Milestones & Moments
There’s a gap now where someone used to be.
In the lineup. In the room. In the roles and relationships that were built around that person being here. And the team has a choice about what to do with the gap.
The worst version: the gap becomes an excuse. Something the team points to when things don’t go well. A permanent asterisk on everything the season produces.
The better version: the gap becomes an opportunity. A reason for people to step up who haven’t had to yet. A test of the depth and resilience that the program actually has.
Read this passage slowly.
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.
1 Corinthians 12:12 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Many parts form one body. The body doesn’t cease to be a body when one part is absent. It adapts. Other parts take on different functions. The coordination that was built around the original configuration rebuilds around the new one. And in that rebuilding, things sometimes develop that the original configuration didn’t produce.
Teams that have handled significant player losses well almost always describe the same process. An initial period of adjustment and grief. Then the conscious decision to trust the people who remain and invest in them fully rather than dwelling on the absence. Then the discovery of capacity that the original configuration obscured — the player whose role expands and who rises to it, the chemistry that forms between different combinations of people, the team identity that emerges from having come through something together.
Close the gap. Not by replacing the person — they can’t be replaced. By recognizing that the team in front of you has what it needs to compete at a high level and investing in that fully. The absence is real. The team is also real. Trust what remains.
The team that treats a departure as an excuse shrinks. The one that treats it as an opportunity for what remains to develop is the one that surprises people.
What specifically needs to happen in this team for the gap to become an opportunity rather than an excuse? Who steps up and how?
Practical and action-oriented. The question should produce specific names and specific commitments.
Trust what remains. Close the gap. The team is real.
This devotional is specifically forward-focused. It follows the grief of the departure with a practical orientation toward what the team does now.