude for ourselves that she’s a lightweight.

Bill doesn’t preach. Instead, his humility mentors us. He admits his own role in the discord, but he also rises above past controversies. He chooses to take the high road, a good lesson for all of us.

And note how, throughout, he tells the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). We don’t see a guy in a long robe living in the desert during Bible times. Rather, we see a prodigal son wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, or, since he lives in Georgia, probably wearing shorts and a T-shirt. And a baseball cap.

Through Bill’s story, we experience with him the joy of seeing God open His arms wide to all of us prodigals and hearing Him say, “Welcome home.”

Remember Bill’s praise of Anne Lamott: He said she is “brilliant at telling individual anecdotes and making you think you’ve read a cohesive life lesson.”

I’m sure you agree, Bill too, is brilliant at offering us a cohesive life lesson. He blessed us with a teaching moment all wrapped up in an enjoyable read.

What about you? Read beyond the lines: Think about your own prodigal son moment.

Can’t remember it?

Well, Bill almost overlooked his prodigal son moment. Maybe you failed to spot yours.

Spend time searching through your past for that event. Your search might take a long time, but the results will be worth your effort.

When you find your prodigal son moment, be like Bill: Package your life lesson within one of your memoir’s vignettes, all wrapped up in an enjoyable read.


Buy Bill's memoir on Amazon or through his website, www.william-sanders.com. Follow him on Facebook at William Sanders, Author.

Let me introduce you to William Sanders, The Great Stayer

You’ll like Bill Sanders. If you read his memoir, you can’t help but like him. And admire him. And respect him. His book will make you wish you could sit down with him over a cup of coffee so his goodness might rub off on you.

But his memoir, Staying: A Multi-Generational Memoir of Rescue and Restoration, is not an easy read. You’ll read stuff you don’t want to read. It’ll rip into your heart. But his story will also stitch your heart back together.

The best way to introduce you to the story and to Bill is to let him introduce himself. He writes on his website about what his parents did right. Notice his references to staying:

“When I was five years old, my birth mother abandoned my sister and me…. She returned nine months later—this time, to kidnap us….

“[Dad] fought for three days to get me back. He fought for 18 months to get my sister back….

“The greatest ‘right’ thing my dad did was to stay. Staying is taken for granted until you become intimately tied to being left. Subtly, without ever talking about his decision to stay in my life and the life of my sister, he modeled a trait for me that now is my most cherished quality as a father.

“In the weeks and months following our abduction, Dad could have caved. It was 1971. Dads didn’t get custody over moms, even ones prone to leave and then steal from their children what little sense of security they’d found since being abandoned. For Dad to stay in this particular arena, to not settle for anything less than total and complete custody of his children, cost him in every way. He was bled dry financially and was even bleeding on the inside from an ulcer that had taken root in his gut….

“A few years later, he met a woman who eventually became the mother I never had. She, too, stayed….

“They modeled love for each other that I learned from and now have with my wife. They told me they loved me every day, particularly my dad, but my stepmom, too [Bill has called her Mom for 40 years and counting]. I never wondered if their love for me was based on my performance. Eventually, that led me to believe that God’s love for me was not performance-based, either. Not too many of us get to that place, where we really believe that, as author Brennan Manning said so often, God loves us just as we are, not as we should be….

“The laundry list of things my parents did right, though, all came back to this. They stayed. In every sense of the word, they stayed. Never underestimate the power of staying.”

The memoir covers three generations. From the back of the book:

“Staying: A Multi-Generational Memoir of Rescue and Restoration chronicles the events of William’s childhood and adolescence, and the effects those experiences had on him as a father to a little girl who suffered from debilitating anxiety and panic disorder. She needed a father who understood deep hurt and fear. She got one.”

When Bill was 38 years old, during an especially rough stretch “when the emotional pain of watching [daughter] Rachel tremble, cower and physically hurt from fear, was draining me . . . dry,”  God caught his attention late one night. 

He was “lying on Rachel's floor seeking some hope to cling to” when it happened. He sensed God was giving him a new name: You are The Great Stayer.”

Staying: “To stick or remain with, as in a race, or a trial of endurance. To remain the whole time. To fix on something as a foundation. To provide physical or moral support as in, to sustain.” That’s what Bill’s dad and stepmom had done for him, and that’s what God called Bill to do for his daughter and others.

“Staying has meant staying in the arena of my kids’ lives. It has meant staying with [wife] Jane, through thick and thin. It’s meant staying in the battle for the hearts of friends when cancer takes their spouses, or when divorce comes to my best friend…. or when a friend’s teenager dies out of the blue. It meant not checking out emotionally or mentally….”

Bill’s story changed me, changed the way I see life and families and faith. His story impacted me in three ways. 

First, he gave me a glimpse into a hurting child’s mind and heart: 

I never knew how impossible it was for a wounded child to sleep at night. 

Bill let me hear the words he silently cried out. 

He let me experience his dread over what might happen to him in the next hour or day or week. 

His story changed the way I pray, especially for kids.

Second, I witnessed God working alongside this tenacious, courageous victim to shine light on darkness, bring beauty out of ashes, joy out of mourning, and praise out of despair (Isaiah 61:3).

And third, Bill’s relationship with God—intimate, comfortable, grace-filled—moved me to tears.

All these make Bill one of my heroes.

You must read his book. You’ll get to know a boy who could have grown up a bitter and dysfunctional man, angry at God—but he chose gentleness and hope and wholeness. His story is heart-rending, heartwarming, and profound.

But before I sign off for today, you need to know: For twenty years, Bill worked as an award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and editor for several daily newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was cited for writing best feature stories, best sports stories and best stories in Georgia and regionally.

That means he’s a pro at writing. You’ll notice that right away when you read his memoir. As a memoirist yourself, you can learn from his writing.

Come back Tuesday for a real treat—Bill’s guest post. Don’t miss it.

In the meantime, you can buy Bill’s memoir on Amazon or through his website, www.william-sanders.com. Follow him on Facebook at William Sanders, Author.