Shattered Dream

It can be a joy to watch your child’s dreams get shattered…if you’re ready for it…

Please welcome guest blogger Bryun Lemon

As a father, husband, and owner of Chapter Three Games, I think about games a lot. 

After years of playing, designing, selling and watching others do the same with 

games, I’ve seen my share of people who try to win at all costs and miss the whole 

point of the game. You see, when we worry only about winning, we fail to learn 

valuable lessons and miss out on treasured memories with loved ones. This was 

made very clear to me when I watched my son’s dreams get shattered and it made 

us all laugh and smile. Now, before you post your scathing rebuke of my callous 

attitude, it’s important to understand what happened.

For my son, this dream destruction came on a day like any other. It started out as a 

pretty ordinary day – we got dressed, ate breakfast together, kids left for and came 

back from school, we made small talk about homework and weather, and then our 

12-year-old son decided we should all make spaceships that night.  It sounded fun 

enough, so we decided after dinner and chores were done, we’d build some 

starships and see who the best pilot was. His dream that day was to build the perfect 

ship and to win the game.

With relatively little fanfare, the chores managed to get finished, the gauntlet throw-

downs about who was going to win began, and the epic shipbuilding contest started. 

Or, in layman’s terms – we started playing a board game that happened to be about 

building and flying spaceships.

For this particular game, everybody would become a starship captain building their 

vessel from junk parts (cardboard game tiles) and then brave the dangers of space 

(the game board) with our crews (little plastic spacemen) fighting off pirate attacks 

and meteors (event cards that we’d turn over) and become the best pilot in the 

galaxy (the one with the most money at the end of the game).!

The game had the usual light-hearted taunting and trash-talking that our family 

enjoys, right up until the end. My son had created his shipbuilding masterpiece and 

was on par to clobber us all (a fact that he reminded us of at least 542 times that 

night). By all means, it looked like his bragging was justified…until an unlucky dice 

roll caused him to lose half his ship to a meteor swarm. The next card was a fleet of 

pirates that managed to take out most of what was left, and by the last turn my son’s 

masterpiece was nothing more than a cockpit and a rocket.  The majestic battleship 

he had constructed with the hopes of winning the game had been reduced to 

cardboard rubble in a few short turns.

And you know what he did in the face of this terrible dream-shattering tragedy? He 

laughed. He started joking about the race ending and his little pilot flying across the 

finish line with a steering wheel on a rocket-barrel. By the time we were done 

playing, we had spent the evening laughing, joking and teasing the ill-fated captain. 

And our family had created a memory that we still laugh about today.

So why bring this up in a forum about missionaries? Because what happened at that 

table - before and after that night – can be a powerful tool to prepare our kids for a 

world that’s ready to gobble them up. This was even more evident when I watched 

that same son playing with a friend a few months later.

I don’t even remember the game their group was playing, but I do remember the 

tantrum from one of the neighbor kids. This young boy was screaming and  trying to 

pop the veins in his forehead over some horrific rules breach and was busy storming 

off in protest when my son turned to the rest of the group with a shrug and asked 

what they were playing next. His teammate had stormed off, his team had lost, and 

he just shrugged it off!

Now, don’t get me wrong - everybody loves to win. It’s easy to have fun when we’re 

winning. We all know this. Part of playing games, however, means we’re not always 

going to win. Some kids learn this and have fun no matter what the final score is. 

Others never learn this and only enjoy games when they’re ahead.

And this is why playing games is so important for kids as they’re working towards 

adulthood. The way we handle games as a child becomes the pattern for how we 

handle games and life events as adults (college, dating, employment, missionary 

service, et al). As parents, we all know that the events that turned out like we hoped 

are a fraction of those that end up becoming a ‘learning experience’ for us (I always 

hated that phrase, even if it is just that). Children need an environment where wins 

and losses are inconsequential…a place where they can get up from the table with 

their confidence and self-worth still intact. A lot of this comes by watching mom or 

dad’s ship (or railroad empire or plastic army) get obliterated while we laugh and 

joke about it – setting the stage for how to react to losses of all kinds.

As a missionary, I was able to see both sides of the coin in this regard. I saw 

missionaries who were able to roll with the punches of slammed doors, companion 

disputes, bible-bashing ministers and long periods of time without letters from 

home. With the same shrug that my son handled his grievous setbacks in a safe 

environment, these missionaries were able to shrug their shoulders and move 

ahead. These were the missionaries who always smiled and who seemed to enjoy 

the journey itself. Contrast that with the missionaries who threw a tantrum against 

members, companions, and even God himself when they perceived some horrific 

‘rules violation’ of how it was supposed to be. These missionaries had learned to 

enjoy the journey when they were ‘winning’ (teaching, baptizing, training a LOT of 

people), but missed the joy that was the journey itself.

As a parent, I want to see my children succeed in life. Succeeding in life doesn’t mean 

winning all the time, and often it means we lose a lot more than we should. When we 

learn to handle setbacks with a shrug and enjoy the trip, we will succeed at what 

matters most. When we teach our kids to shrug off the small setbacks in life - losing 

your fortune because the dice put you on Park Place with hotels, coming in last lace 

because you had to draw 4 cards three turns in a row, or having your invincible 

battlecruiser destroyed by space pirates – it teaches them to shrug off the larger 

setbacks they will certainly face – losing a job, being dumped by a fiancé days before 

a wedding, or having an investigator call off a baptism and ask the missionaries to 

stop coming over.

And so, coming back to those shattered dreams…

How wonderful it is to be able to watch your child’s dreams be shattered in a safe 

place, with plastic and cardboard as the casualties! When this happens, we know 

they’ll be ready for the hard times they’ll run into as missionaries – opening a new 

area with nobody to teach, a ‘dear john’ waiting in their inbox, or a companion who 

likes to sleep in until noon every day. When that time comes (and as parents, we 

know it will), imagine how nice it will be for that missionary to remember the 

laughter his family shared as his prize warship was destroyed by cardboard meteors 

and plastic pirates…

…and he’ll shrug his shoulders as a man with the same resolve he did when he was 

twelve.

About the author: Eight kids call Bryun Lemon “dad”, one beautiful lady calls him 

“dear” and everyone at his company - Chapter Three Games - calls him…Bryun. 

Bryun took something he enjoyed growing up (board games) and combined it with a 

desire to create something to being families together. When he started Chapter 

Three Games with the mission statement “It’s not about the games we make, it’s 

about the people who play them” became the focus for why they were doing this. 

The latest game, Five Minute Delivery, is a game that gives families without a lot of 

time (that’s pretty much all of us) a way to spend time with each other. They are 

running their Kickstarter for Five Minute Delivery through August, and the link to 

check it out can be found here: www.fiveminutedelivery.com.