Fourth From Your Longest and Strongest

It’s the annual Bacchanal for me. Like someone driven in some fantastic gorge, we seek each other out with an air of excitement.

"You ready?" we say to each other.

This year we found ourselves in the stairwell on the landing outside the men’s room. We thought it was going to be the quietest place.

And then it begins. The annual Bridge Playing Marathon at Camp Burton Family Camp.

"Cut for deal".

This year the joke was that we had all become so old we could never remember who had dealt. We remedied the situation by talking to ourselves.

"Look at (Marge, Paul, Debby, or Earle) dealing. Aren’t they doing a nice job of dealing? Wow! (The name of the dealer) really dealt a nice hand."

The bidding begins. Since Paul and I only play once and year and I’ve played bridge for more years than Paul, usually there’s a fair amount of table talk to help him through the first few hands. Well, and the fact that his mother is sitting at his right (my partner. Men against women dontchaknow, or vice versa).

It’s the conventions that trip him and me up the most. Blackwood has changed so much and I confuse it all the time with a real short club and what do you do about twenty-two points and wanting to open at the two level but then nowadays that’s a short bid.

This year I learned something and I taught something. Now let’s see if I can remember without having cards in my hands. It’s something about if I’m cross roughing and I should trump with the hand that has the fewest cards in it. I think that’s it. If the board has the most trump then trump in my hand or the other way around if the board has the fewest.

And I taught Marge that the value of the suits is in alphabetical order: Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades. No trump doesn’t factor into that. Just remember it’s the highest.

One convention tripped me up three times; second hand low. I kept breaking that rule and by the third loss realized that for whatever reason it pays to attend to that one.

The other strategy I found infallible is when you have not been able to tell your partner what you have. You lead ‘ fourth from your longest and strongest’.

I’m a late bloomer. Gosh, that’s not exactly accurate. I’m a late realizer. All my skills and gifts bloomed early on in life, but I didn’t realize what the world was like and so I feared playing a strong hand. All I knew was I didn’t get it. Five years ago I figured it all out and now I’m playing an open hand with incredible strength. But for years, all I could play to the world was fourth from my longest and strongest.

In a Pentecostal prayer meeting a couple years back somebody spoke a prophecy over me that I was going to suddenly do things that people didn’t consider me capable of doing. They actually really nailed it on the head. They said it was going to be like I was on a jet ski and everyone on the shore was saying, "Wow! Look at her go!! We didn’t know she could do that!!!"

My fear of the unknown in other people and my inability to figure out who the good guys were and who the bad guys were kept me from presenting strongly and finishing with incredible follow through.

I finally was able to figure everything out because I found out there’s another convention that is spoken a lot but is not true like the rules of Bridge.

It is said, "Time heals all wounds". I have found that actually isn’t true. Time doesn’t heal anything. Wounds stay wounds and hurts stay hurts and they don’t change. What time DOES do is present other opportunities to respond to wounds and hurts and more importantly injustices in positive, life giving ways. And THAT is what makes it better.

People move around, circumstances shift, deaths and loss of power occur, deeper character traits are revealed in unorthodox ways for good or ill. Things change. And then we get to respond PAST our hurts and wounded ness and injustices. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to play on, play through, and do over.

Maybe you’re stuck right now. Maybe somebody is keeping a lid on the head of your life, whatever. Keep playing. Play fourth from your longest and strongest. Indicate to the world what you have in your hand. It may mean nothing to them but it will encourage you and keep you focused and on track for the time when you can let the world see that even though it isn’t trump, you do hold the Ace, King Queen and Jack of another suit.

Oh… and remember to cherish the sunshine and roll with the change of seasons. There are only four of them and every year they rotate in a very orderly fashion. It gives you plenty of time to figure out your strategy for the hand you’ve been dealt.

Love,
Deborah