Why You Need A Belt Buckle

Short blue ribbons circled my childhood bedroom. Basketball trophies lined my windowsill. From that first ribbon given at my Kindergarten field day, I was drawn to these awards that became visible and physical reminders of worth.

As a teenager, I believed belt buckles to be the holy grail of trophies. They were gaudy, brash, and wearable.  Here was an award that didn’t have to be stashed away in my room, but could masquerade as functional clothing and advertise my accomplishment to all who saw it. I wanted one badly. I didn’t just want to wear one, I wanted to win one. 

“Dad, you should wear your belt buckle,” my daughter unexpectedly told me two weeks ago as our family prepared to go to a rodeo. 

Six years ago I managed the cattle at our local university’s agricultural research center. Each year we held a small bull sale that six undergraduates assisted with. I received the buckle as a thank you gift for helping advise the students. 

The same university logo engraved on the buckle was stitched on the hat I wore as a 7 year old as I attended the school’s football and basketball games with my grandfather. We went to these games because the university was an anchor in our family. Three generations had been educated there, two generations had played sports there, making it an institution that was deeply respected. This family history should have made the buckle an object of pride, a physical representation of a rich family legacy. But my gaze is sheepish whenever I see it.

The buckle reads advisor, not champion. The undergraduates also received similar buckles, making mine seem like an updated version of the three inch plastic participation trophy I received at the end of my fourth grade basketball season. Throughout my life I’ve come to love the feeling of earning things. But this buckle was given, not earned.  

The buckle also reminds me of the cattle we raised and sold. They were nothing more than decent. Twenty years earlier the university had a national reputation for the quality of their purebred Hereford and Angus cattle. But those days were an aging memory. More people came to our bull sale for the free brisket lunch than to bid on our cattle. Alumni and professors were constantly disappointed that the once elite cowherd had stumbled into mediocrity. 

Fake green jewels stud the buckle’s corners. Bronze floral designs background the writing. Even the buckle's unseen backside is engraved. The contrast between the buckle’s gaudy exterior and the mediocre performance of our cattle is hard to reconcile. The fake gems echo the fraudulency I feel towards my time in that job. Not surprisingly the buckle is stashed in the back of my closet.

And yet, my daughter knows none of this. She has no sense of our family’s connection to the university, no category for what makes cattle marginal or excellent. Only a sense that there’s goodness - visual or otherwise - in wearing the buckle. I smiled, and dug through the shirts in my closet and put it on.

As we drove to the rodeo, I remembered my time working at the university. The pressure of the job idled high, like an engine with a broken throttle. I tried to fight it with frantic to-do lists and flurries of ever changing and murky instructions to my team. I felt my stomach twist while reading a below zero weather forecast while calving. I remembered the top of my jaw tingling with worry while reading critical emails from my bosses. 

I saw a 24 year old busting his ass, afraid it won’t be enough.

Compassion for his fear and appreciation for his try slowly surfaced. The twine of disappointment that had neatly bound and organized those memories started to loosen. And, maybe for the first time, I was proud to wear the buckle.  

The buckle seemed tarnished to me because it wasn’t won. But I realized it was fought for - through 3 am calving checks in January, by bumbling through managing others, and by knowing the familiar sting of mistakes. All of which point to a young man, who as Teddy said, was willing to “enter the arena…who comes up short again and again…who knows great enthusiasms…and who strives valiantly.” 

I used to mock those who wore buckles from decades past - the nostalgics who relived their glory days by any means possible. But now, I wonder if those buckles are more window than trophy. Behind the shine of success is one who risked and ran after a passion uniquely engraved by a good and wild God. Glory is not external accomplishment, but an internal revealing and welcoming of God’s character made known through our hobbies, vocation, quirks, wiring, and lives. And so, may we all relive, and continue to live our glory days. 

Is there a belt buckle you wish you had, one that marks a time when you ‘entered the arena’ or risked and ran after something? (Bonus points if you draw its design and share it with someone else)

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Jesse French
Restoration Project Executive Director