For the “LOVE” of the game.

It was 32 years ago that I began making a play for the girl of my dreams. Playing softball the summer of “87” I couldn’t help but notice “that girl” in the stands. After several trips striking up conversations between innings I knew I had to try and steal her heart. With each attempt, It became clear she was the home run I’d always swung for.

Finally, it was time to get in the game and ask her out. She knew the count and threw me a curve the first time I asked. Being the first time ever missing on a pitch, I determinedly dug in for another swing. To my relief, Patricia and I went out for the very first time. It wasn’t long and we were spending extra innings together on a regular basis.

Before I knew it my plan for the perfect game became all too real and we became teammates in life on November 18, 1989. As with all teams, there’s responsibility issues, position changes, and growing pains. And within our first season together we displayed the unraveling of misguided, mismanaged, and leaderless teamwork. Grown selfishly apart and prime for dismantling. Our teams’ destiny could have easily ended there as do many succumbing under insurmountable odds and statistics.

Resiliency, the test of a teams core. That was the only thread left holding any stitch to our relationship. We faced a major offseason of change that would require a complete rebuilding from the ground up. We turned to each other and committed to working under new management and allowing the past to be remolded by grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

In order for us to be successful in the seasons ahead, we had to commit to leadership and each other. We became determined, what we did each day mattered to the future franchise we planned on building. Each decision and choice helped us grow more selfless following the game plan of new leadership. Every team experiences victory or failure by who they choose as leadership.

Each move, each choice, each series of decisions we make effects the people and world around us. As a relationship team, a marriage, we hold responsibility to our franchise families future. Together we put down the lines of influence impacting future relationships to go foul or hit a home run! Nothing is impossible with the right attitude and guidance when it comes to building a Championship Team.

Our franchise has grown beyond our wildest dreams. Watching from the stands we take in each blessing from a decision to keep the team together. Each new relationship, each new team player, each new generation growing and learning from the last. What all started at a summer softball league has truly turned into a “Field of Dreams”.

No Diary, Let’s be Frank…

It’s Valentines, Hallmark and local florists are at a breakneck pace trying to fulfill everyone’s desire to express love for that someone special. It’s an excellent ideal no matter who’s or how it came about. Love, song lyrics, poems, books,movies, its portrayal is incredibly diverse. Love is Human nature’s deepest desire, what an incredible void to fill in a fractured world. So we spend much of our adolescent years spinning in a hormonal dervish longing for that special someone to quench that thirst. Transcending into early adulthood to pursue the Love of our lives towards marriage.

Marriage, the symbol and doctrine of a Christians commitment to Love. An ironic battlefield has been waged recently as to who holds the foundations and truth of marriage.  My query, how can Christians place a claim to something that is being decimated within their own confines? Yes, we are all infallible and subject to a sinful nature but the Core of Christ is the stake in our claim.

Glass houses are fragile. Pain and forgivenes uttered through inexperienced lips are dry and meaningless to those whom have been scared through Loves battle. I assure you my wife and l have wet our lips to its bitter taste deep within our marriage. And it’s with deep compassion and love that I’m compelled to encourage those that are embattled to reflect who Christ is in your marriage.

My wife and I began to take Christ seriously in our lives when literally all hell broke lose in our marriage. At a point where you make a choice that will effect you and everyone around you forever. We were physically and emotionally damaged goods seeking something to right all the wrongs. At that moment I asked myself a question that has changed everything. If Christ was willing to forgive me and I was laying claim to that redemption, then how could I not apply that same unconditional love and forgiveness to my marriage.

Selflessness is the core of Christ and quite frankly the core of marriage. A ceaseless battle that must be countered in my life and marriage by one thought. He that lives in me must be reflected though my actions for only words have no bearing. I choose daily to serve my wife as Christ served, unconditionally covering her in love, unconditionally forgiving, unconditionally accepting her as she is, and putting her before myself. Together we have gone from scared to sacred by the choice to be Christ in our marriage.

It’s impossible to know how it works without reading the owners manual, get into Gods living word and fill your life with truth. I would be negligent not to mention the title “Love and Respect” a book alongside Gods word that has changed everything about our marriage. Never forget that Christ came that we would be redeemed. Offer your marriage as a living sacrifice and be a remnant of true Love to a fractured word. Albeit even after a painful end He compels us to stay available to offer redemption to those we committed to love.

May everyday be Valenties❤️