Keepy Uppy

Reflections of a fearful man coming off vacation and looking for rest

The rules of Keepy uppy could not be easier to understand. You inflate a balloon, choose an arena, find an opponent, and serve. Each player takes turns tapping the balloon to keep it alive, and person who allows it to touch the ground loses. Last year, some grownups turned this kid game into an official tournament with its own World Cup. This highlight is insane. 

Abby loves playing Keepy uppy. She was introduced to it through the Australian cartoon that took over the kid’s world in the last couple of years. Here, click this link and give it a go yourself and ruin your productivity for the rest of the day. Pro tip: If you play on an iPad, you can tap the balloons with with both thumbs and last way longer than on a computer with a mouse. 

When Abby and I play, we aren’t in competition. Naturally as a kid, she plays as if we’re on the same team with the same objective. Every time we play, she works himself into a mild euphoric panic. “DADDY! QUICK!! GET IT!” She would look so anxious that it would make me doubt whether she was actually having fun or was this a stressful experience. “IT’S FALLING! QUICK! QUICK!” I watch the balloon tranquilly descend. I had no hurry. I was two strides away. To me, I might as well have an eternity to reach out and give a gentle tap and extend its life. But Abby saw it differently. Two of my strides are six of hers. Years of being a grownup made me confident that I would have no trouble tracking and whacking the balloon. But Abby didn’t have that experience yet. She needed time and concentration to line up her shot. And so, standing next to each other in our living room, watching the balloon, she and I were experiencing the game very differently. 

Earlier this week, our family went up for a quick three-day Central Coast escape. We went with my dear friend and podcast partner Chong and his family. I was gone from Sunday to Wednesday. On Wednesday night, I was getting back-to-work dread. Imagine that! A pastor working his dream job, finally arriving after years and years of setbacks, doing what he loved to do the most, work with eternal significance, sitting on his couch eating a meat pie and playing Halo and panicking about work the next day. 

It was because in those four days, work didn’t stop even though I stopped working. Both inboxes were full to double digits with emails that I needed to action, not just skim-and-archive. I missed two staff meetings and a board meeting. Plans were made without me. People had been waiting until Thursday morning 9am to call or message with this or that for me to think about. 

Whatever, it’s fine. The people that I work with at church are competent and gracious. They knew what to expect of a pastor coming off leave, and they weren’t putting me in a position to meltdown from stress. Nothing urgent was waiting for me; I had a reasonable rope of time to catch up. 

But, as you must know by now, the real battle was never external. The real fight was within the arena of my own heart. NO ONE puts more pressure on me than me. Before I left, I inflated a hundred balloons in my living room and gave them all a tap. In the four days I was gone, a hundred balloons, captive to gravity, halted their upwards ascent and were now heading towards the ground. I was about to lose. 

Lose what?? What’s going to happen?? Why is it a catastrophe??  I’ve been trying to answer this question all my life. I don’t know why I can’t lose. I just know I can’t let the balloons hit the ground, or the failure truck catch up to me. I am going to fail. I am going to be a failure. 

Each balloon is another thing in ministry that I think I need to do. 

“Plan that event”

“Write a thoughtful response to that email”

“Send a devotional though to that Whatsapp group”

“Read a little more from that book”

And for each balloon, I have imagined catastrophic consequences of letting it hit the ground.

“If you don’t send out RSVPs and organize catering for that event soon, people won’t save the date in their calendar and they won’t come and it’ll be a failure and you’ll be a failure”

“If you don’t write a response to the email with just the right tone, then the person will think you’re too busy for them and they’ll feel disconnected to their leadership and leave the church and you’ll be a failure”

“If you don’t send a devotional thought to that Whatsapp group, then the group will go silent and die and they’ll all think that you don’t care about them and then they’ll leave and you’ll be a failure”

“If you don’t read a bit more from that book, you’ll be way behind your self-imposed study schedule and you’ll stop learning and growing and become stagnant and lose your freshness and you’ll be a failure. 

The battle is within my own heart. The rules and consequences are as made up as any game of Keepy uppy played by any kids or grownups anywhere in the world. It’s not a real game. But it sure feels real to me. 

My idols make it real. My sinful beliefs make it real. Sinful beliefs like, “you’re the only one playing the game”. But God is experiencing the game very differently to me.

Why do you complain, Jacob?

    Why do you say, Israel,

“My way is hidden from the Lord;

    my cause is disregarded by my God”?

 Do you not know?

    Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

    the Creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary,

    and his understanding no one can fathom.

He gives strength to the weary

    and increases the power of the weak. Isaiah 40.27-29

To God, he might as well have an eternity to reach out and keep each of the balloons up. A hundred balloons, a thousand balloons, a million, billion, floppity-jillion balloons. 

Even youths grow tired and weary,

    and young men stumble and fall;

but those who hope in the Lord

    will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

    they will run and not grow weary,

    they will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40.30-31

I am frantic, panicking, in dread. God is at peace and at work. They were never my balloons to uphold. I’m standing in the room, weak and distraught. “QUICK! QUICK! THEY’RE FALLING!” But I can’t see the room the way that God does. I see too much of myself and my part in it. I stumble, but he doesn’t falter. 

And so I do the one thing that I need to do. I tap the one balloon that is mine to tap. I repent. I rest. I pray. And I relinquish control. And I stop panicking. 

Dear God, please help me stop idolizing productivity. I don’t want to be accomplished, I want to be at rest. I don’t want to be a success, I want to be at peace. Jesus has overcome the world. Let me have a share in that victory. From now on, I don’t want to be a success, I want to be a fragrant offering. Amen.