It’s a paradox. It’s a risk: the biggest risk you can possibly take, and the odds are stacked against you. If you succeed, you win the entire game. If you fail, you lose. 

Spades is my family’s favorite card game. It always ends with my mom posting a snap chat story of the sore losers, and the winners dog piling on the kitchen table. It’s a family tradition dating back to before my brother could hold his cards in his hands. We never let him win, not even then.

In spades, you can choose the blind low. We also call that shooting the moon. 

How it works: you don’t look at your hand. You decide that you won’t win any hands at all and you’ll try to lose them all. By losing them all, you win the game. 

It’s a paradox—by losing you win, and by winning just one you automatically lose. And it’s called shooting the moon because it almost never works.

A few nights ago my family decided to pull out the cards and play. I joked about going blind low, but i was too scared. I wanted to see the cards, I needed to know. 

But, as the cards were upside down in front of me, sprawled in a jumbled mess, I thought about my plane ticket.

Tomorrow, I will board a plane with all of my belongings headed for mi nueva vida. In Sevilla, Spain. A place i’ve never been, living with people I’ve never met, speaking a language i’ve never spoken outside of a classroom. I have no idea what my cards hold. right now, they’re upside down on the table. 

But, I could stick with the cards that I know. TCU, Fort Worth & Fayetteville, ENGLISH (that one’s hit or miss).

However, I have chosen the blind low. 

This is a decision weighted with uncertainty, potential for wild success, potential for massive failure, and risk. 

Risk. The one thing that always point us to the one true God. The one exercise that draws him in closer than our breath, because we need him. Actually. 

Going off to college. Getting on a roller coaster. Taking a new job in a new city. Working at summer camp when, all of a sudden, you are responsible for the lives of 12 eight-year-olds. 

It’s all a risk. But we lay it all out on the table, eyes closed, and take the step because we trust Him.

Risk is in every adventure and every collected memory. That’s what makes it exciting. 

When I turn over my cards, some may be good. They may be exactly what I want, like to meet Paolo and ride off into the sunset on a Vespa or speak fluent Spanish (God, are you listening). BUT, others may be wildcards. We won’t name those because I’m superstitious. Yet even in the seemingly bad and messy, there is beauty!

I know there will be good cards and hard cards, cards that require work and others that are comfortable. However, I trust the one who holds the cards. 

My brother sat across the kitchen table, his eyes darted back and forth from his cards to the diamond sitting on the center of the table. I tossed my last card in with resignation, the ace of diamonds. I had just lost the blind low. My mom played, and it’s left to my brother, my partner. He hints at a smile and puts down the one card that could save it: a spade. We had won. 

If you’ve never played the game, you don’t understand the true power of a spade. A spade trumps every number of any other suit, so it’s the most powerful card.

For just a moment, in our Fayetteville, Arkansas, kitchen, we felt as if the world was in our hands and we had beaten the odds, achieving the impossible. And, of course, no one in our family will ever hear the end of it. That’s why I’m writing it now, just so no one forgets. Bragging rights are real.

I will miss my spades more than anything: the only three readers of this blog and the rocks of my life! I definitely couldn’t be on this adventure without them because my 90-pound suitcase never would have shut and I couldn’t have brought it down the stairs. Really though, they are the best.

They have taught me the power of the blind low in taking a big risk for a big reward, in jumping into the unknown headfirst and in leaning on others for support when you need it.

So, here’s to believing that my cards hold the adventure of a lifetime, filled with diamonds, spades and even a few jokers. Buckle up for the ride.