I’m short.

At just 5’1″, I find that most adults are taller than I am, and many tower over me. In a game of co-ed volleyball, this is, shall we say, not an advantage.

I also have relatively limited experience with volleyball, so I don’t place among the most-skilled players of all time.

When you put all these things together with the competitiveness of teenage boys, pickup games of volleyball in my youth group were frustrating experiences for me, to say the least.

Everyone Has a Position to Play

See, on a volleyball court, each player has a position to play. Your little area of the court is yours to cover. There’s some overlap — you help support your “neighbors” — but ultimately, each player has to play his own zone in order to ensure the whole court is covered.

When I played volleyball with my youth group, that’s not how it usually went down.

Did I mention I’m short?

Interference

More often than not, when the ball came my way, a neighboring teammate — usually one much taller than I — would jump in over my head and knock the ball back before it ever even had a chance to get to me.

This is frustrating on multiple counts. Not only am I not really getting to play; I’m not getting to learn and improve.

We can do that to our spouses, too. Either because we think they’re “not up for it” (“too short”) or because we see them as inadequate (“not skilled enough”), we swoop in to take over where we think they fall short (pun intended). Sometimes this is well-intended — we mean to be serving them (pun also intended) by taking the burden off. Sometimes we simply don’t trust them to do it well, so we’re serving our own interests by trying to keep the ball from hitting the ground.

But in neither case is this being an effective team player.

We Each Have a Part to Play

In marriage, like on the volleyball court, we each have our own “position” to play. The one who is constantly “rescued” from having to play his (or her) position will never improve. He — or she — might, however, decide s/he’s a useless space-filler and give up trying. And the one jumping in may be able to keep that up for a while, but sooner or later, playing someone else’s zone is going to leave his (or her) own uncovered, leaving the opponent an open opportunity to score against our whole team.

Support Your Teammate

The proper, mature, team-spirited way to play the game is to support your teammates in playing their own positions. We want to play our own positions strongly, and be their backup to help them succeed at playing their own.

Help them anticipate the ball. Help them end up in the right spot on the court at the right time. Set up the shot for them so they can take it instead of taking it for them. Maybe occasionally catch the shot they dropped. But don’t just swoop in and take all the shots that are theirs to take. If you do that, they never learn to shoot, or maybe to show you how well they already can shoot — and sometimes you might just both end up in tangled heap of limbs on the ground when crash into each other.

Play Your Position

Husband, be a husband. Wife, be a wife. Don’t try to play each other’s positions. Husband, set your wife up to be good at her position; don’t assume she’s going to drop the ball and “rescue” her from hitting it. Wife, set your husband up to be good at his position; don’t assume he’s going to drop the ball and “rescue” him from hitting it.

They might even — gasp! — drop it. That’s okay, too. A point is not the ballgame. You have to risk a dropped ball to have an opportunity for a solid return shot.

So here’s the question for us all today: in your marriage, are you being a true team player, or are you being a ball hog?