The setting was as close to perfect as you could get, a sublime ambience of winsomeness. My wife and I had just celebrated the jubilation of being married to each other with over 600 of our friends and family. Just three days into our honeymoon, we were surrounded by warm, clear Caribbean waters, slight breezes, lush white sands, beautiful blue skies, all the food we could eat, and lovely, kind people serving our every whim. All seemed right in our world. More than that, we were on top of our world.
All of a sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, we came plummeting down from the top of that perch by nothing more than, dare I say it, a game of putt-putt. At the resort in which we were staying, the putt-putt was part of the package and you could play as much as you could handle. After a couple of days of sun and sand, we gleefully decided to venture onto the putt-putt course. That’s when the bottom fell out. Being that we were newlyweds and blissfully in love, we decided to play “for fun.” The setting around was so perfect and my wife so beautiful, the putt-putt failed to capture my attention. I gave very little attention to whether a ball was making it into a hole. Needless to say, after 18 fun-filled holes, I came up on the short end of the score card…well, plainly put, I lost.
Though I typically don’t like to lose, losing wasn’t the problem for me that day. The problem was what happened immediately after the score card was tabulated. As soon as I announced the score, my wife launched into a swaggered posture of grandstanding that up until this point in our relationship, I wasn’t aware she possessed. To be fair, my wife was never really an athlete growing up, so “talking junk” didn’t come naturally to her, and as far as she was concerned, it was all innocent and fun-loving. But for me, building much of my childhood and college years around sports and competition…well, let’s just say “It was on!”
That was my first of many mistakes that day. As usual, I let my competitive spirit get the best of me. I played it cool and very gently and lovingly asked for a rematch. When she politely declined, opting for time on the beach together, I kicked into another gear and before I knew it, the next words that flew out of my mouth were, “You won’t beat me again, not if I really try. It won’t even be close.” That was the moment I unearthed a lifelong, deeply hidden, competitive side of my wife that even to this day, can turn a simple game of Connect Four into an all-out war. Even when our kids were small, we couldn’t complete a full game of Candy Land as a family without tears, grandstanding, and a family altar call to repentance and restoration.
Naturally, my wife consented to a rematch that day. And right there, in the midst of the sublime, perfect setting of the tropics, just off the heels of a storybook wedding with my dazzling wife, for the next 30-45 minutes, my only focus became dismantling my wife’s putt-putt swagger piece by piece, and leaving her in the abyss of a crushing loss. Sadly, I accomplished exactly what I set out to do. I focused, I concentrated, I won…it wasn’t even close. You would think that was enough. But then, even though it was light-hearted and all in fun, I was fool enough to exhibit for her a real case of “talking junk” on the battlefield of competition. Before I knew it, on just the third day of our honeymoon, we were having our first fight as a married couple. Did I mention my foolishness yet? Oh yeah, in the sentence above. For emphasis, let me say it one more time…foolishness.
I learned a very important lesson that day. Sometimes it’s more important to be in relationship than to be right. Sometimes it’s more important to keep the peace than keep the score. “Being one” is more often better than “having just won.”
Let me be clear, there are moments in life where it is more important to stand for what is right than to compromise principles. Wars have been fought and won and life has been preserved because nations and peoples have stood for what is right over compromise and surrender, and rightly so! There are certain eternal, Scriptural truths in which believers should never compromise, even if it costs them a few relationships in this fleeting world. There are times when one must stand and not compromise, even unto the loss of relationships or even death.
But in between those pivotal, epic moments, there are far many more prevailing moments in ordinary life that call for give and take. Ephesians 4:3 says it this way,“Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.”
When you realize the beauty of not having to be right all the time, but being in relationship, when you realize the reward of keeping peace, rather than keeping score, you meet in the middle, you cooperate, you become One. This is where you experience true freedom and this is ultimately where you get the win. When you deviate from this, you become nothing more than a slave to your own ego and sovereignty. You may win, you may even be right, but you won’t be free. You’ll either push yourself further into the misery of isolation, or even worse, you’ll be so narrow-minded that you can only tolerate being surrounded by only those who think like you and never challenge you to true surrender, self-denial, and learning to think deeper and more humbly about your own convictions.
When it’s said and done, in most of these general, day to day circumstances that turn life from page to page, maybe you’ll be more right than those who oppose you. Maybe you’ll have the upper hand or the “win” on the scorecard of every conflict or cultural, familial, political, or even church collision. But if it comes at the expense of relationship and building bridges together, then no one wins. It took a putt-putt game in the middle of paradise for me to learn that. Thank God that’s all it took.