My Oldest Son

In keeping with my theme for this month, I want to send another letter.  This one is to my oldest son.  I am so thankful for him.

Dear David,

As I write this, you are going through a hard transition in life.  Some of this is just part of life and some of it is because of your mom and I.  You are adjusting to 6th grade, changes in your attitude toward girls and unfortunately mom and I's divorce.  It is a lot for one kid to handle and I think you are doing such a good job.

As I look back on my how I have done as your father so far, I am a little sad because I know that I could have done much better.  I was just recently that I realized how little I knew about being a Godly father.  It is my whole heart's desire to teach you to be one in the few years we have left before you step out on your own.  I want to prepare you to be a Godly man.  If I can do that, I have succeeded beyond my wildest imagination for you.  The strange thing is I think in spite of all we have done, you are already becoming a very Godly young man.

I am so very proud of you.  Whether you know it or not, you started school when you were three years old because you had speech issues.  This was due to a hearing problem you had as a little tyke.  Now when I was in school kids in those classes were sort of looked down at and made fun of.  When I was in school, those kids barely made it through.  But not you.  You went from needing help with speech to all honors classes.  You are a really brilliant young man.  I also see things in you that I never could be at your age.  I look at you and see courage.

How?  Well, it took courage to ask that girl to the homecoming dance.  I would never, ever have done it because I would have been too afraid.  When we talked afterwards, you told me that your heart was pounding in your chest pretty hard and that even though when you asked her the dance had already passed, she was nice to you with her reply.  Son, I want you to remember that feeling and what you did.  There will be many more opportunities in life for you to feel that way and make a decision.  You are going to be in places where you risk rejection in your life.  It just happens.  But you possess that special quality called courage.  Don't ever change that.  Take risks because if you don't, you won't have rewards.  I know you didn't see it that way then but that's what you did and I am extremely proud of you.

Son, you are growing up so fast and it seems like it will only accelerate from here.  As you get older, I want you to understand something.  I heard a story about the head of the Salvation Army.  You know those guys who stand ringing the bell at Christmas time asking for donations.  Well they take those and use them to help people who need it.  One year, the head of the Salvation Army was going to send a telegram to all his offices around the world.  He wrote it out and then went to send it.  When he got to the telegraph office, he realized that it was too long and he had to cut it down.  So he trimmed it down to one sentence. Again, it was too expensive to send.  He finally trimmed it down to a single word - others.  Son, that's what our life is all about.  We are to help others.  You have to let the Lord show you who and how but always remember that's what life is about.  As you get older, you will see people who define success by how much education and money you have.  I thought the same way for a long time.  Don't get me wrong, money and education are important but not as important as people.  Think of others and ask the Lord to show you who you can help today.

Lastly, I want to talk to you about what you are going through in school today.  I know some of the kids make fun of you.  That really hurts your feelings and quite frankly, it just plain sucks.  When I was in school, kids did the same thing to me.  Grandma and Grandpa did they very best they could but I didn't wear brand name clothes like the rest of the kids and some people made fun of me a lot.  I also got made fun of because I had big ears and I had a lot of pimples.  It really hurt my feelings.  Son, as you go through these times, know that you were not alone.  Guess who else was made fun of and people talked bad about? - Jesus.  I guess that puts us in pretty good company huh.  You may not see it now but this will pass.  Just keep doing the right thing because it's the right thing.

I cannot begin to express how impressed I am with you.  You are smart, handsome, loyal, you love God, you aren't afraid to share your faith, you know how to build stuff, you always try to help your brother and sister, and you are a really respectful young man.  No matter what you do, know that I will always love you.

Love,

Dad

That's another letter from the Minion

Running

Today I want to talk to you about something I hated, then wished for, taken for granted and then became thankful for - running.

I can already hear many of the people who read this blog saying something along the lines of, "I could never be thankful for running.  I hate that stuff and having to run is a curse."  I can certainly understand how you feel.  While I have mentioned this in earlier blogs, I think, it's worth repeating.

