I stopped during a road trip for the usual infusion of a caffeinated product. I visited the coffee shop restroom first and noticed that it could use a bit of attention. But I recognized that this was an extremely high-volume pit stop and gave the workers some grace that they were trying to keep up with drink orders more complex than the tax code. As I was waiting for my drink to arrive, a woman rejoined her husband after visiting the aforementioned restroom. She left no doubt about her feelings. “I have never seen such a disgusting and filthy mess. There were paper towels overflowing the containers.” Her face looked like she had just left a construction-site portable toilet on a searing summer afternoon. Seriously? You have never seen such a disgusting mess? A few paper towels on the floor drives you to that level of hyperbole? Have you seen the conditions that people live in around the world? Do
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I write a lot about the importance of Christian community. I too often hear from wounded churchgoers that have not found a room of grace where there is freedom to be honest. At the risk of riling the ever present spiritual hall monitors I want to suggest a reason so many people leave the institutional church in frustration and pain. My thoughts were triggered by a song titled “I Love This Bar” by Toby Keith. If you will hang with me to the end before launching the email barrage I think you will at least see my point. I understand that bars can be a dark place to anesthetize pain. But there is another dynamic of these gathering spots that we can learn from. In my oddly constructed brain I listened to this song and dreamed of what a community of seekers and followers of Jesus should look like. We got winners, we got losersChain smokers and boozersAnd we got
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An excerpt from my new book “Between the White Lines”. It is almost impossible to comprehend what it is like for a sixteen-year-old boy to run onto the Dallas Cowboys’ home field to play for a state championship. Kids who have played in front of a few dozen or a few hundred look at a vast sea of faces. They struggle to balance fear and exhilaration. Some teams thrive on this big stage, and others wilt. The Newton Eagles always looked to one source of strength in these moments: their coach. “There is nothing like being in the battle with these young men,” W.T. says. “One of the things I love the most about coaching is the team huddle. It is a sacred place that only I get to share with my players. No one else gets to invade that sacred space between the white lines. I always ask them to take a knee, and I get down to their
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One of my favorite songs from Carly Simontouched an emotional chord recently. That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be features raw and emotional lyrics detailing the dashed dreams of too many marriages. These couples have everything they were sure would make them happy. A beautiful house, manicured lawns, and an Instagram picture perfect family. Yet the truth of their lives is starkly different. Carly Simon’s lyrics are haunting. Their children hate them for the things they’re not They hate themselves for what they are And yet they drink, they laugh Close the wound, hide the scar My heart hurts that I personally know a lot of people caught in that cycle. They wear a mask and smile bravely through the pain. My heart cries out that there is a better way. There is a different path that ends in a room of grace. But you have to be tired enough and sad enough to quit trying to fix
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For reasons I still don’t understand I was cast as the lead in our high school senior musical many, many years ago. I had never acted and I was not a trained singer. That stellar resume got me the lead role of Don Quixote. Go figure. The play was called Man of La Mancha and I realize almost fifty years later how daring that choice was for small town Chillicothe, Ohio. Man of La Mancha was pretty edgy for that era. You may know that the play is based on Miguel de Cervantes’s seventeenth-century novel Don Quixote. The musical unfolds as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. Cervantes takes on the character of “mad knight” Don Quixote and he assigns roles for the other prisoners. The musical is best known for it’s signature song “The Impossible Dream”. As I look back I can see a spiritual lesson in the
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A song by Big Daddy Weave is one of my go to songs to remind me of fundamental theological truths. The song resonates with me every time I hear it. Maybe you are better at this following Jesus thing than I am but I tend to be forgetful and slow to learn. The song “Redeemed sums up my struggle and encourages me to know (again) that I am not alone in this battle. Seems like all I can see was the struggle Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past Bound up in shackles of all my failures Wondering how long is this gonna last Then You look at this prisoner and say to me “son stop fighting a fight that’s already been won” I am redeemed, You set me free So I’ll shake off theses heavy chains Wipe away every stain now I’m not who I used to be I am redeemed I am redeemed. Paul spent a little over two
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I am just catching my breath from an intense and humbling finish to my television baseball career. I never imagined I would receive the volume of kind words and love from my television colleagues. Finishing a season of life and getting older caused me to be reflective. A country oldie from Paul Overstreet nailed my feelings. I’m seein’ my father in me I guess that’s how it’s meant to be And I find I’m more and more like him each day I realized that many of the kind things said about me could have been said about my father Paul during his long career in management at Mead Paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio. I remember how kind he was to his employees and how he always made it about them and not himself. I remember resenting when he would skip evening family time to pay his respects at the funeral home to an employee who lost a loved one. I
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