“Just Water and a Three Dot Pro V1”

Let me set the scene.

Fourth of July weekend. Marquette, Michigan. The Upper Peninsula. Beautiful golf. And flies the size of birds. I'm pretty sure one of them stole a ball out of my bag. I'm not filing a police report, but I'm also not ruling it out.

But I digress.

I got to the first tee with all the confidence in the world. I had looked at the course layout online. I had already predetermined the exact play I was going to execute. The distance. The line. The landing spot. All of it mapped out so that I would obviously impress my father in law with my game. Because that's what we do, right? We plan the perfect shot before we've even put a tee in the ground.

Well. I did hit the shot the distance I wanted. On the line I drew up. I held my picture perfect finish and stared at it like a tour pro watching one land on the green.

As it carried everything. Into the hazard.

Worse yet, I didn't even know it was in the hazard until I walked up to where I thought I hit it and there was no ball to be found. Just water. With a three dot Pro V1 looking back up at me from inside of it.

I had two choices in the moment.

One, look back to see if my father-in-law would be able to see me fish it out. None of us have ever done that, right? Just me? Cool.

Or I could own what I had done out loud, take the penalty, play the next best shot, and move on with the round.

I chose the latter. As we say in recovery, I did the next right thing. I let my father-in-law know the tragedy that had taken place, took the penalty, swatted 6 flies, and carded a double to start the round. It wasn't pretty, but it was right.

Here's the thing. I have all the best plans and perfect intentions. But sometimes, they just don't work out. I mess up. I say things, do things, that have all the best intentions behind them but just end up in the hazard. And instead of trying to cheat my way around it to smooth it over or gloss over it (because that always works out, right?), I can do what's right. Own my part. Put my hand up and say "I was way out of bounds. I need to own it and try again."

I'm curious. What if that was the posture we took with ourselves? How we treated others? What if we just publicly told the people around us when those moments happened instead of trying to fish the ball out when nobody's looking?

I'm pretty sure the outcome would be better than we thought. And we'd be better off for it.

Oh, I ended up with a really good finishing score. I guess that bad start didn't matter that much anyways.

Not perfect, but good.

One Story. One Swing. One Gathering at a Time.