When I was in high school, I was on the football team and I "played" offensive lineman.  For those of you who don't know, that means we didn't run very far.  We only ran 10 or 15 yards at most normally.  Even during practice, we didn't have to run very far.  We did have to run sprints after practice and I hated them with a passion.  They were supposed to be the conditioning part of our workout and I can tell you I was in no condition to do them.  We only had to run across the field for each sprint and I hated it.  I was in the slowest group and I came in dead last in that group.  Running was definitely not something to be thankful for.  Then I went to TCU and my hate for running continued.  We had to run longer and I still hated it.

Then the day came when I was 350 pounds.  Now at this point, I couldn't run 50 yards if I had to.  I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without being out of breath at the top much less run.  Now back then, I was my own worst enemy.  I went on many diets without any success.  My favorite was the seefood diet.  I was quite successful on it.  It was pretty simple.  I see food.  I eat it.  A lot of it.  I managed to stay on this diet until I got so big that when I stepped on a weight scale instead of a number it read, "To be continued...."  At that time I would go into Starbucks and order a Carmel Frappucino to drink in the morning.  For those of you who don't know, it's a fancy word for milk shake.  I would go into Starbucks and see people I despised.  You know the type.  They were fit and they stood there ordered all those coffee drinks.  What made it worse was they wore workout clothes.  They had on running shorts, running shirts, and during the winter even running tights.  Many times they were laughing and talking among themselves about running and how this part was hard or that part was easy.  I really hated it.  In reality, I was just extremely jealous.  I was in shape if you consider round a shape.  Literally, I was 67 inches tall and 58 inches around.  I knew I would never be able to do that and it hurt because it reminded me of just how far out of shape I have become.  At this pace, I was killing myself one pepperoni pizza at a time.

Let me stop right here for a minute and tell you a bible story.  See one time Jesus was walking through a city.  As he was going through the city, he came upon a funeral procession.  I don't know much about the Jewish culture but apparently they carry the body on their shoulders from point A to point B and this is what he saw.  This was a young man they were carrying and he was certainly too young to have died.  His mother was walking with the procession full of grief.  Jesus saw this and told the procession to stop.  That must have taken guts and I bet many of the people were furious because he was being very insensitive, or so they thought.

Think for a minute about some of the crazy things that have went on in this country.  There is that nut job church that goes around protesting funerals of our dead heroes who gave this country the ultimate sacrifice - their lives.  I certainly think you have a right to protest anything you want and the worst part about this type of protest is that the man or woman in that coffin took an oath to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic.  They were like so many others who died to protect those people's right to protest.  I can feel my blood starting to boil and maybe I will save this for another post but remember this.

So now we have this preacher stopping a funeral procession to do what?  Well much to the surprise of everyone, he raised that young man from the dead.  All of the sudden, these people got a brother, a son, and a friend back.  Mom went from grief to joy and the funeral went from death to a party.  When Jesus touches your coffin, your life and those around you is changed forever.  That's exactly what happened to me.  Jesus touched my life and I went from 350 pounds to 190.  I went from a life headed for an early grave to a celebration.

Part of this change involved running.  I became and still am a runner.  It started during my weight loss period.  At the end of the weight loss period, I ran my first marathon.  It is a moment I will never forget.  Jesus had literally turned my life right side up.  The marathon was in Fort Worth, Texas.  I was under trained for my first one and it was a cool, overcast, drizzly day in February.  The race started and ended in downtown Fort Worth.  As I turned to corner and started the last quarter mile, it was one of the most difficult and easy of my life.  The run wasn't hard but I was overcome with emotion.  I had tears in my eyes as I crossed the finish line because I knew how far I had come because of what God did in my life.  Thank you Lord, I will never forget.

After that running became pretty routine and I got pretty good at it.  I ran one more marathon and have done a bunch of 5Ks and 10Ks.  I have even managed to win my age group a few times.

Then one day, I was going into Starbucks again for tea.  This time was different from the time above because I was one of those people who was in shape.  I had lost a lot of weight and generally felt great.  This particular morning, I was frustrated about my run.  I think I ran slower that I would like or something and I was complaining on the inside about it.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man sitting in a wheel chair and part of his legs were missing.  I didn't think much of it at first but then the Lord arrested me.  He said to me, "Do you see that man?  He would almost kill someone to be able to do what you are complaining about doing."  That humbled me.  It made me really appreciate my legs and being able to walk/run.

That's another Opinion of the Minion