One For The Ages

We attended a soccer game last night.  Our youngest son Danny loves the game and is fortunate to play on a team with a good coach and players who are willing to hustle.
I was amazed at the hustling play of each team member and I was reminded of what happens when people accomplish something as a team.
I have been taught and then reminded of my role as a team player in our family.  It takes the gifts of each person to carry out and succeed. 
I am grateful for Becky and the important role she plays as a wife and mother.  She does so much and her role blesses each member of our family. 
I hope that I am the kind of husband and father who plays as a team member and wants to succeed so that our family will be happy.

The Best Team

I was having a conversation with a good friend at work, when another man that works in the same building, approached us to visit for a minute.  We asked him how he was doing and his response was one of discouragement.  "I'm close to just throwing in the towel."  Many have felt the very same way as this co-worker of mine.  My friend and I took the next few minutes to offer encouragement and, more importantly, hope.
I have given a lot of thought to the gradual loss of hope that so many battle with throughout their lives.
I offer a great insight--it is actually truth. 
We all chose to come to this beautiful earth.  We were excited at the prospects of coming to a place where the surrounding beauties would offer us a little of every kind of interest that we would have.  We were going to come here, at varying times, formed into families.  That was a neat concept for all of us, and we were fully in favor of the plan--in fact, we raised our hand in support.  We knew that there would be joys and there would be pains.  We knew that there was going to be opposition.  That opposition would persuade us to do things and make choices that would be contrary to the knowledge that we  had already gained.  We knew that we would make a lot of good choices and some bad ones would be laced into our life, too.  In this life, no matter what opposition we contend with, the reality is, that in the end, the good is going to prevail.  Who doesn't want to be on the winning team?
If any one of us knew beforehand that when the whistle is blown to start a sporting competition, that we were going to be on the losing team, there isn't a single person that is going to stay on that particular team.
When life's struggles come, and yes, they will surely come, remember that each one of us has to muster all of the courage and strength we can to keep a clear picture in our minds of the victory that lies ahead for us. 
It seems so hard but the reward for enduring the sometimes unthinkable is worth every struggles we will ever have to face.
It is our divine mission to be on the winning team.  We were created by a loving Father, who wants nothing more than to have all of His children returned to His presence.  There isn't any challenge that is too much for you to handle.  The Opposition desires discouragement and frustration to enter into your life.  That Opposition knows that the discouragement only has to come a little at a time and over just a short period he can have you bound helpless and hopeless.  It is this Opposition that has mastered this unique, and for him worthwhile, plan. 
We are all important children of our loving Father.  Do the things in your life that will firm up the walls of safety and security against this evil power.
We are on the best team ever assembled in any arena ever known.  We are supposed to be on, and stay on, the winning team!  Never forget it.

Give Him The Ball

You know by now that I love good stories that motivate.  I love this one and it seems appropriate for today.

CBS) It was the stuff of Hollywood, but it was real.

Senior Jason McElwain had been the manager of the varsity basketball team of Greece Athena High School in Rochester, N.Y.

McElwain, who's autistic, was added to the roster by coach Jim Johnson so he could be given a jersey and get to sit on the bench in the team's last game of the year.

Johnson hoped the situation would even enable him to get McElwain onto the floor a little playing time.

He got the chance, with Greece Athena up by double-digits with four minutes go to.

And, in his first action of the year, McElwain missed his first two shots, but then sank six three-pointers and another shot (video), for a total of 20 points in three minutes.

"My first shot was an air ball (missing the hoop), by a lot, then I missed a lay-up," McElwain recalls. "As the first shot went in, and then the second shot, as soon as that went in, I just started to catch fire."

"I've had a lot of thrills in coaching," Johnson says. "I've coached a lot of wonderful kids. But I've never experienced such a thrill."

The crowd went wild, and his teammates carried the excited McElwain off the court.

"I felt like a celebrity!" he beamed.

McElwain's mother sees it as a milestone for her son.

"This is the first moment Jason has ever succeeded (and could be) proud of himself," reflects Debbie McElwain. "I look at autism as the Berlin Wall, and he cracked it."

His teammates couldn't be happier.

"He's a cool kid," says guard Levar Goff. "You just get to know him, get used to being around him. A couple of weeks ago, he missed practice because he was sick. You feel different when he's not around. He brings humor and life to the team."

Jason's next goal: to graduate.


We can do anything we want to do, no matter how impossible it may seem.  I love real life stories that illustrate one's hope to conquer the world.

It's every day life and we are all a part of it!