I was forced to play basketball, so I empathize with Orson Scott Card

I know what it is like to be forced to play church basketball when I hated it.

I was in a small ward in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and we barely had enough girls to make a basketball team, but only if I played too.

The other girls had their hearts set on it.  "PLEASE  PLAY, AMY!"
"PLEASE, PLEASE,  PLEASE!"

I couldn't stand basketball, but that tiny part of me that didn't want to hurt their feelings made me be on the team.  I was terrible.  I couldn't dribble.  I couldn't make a basket.  I didn't know the rules.  But being there allowed the other girls to play against the other wards in the stake.

It was awful.

Many years later as an adult, I was visiting my mother in Stillwater.  Brother B. came up to me and said, "I've always wanted to tell you how much I admired you as a teenager."

Dumbfounded, I asked "why?"

He said, "Because I saw how much you hated basketball but you played anyway because you didn't want to disappoint the other girls."

That was a shocker to me.  I had no idea that any adult ever knew what suffering I had gone through to be on that team.

Fast forward to today.

I recently read this article by Orson Scott Card published in "Mormon Times".

http://www.mormontimes.com/article/19921/Holding-on-to-the-others?s_cid=search_queue&utm_source=search_queue

I read it with a little bit of sadness for myself but a lot of sadness for youth like Orson Scott Card.  And that includes a couple of my own sons.  I hope they had enough joy in their church attendance that feeling out of place with basketball didn't hurt them permanently.