This week was a hard one. I firmly believe that one of the ways Satan attacks women is through PMS. I can't even begin to tell you all of the STUPID and HORRIBLE thoughts he placed in my head. The biggest one being doubt about EVERYTHING! The area that hit the hardest was doubting my abilities in all of my roles. I was spinning in circles this week going from one job to the next and doing three job simultaneously sometimes. It was crazy and I didn't feel like I was giving any of them 100%. Even though it's my nature to give 100%, it's okay not to no matter what the devil tells me.

It got a little worse this weekend because I was running on low sleep and drinking caffeine, which makes me crash even harder. Going into my club tournament this weekend I was determined to be positive with them regardless of the terrible practices we have been having. I knew that I had been hard on them and was not going to carry that over into the tournament. Saturday, they did a lot of great things with only 7 players. We played our last match of the day against a team that should've killed us. I was just hoping we could compete. Well, we did in the first game. Then in the second game, the other team was playing terribly and we just kept getting big runs and ended up winning that game. The team was starting to prove me wrong and show that we could win. Unfortunately, the 3rd game didn't go our way, but the girls felt great about it and so did I.

Sunday (today), we had a challenge match to get in the Copper bracket (I was made for the copper bracket), which we won. We then faced a team we beat yesterday to advance. We had a solid performance in game 1 and won. Then the wheels just fell off and we couldn't put things together. I felt like I stayed positive throughout despite the loss. After that game I shared that it was a little disappointing, but tried to put a positive spin on it and encourage them to learn from the experience. We departed and began our reffing assignment (I won't even start on the drama the ref caused during that part of the day). Into the first game, here came my captains . . .

They wanted to chat, which was great. They began by sharing how they felt like my negativity was bringing the team down. I sat their with my jaw open shocked that this was coming at this tournament, which I had made such a concerted effort to be positive. I shared with them my shock and actually started to cry and I shared with them my goals going into this weekend. I was devastated at the timing. I was so glad they shared and we definitely worked through some things that both coach and player needed to work on, but my spirit was crushed. I know I am good at what I do, but I feel so discouraged right now. I am constantly trying to balance positive & negative reinforcement and to make due with the players I have at any given practice and compete against teams that are head & shoulders above us in practice and teach the girls life lessons . . . it's getting to be too much. I hope that we did make some progress in our chat, otherwise it's going to be a long 3 months!

Needless to say that was not the best way to finish the week/weekend, but I'm hopeful that God will restore my spirit. Stupid Satan has nothing on me!