Lunch recess. Standing at the edge of the kickball field I was one of forty-five fourth graders, twenty-six of us waiting for the two chosen captains, the most athletic of us, to pick their kickball team.

Both Peter and Kevin scanned through those of us brave enough to show up. Names of the chosen kids called, one at a time. David. John. Beth. Jen. These kids were the athletic kids peeled off first, jogging over to their side grinning with confidence. Next, the middle tier vanished. Decent players, like Derek, Chad, Liz, and Kathy. These kids wouldn’t embarrass either captain.

Time was of the essence so the choosing went fast, but to those of us standing next to only one or two other kids? It felt like an eternity!

And there I stood. Alone. Waiting.

The captains would glance at each other, shrug, and sigh. “I guess I’ll take Joe this time.”

The slow shuffle to whichever team got stuck with you? Try to forget that. It’s an unspoken understanding. You were not chosen. You were a leftover. Like the pieces of broccoli stuffed in the fridge after dinner no one wants to eat later. Eventually it gets thrown away. But it does finally get picked. Last.

The craziest part of all of this? It happened at a Christian school. A place with Bible verses on the walls and chapel every Friday. Saturated and inundated with one message: every kid, heck, every person, matters to God. The theology screamed the truth. The kickball line? Spoke something else.

Like it or not, fourth-grade kids believe kickball lines. Not the Bible verse lined walls.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, or whatever days they dragged us outside for PE, I learned one catechism nobody taught us or wrote down. The doctrine of the unchosen. The gospel according to athletic ability. Of course I absorbed it like a sponge. Most kids do. Hard emotions sink in, straight to the bone.

Kevin and Peter? They weren’t evil. They were kids who wanted the best. Driven to win. However, they were also priests performing a ritual. Me? I ended up their sacrifice. Last one picked. What I heard every time settled deep into me, nestled in, building a cozy little blanket fort, ready for me to stay.

One message.

You are not enough. You will never measure up. You are leftover broccoli.

I continued to carry that message with me. The blanket fort I carried inside me? I rebuilt it into a mansion filled with messages aligning with that one. You are not enough. We all carry that, or something like it. I don’t know what yours is. Maybe it came from a different playground. A different moment when someone’s eyes passed over you and landed on someone else. The details will vary. But the hurt? Doesn’t.

As adults we do our best to outrun it, funny coming from the underperforming athletic kids! We build resumes, accumulating accomplishments, crafting personas specifically designed to prove we’re the ones worth choosing first. Hustling for approval. Performing feats of strength, like superheroes do. It’s our unwritten mission to never again stand at the edge of a field, listening to other names get called before ours. If it ever gets called!

But here’s what I wish someone had told fourth-grade me:

The kickball line lied to you!

The God who spoke galaxies into existence is calling your name.

He wants you. Specifically you. He made you unique and special, just so you could exist!

That’s the cool thing about Jesus. He doesn’t pick teams the way Peter and Kevin did. He doesn’t scan the lineup for the fastest kid or the one with the best arm. He walks straight to the one standing alone at the end, the one bracing for rejection again, and says, “You. I want you on my team.”

The playground captains were building teams that disbanded by lunchtime. Jesus is building his kingdom, one that will outlast the sun. The playground kids were playing a game they would forget by dinner. Jesus is calling people into something bigger. Something eternal.

Fourth grade got it exactly backward.

Now I’m thinking about my own kids. Soon enough they will face their own versions of the kickball line. A moment when the world tells them they’re not enough, not wanted, not worth choosing. I may not be able to protect them from it, but I can tell them the truth.

You were picked BEFORE the world was! You were chosen thousands of years before you ever failed a tryout, got cut from a team, watched someone else get the promotion, or the relationship or the opportunity you wanted. Jesus choosing you? That matters so much more, knowing he did it long before you took your first breath.

You are not broccoli. You are loved, wanted by the God of the universe, who calls you beloved.

That fourth-grade kid standing at the edge of the field? He was already chosen. He just didn’t know it yet.

Neither did I.

But now I do. And you know what? For me?

That changes everything.