The impromptu things of life

By Jeff Becraft

Since I wrote about doing a weekend camp about a week ago with a children’s home in North Carolina, I want to mention something that happened there that Saturday night. This was not something that was even on the agenda.

We had just had a big, fantastic Saturday night barbecue dinner… banana pudding and everything.  After dinner on this retreat, we will usually do games on top of the hill. These games usually involve a lot of running.

I was joking around with Dan and I said, “Dan, they’re not going to eat dinner in heaven and then go do a bunch of running games…. they might do that in hell… but they’re not doing it in heaven. So I’m not coming up for the games. I’ll just see you all at the pavilion.”

Dan then says to me, “Well, we’re going to get a group picture on top of the hill. Can you come up there for that?” “Sure,” I responded. And so I went and dropped off one of my backpacks at the pavilion (I usually carry two backpacks around on a weekend like this… but that is another story), and then I was carrying my other backpack up the hill to where everyone was. As I am walking up the hill, I see that about 15 or 20 people have started a volleyball circle, where they are keeping the ball up in the air and trying not to let it hit the ground.

As I saw this, I quickened my pace, and as I got near the circle, I dropped my backpack and immediately jumped into the group. It was an awesome time. We were having a blast and it was great to see people encouraging one another and giving 100%.  Very few were real volleyball players.

People were diving on the ground to save the ball. They were making incredible plays. People are laughing. People are encouraging one another. No one put anyone else down. If someone made a mistake, no one condemned them or trampled on them verbally. People were all uplifting one another with people smiling and laughing.

There were a lot of big things that happened on this retreat, and particularly on Saturday… but that 15 minutes on top of that hill in the mountains of North Carolina… that was one of the highlights of the entire weekend for me. And it was impromptu. I had almost missed it.

I was just going to go to the pavilion and wait for everyone to get down there for the evening sessions. But it wound up being one of the greatest experiences of the weekend.

There are a lot of impromptu moments in life. A lot of lessons came out of this volleyball circle, but we’ll just focus on this one for now – the impromptu things of life.

Obviously, if I hadn’t been there, I would have missed it. And there are things that pop up in life, but it is having an attitude of readiness, engagement, the fun is in the action, being willing to jump in. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was this great teamness and teamwork. There was this great camaraderie. There was this great amount of fun… and it “just happened.”

But nothing just quite happens. One, you had to have a volleyball there, so someone was thinking about that. Two, someone had to have the suggestion of, “Hey, let’s get a volleyball circle going,” or maybe they just started hitting the ball and others jumped in

But in those moments like that in life, it is where walls come down, and sometimes our personalities and identities begin to show forth. I am a big believer in breaks, and so back in my Youth Corps days, we would take a lot of breaks throughout the sessions during our Leadership Weekend. We would go outside for ten, maybe fifteen minutes… sometimes it was only five minutes.

One year it was a really big deal for about a dozen of us to get in a volleyball circle while we had the time outside. And one girl in particular, this is where she became Coach P. Her real name was Pelham. But during that volleyball circle, she kept encouraging everyone and lifting them up and challenging us to keep getting a higher score with the number of hits to keep the ball up. And that is where we started calling her Coach P. And to this day, she is known among many as Coach P.

Years ago, I would carry a Nerf football with me in the trunk of my car. I learned it from someone else. That way, if you show up somewhere and have people just standing around, you could whip out the Nerf football and start throwing it around… and the impromptu experience begins.

You don’t know when the next impromptu moment might happen. That is why we need to live with our heads up, aware of those around us, and ready to engage with those people with whatever opportunity arises.

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope(opens in new tab) located in Columbia, South Carolina, where people find encouragement to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. Jeff has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. If you would like Jeff to speak to your group or event, you can connect with him at  [email protected](opens in new tab).