Life Lessons from the Golf Course

Many of our supporters know we just hosted our very first inaugural “Fairway to their Futures” golf tournament. We’d be remiss to say that we are even golf people. We’re golf cart people or putt-putt people, but we truly know very little about golf. Therefore, planning a golf tournament of any kind was outside of our comfort zone, especially for it to be in our first year. So why do it? Truth be told, it was us being obedient to something we felt we were being led to do. We didn’t know the whys or the hows in doing it, we just trusted and leaned on those that knew better than us for their guidance and input.

Overall, it was a great success, and while we did have a couple of items to be tweaked or items we had to pull an audible on, in the end, it all worked out. After the tournament ended, the FFNC team reconvened to do a recap, highlight areas of improvement for next year, and essentially close out any tasks we had left. As we were doing so, we started sharing stories from the day, things we observed, the various people we met and talked to, and reflected on the planning/execution process which actually led us to pull an audible on this blog post. While we originally had something else we were going to share for our June blog, we felt led to share with you some of the lessons we learned from you all on the golf course, the reminders we all need, but also the moments that we knew and saw God’s hand in the details.

Faith over Fear: We see this a lot these days and typically many misunderstand it as being only for the big moments or the big storms, but honestly, it's something we can incorporate in our everyday lives or in something like planning a golf tournament. When we originally started planning the tournament, one of the biggest pieces of advice we received was to make sure it was organized. So being the type A…slightly OCD… planners we are, we thought we’d for sure have that covered. When the registration went live, we set it up to have everyone just pay online upfront versus paying the day of. Our thought process was that it would honestly make the day of tournament registration check-in a seamless experience. With most everything being done electronically these days, we thought it was the easiest for the players as well. Fast forward a couple of weeks and one of the most frequent questions we kept getting was about paying at the tournament. We stayed firm on our position for a bit, but I think only because we had a legit fear. Being a nonprofit in its infant stage, every single dollar counts. I think it's fair to say that we had a natural fear of opening registration up to pay the morning of the tournament because that meant we would have to have faith and trust y’all would show up. This meant we had to give final contractual numbers to our vendors, where we would foot the bill for everyone who signed up. If anyone no-showed that hadn’t paid, then we would be stuck paying. It's as simple as that. We asked around and got more feedback from family and friends who play golf regularly, just to get their feedback, and one of them explained that most local tournaments do allow day of payment. When we were doing our research, the other tournaments we were looking at online were only doing electronic, so we truly didn’t know differently. Looking back, we realized they weren’t as local to us as the tournaments that this particular relative was referencing. It was during that same conversation of trying to get guidance that he said something so simple but prolific, “You just gotta have faith”. It literally stopped me in my tracks as soon as I heard it. I would then later pray about it in the car and distinctly remember feeling the Lord say, “Trust in Me and they will come”. I then later talked to the team about it, and we discussed and prayed about it some more. We ultimately decided to open the registration to pay the day of. We just continued to hope and pray y’all would show up. And y’all did! ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT of everyone that registered showed up and taught us a reminder to have faith over fear literally in ALL things, including a golf tournament.

Grace: With every event, you anticipate some things going wrong and to have backup plans in place to quickly remedy the situation. However, sometimes even after our best efforts, things don’t always go to plan, no matter how much you prepared, practiced, or tried to fix it. In life and the Bible, the response to those situations is called the practice of grace. While the tournament itself was a great success, it was by no means perfect. For us, one of the exciting elements that we had planned was the add-on experience of shooting your golf ball with a golf-ball launcher, instead of your club. We had 2 different guys do multiple practice rounds days before the tournament, and everything worked fine. As life and luck would have it, we immediately started experiencing problems with the golf ball launcher the day of the tournament and had to troubleshoot it on the spot in front of you guys. We were embarrassed. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a backup plan. However, you guys were great about it. Some of you even helped us try to figure it out or offered the donation up anyways, just so you could still get the benefit of dropping the ball 3 feet from the hole. We tried to make it right, in other ways, by allowing those to still shoot it once we got it working, converting it to raffle tickets, or offering a refund to the individuals who didn’t get to shoot. Through it all, the grace extended to us in those moments is what we needed as a reminder to extend grace to ourselves and to others. Ephesians 4:7 (NIV) states, “But to each one of us, grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.” This verse serves as a reminder that none of us are perfect, but the grace that we extend to each other is the same grace that Christ extends to us in so many circumstances and situations that can make or break a situation, a person, or even a golf tournament. For those that extended us grace in those frustrating moments, we thank you. We thank you for not making a frustrating situation worse, for being understanding, and for truly being team players. Trust us when we say your actions, patience, and grace didn’t go unnoticed and was one of the things we really honed in on in our recap meeting to try and figure out how to make it up to you guys next year.

Everyone’s Story is Different: One of the biggest joys we got from Saturday was truly meeting and getting to know so many of you. Several of you shared your personal experiences about foster care and DSS with us. To be honest, it caught us off guard but not in the way you may think. Since we predominantly work with youth in foster care, we don’t always immediately think about the adults that came from foster care nor did we expect to meet those same adults on a golf course. Trust us when we say that anyone who has experienced foster care has been formed or shaped by it, not always in the most positive ways. Needless to say, we were excited to get to listen to your stories. It also serves as a reminder that until we’ve walked in someone else’s shoes, we are to never judge and to never assume anything about their story.

Unity in Community We never take for granted the community that has and continues to support us, and a lot of them showed up Saturday to help us. The support we received from the faces we didn’t know was equally overwhelming. We truly couldn’t be more grateful for the excitement and suggestions we’ve received, not only for future golf tournaments but for future projects, ways you all want to help, and honestly, seeds that may have been planted on connections, programs, or initiatives that we haven’t even started on yet. It also reminds and reaffirms to us that God is in the details, and we know it all will be revealed in His own perfect timing. We were excited to see our community become bigger. We watched with full hearts as everyone fellowshipped together, supported each other, and looked out for one another on and off the course. We can’t wait to see what God has in store for this organization and the ways your participation in our tournament will truly become the fairway to a teen in foster care’s future. You made our success their success.