Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

One of the greatest privileges of coaching is getting a front row seat to who athletes are becoming. I get to see the talent everybody notices, but I also get to see the insecurity, frustration, failure, growth, and work happening underneath it. Psalm 139 has always been powerful to me in that context because it reminds us that our value begins long before anybody measures our height, vertical, statistics, playing time, scholarship offers, or wins.

Psalm 139:13 through 14 (ESV) says, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

I want to be careful with how we apply that passage because “fearfully and wonderfully made” doesn't mean God created every athlete with some guaranteed athletic greatness waiting to be discovered. Psalm 139 is much bigger than sports. David is praising God for His intimate knowledge of him and His sovereign work in creating human life. Our worth comes from our Creator, not from our athletic ability, and that's exactly why I think this passage matters so much in a culture that constantly teaches athletes to measure themselves by what they can produce.

As a coach, part of my responsibility is helping athletes recognize and develop the abilities they have, but I'm also responsible for helping them understand that ability and identity aren't the same thing. I can help an athlete become stronger, faster, more skilled, more disciplined, and more confident, but I never want them believing their value increases when their performance improves or decreases when they struggle.

Sports will absolutely try to convince them otherwise.

Athletes are constantly evaluated, compared, ranked, recruited, started, benched, praised, criticized, selected, and passed over. Somebody is always measuring something, and if an athlete isn't careful, those measurements can start becoming the way they measure themselves. A great match makes them feel valuable, a terrible match makes them question everything, and suddenly their identity is riding the same emotional roller coaster as their performance.

That's a dangerous place to live because sports are never going to provide consistent validation.

Weaknesses are part of athletics too, and pretending everybody is equally gifted at everything doesn't help anybody. Some athletes aren't as fast as they need to be, some need more strength, some struggle technically, some have poor body control, some have trouble communicating, and others mentally fall apart the second something goes wrong. Coaches aren't helping athletes by pretending those weaknesses don't exist, but we're also not helping them when we make those weaknesses feel like permanent labels.

I often call those difficult areas “sandpaper moments” because growth can rub us raw before it makes us better. Correction can sting, sitting on the bench can humble you, getting exposed by a better opponent can show you exactly how far you still have to go, and hearing an honest evaluation from a coach isn't always going to feel good. None of those experiences automatically produce growth, though. An athlete still has to decide what they're going to do with what was exposed.

That's where coaching matters because my job isn't to protect athletes from every uncomfortable truth. It's to help them face the truth without allowing it to destroy the way they see themselves.

There's a massive difference between telling an athlete, “This part of your game isn't good enough yet,” and making them believe they're not good enough as a person. Good coaching has to know the difference. We can demand more without making athletes feel worthless, correct weaknesses without humiliating them, and hold somebody accountable while still making it clear that their value isn't hanging on whether they perform well tomorrow.

For Christian athletes, that distinction should go even deeper because Scripture never tells us our identity is found in our performance. Psalm 139 reminds us that God knew us before anybody knew whether we could play a sport at all. Psalm 139:16 (ESV) says, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

That verse shouldn't be turned into a promise that God has scripted every athletic accomplishment or guaranteed some specific version of success. David is describing God's complete knowledge and sovereignty over his life, which should humble us because our lives are much bigger than the temporary roles we become so attached to.

Volleyball is something an athlete does. It isn't who they are.

I want athletes to pursue excellence, compete their asses off, develop their gifts, and find out how good they can become. I don't believe Christians are supposed to use faith as an excuse for mediocrity or pretend results don't matter because identity is found in Christ. If you've been given an opportunity, there's responsibility attached to it, and I expect athletes to train, prepare, compete, serve their teammates, receive coaching, and take their development seriously.

I just don't want them confusing excellence with worth.

That's especially important when things don't go according to plan because eventually sports will humble everybody. You might get injured, lose your starting position, get recruited over, struggle through a season, make the mistake that costs your team a match, or discover that you're no longer the best player in the gym. For some athletes, college is the first time they've ever had to confront the possibility that being talented doesn't guarantee they'll get what they want.

Those moments can become identity crises if sports have been carrying weight they were never designed to carry.

That's why I want athletes to understand that their athletic journey can have purpose beyond wins and losses without pretending God owes them some specific athletic outcome. Sports give them an opportunity to develop discipline, perseverance, humility, courage, leadership, accountability, and relationships. They give athletes a platform to influence teammates, younger players, their campus, and their community, but what they do with that platform matters far more to me than how big it becomes.

Character still matters when nobody is cheering.

Integrity still matters when doing the wrong thing would benefit you. How you treat the teammate who can't help your status matters, how you respond when you're benched matters, how you carry yourself after losing matters, and how you treat people who can do absolutely nothing for you says a whole lot more about your character than what you post about leadership when everybody is watching.

That's part of what I believe coaching is supposed to develop.

I want athletes to leave a program better than they entered it, and I don't just mean better volleyball players. I want them to become people who can receive correction without crumbling, compete without becoming arrogant, fail without believing they're failures, succeed without believing they're superior, and understand that the gifts they've been given come with an opportunity to serve people besides themselves.

As a coach, that requires me to remember that I'm coaching individuals, not pieces on a depth chart. Every athlete walks into the gym carrying a different story, personality, level of confidence, family background, set of strengths, and collection of insecurities. That doesn't mean standards change for everybody or accountability disappears because somebody is struggling. It means good leadership understands the person while still coaching the athlete.

Psalm 139 also forces me to examine how I see people because if I believe human beings are intentionally created and completely known by God, I can't reduce an athlete to what they produce for me. They're more than a stat line, scholarship, recruiting ranking, position, injury, mistake, attitude problem, or place on my depth chart.

That doesn't make coaching softer. I actually think it makes the responsibility heavier.

I can push an athlete hard while remembering who I'm pushing. I can demand discipline while extending compassion, confront poor behavior without attacking somebody's worth, and celebrate athletic excellence without allowing performance to become the most important thing about them.

That's the balance I want athletes to understand too. Being fearfully and wonderfully made isn't permission to stay exactly where you are and call every weakness “just who I am.” God given worth and personal growth aren't enemies. You can know your value isn't earned and still recognize that there are areas of your character, habits, attitude, faith, leadership, and athletic performance that need serious work.

Sometimes the most loving thing a coach can do is refuse to let an athlete use acceptance as an excuse to avoid growth.

I want my athletes to know who they are deeply enough that correction doesn't destroy them and humble themselves enough that confidence doesn't make them uncoachable. I want them secure enough to acknowledge weakness, disciplined enough to work on it, and grounded enough to understand that whether they become an All American or spend a season fighting for playing time, their human worth hasn't moved an inch.

Psalm 139 doesn't tell athletes they're destined to become great at sports. It tells us something much more important. We are completely known by God, intentionally created by Him, and valuable before we've accomplished a damn thing.

Once athletes understand that, they can stop competing to prove they're worth something and start competing from the security of knowing they already are.