A Fine Young Man

The other night, I watched my son play his last basketball game.  I watched with pride as he scored in double digits and played hard all the way until the end.    Basketball has always been his favorite sport since he was little.  As I watched his game that night, I reminisced back to the first time he played on the goal we got him for Christmas.  That first day as I watched and played with my kids in the driveway, my five year old son dribbled all over the place and would heave the ball into the air - sometimes hitting the goal, rarely getting a ball in the goal, and mostly hitting nothing close to the goal.  I was amazed however at his ability to dribble a basketball between his legs while he exclaimed, “I’m Dirk Nowitski!” 

I continued that evening to move through the memories as I soon found myself coaching his YMCA league team.  I thought about the times I had to sit him on the bench because he argued with my decisions as a coach.  He was mad at me and it was hard for me to do that even when it hurt the team.  I knew at the time it was more important to teach my son the importance of lessons in life over winning a game.   I also reminisced about the days we spent playing basketball in the driveway over the years.  At first, he was never able to beat me.  Then one day he won a game.  His first question was, “Dad did you let me win?”  He has since learned how much of a competitor I am and that I would never let him win.   But soon he got older.  He grew, got taller, stronger and smarter.  I got older, slower and tired more quickly.  I soon found myself losing more and more games, eventually losing the best of 5 series against him.  Today, he beats me most of the time and when I do win, I have to talk trash to him.

The best part of those games and matches were not the score or who won.  It was the times we talked about life.  Sometimes he would ask me to help him with basketball skills but mostly he was asking me about being a man.  My wife and I have spent many hours and miles watching him play basketball from middle school to high school.  We would talk to him about attitude, effort and other life skills we noticed on the court as he represented (or didn’t represent) Christ in a public way.  We would use those as teaching moments.  Not about basketball, but about life.  This brings us back to the last game I was watching.  I can’t explain the pride his mother and I had as we watched him, for the last time, play a basketball game.   I don’t regret any minute I have spent with him over the years playing, coaching, watching and traveling.   It was important.  Not because he needed to be a better basketball player, but because he needed to learn about life and God.  He has become a fine young Godly man, and I am thankful God has answered those prayers.   

A couple of days ago, we played again.  He beat me in every game we played, but I still thought about all those times through the years where we played each other.  I wondered if this would be our last time to play each other one on one or if we would have another chance when he comes to visit from college.  As I watched him dribble past me, I couldn’t help but see that little boy who dribbled between his legs saying, “I’m Dirk Nowitski!”   To me he is not Dirk.  He is more than that.  He is a young man who will soon be a Godly husband and caring father.  I will take that over an NBA Hall of Famer any day.   

Where's the Grace?

Where’s the Grace?

This is a question I get often as an educator and administrator.  Parents whose children have done something wrong want to know why the school does not show grace in their child’s situation.  For some odd reason, this question reminds me of an old Wendy’s commercial.  The question sounds similar to a question from that commercial several years ago when a lady asked, “Where’s the beef?” as she looked down at her fast food hamburger.  I guess if I try real hard, I can pull some similarities between the two questions and look at some underlying undertones of the two statements.  In essence, the question here is,

“What is the meat of the matter?”  

“Where is the substance?” 

Are we really focusing on a total dependence on God or are we just wanting something to satisfy our wants in a particular situation?  Only the person asking can truly answer that question because that is a question of the heart. However, I would like to make a few points about this question that we so easily dispense in many situations - no matter how important or trivial the situation is.  So I submit to you what I feel is at the heart of the matter and the true substance behind this question of, “Where’s the Grace?”

According to Romans 3:24 Grace is a free gift.  It is not earned.  There is no amount of money in the world that would purchase Grace.  There is no amount of good deeds we can do to earn Grace.  However, there was a price paid for us to receive Grace even if we did not pay that price. 

And it came at a great cost.  Blood was shed.  A body was bruised. Flesh was ripped.  It eventually cost separation from God – a loneliness we cannot even fathom.  All of this so we could receive something we didn’t deserve.

I must admit, it bothers me a bit when someone comes to me expecting, demanding or even asking for Grace.  Not that I haven’t done the same myself, I am just learning now that it is something not to be taken for granted.  But as my flesh moves me to expect leniency, or expect forgiveness, or ask for mercy, I now try to think about the price paid for this gift that I am desiring.  When I was 7, I received a helmet for Christmas that didn’t have my favorite team on it.  I was upset because I had asked for something else and didn’t get it.  At the time, I didn’t think about the price my parents had to pay for the helmet.  I only thought about what I wanted and the disappointment when I didn’t get what I wanted.

In my mind my desire is to respond to this question like this.

“Do we really know what we are asking?” 

“Do we really realize what we are wanting here for our child?” 

“Are we really willing to put Christ to public shame to protect our child?”

Every time we sin, Hebrews 6:6 says we are “nailing Him to the cross again and putting him to shame.”   Should we really ask for Grace?  As Paul would say, “May it never be!”  We don’t have to ask for it because it is already there.  We don’t need to expect it because none of us deserve it.

So what should we expect when our child gets into trouble at school?

It would be fair to expect a consequence based on what the school policy says. If a lighter consequence is administered, then that should be considered a blessing.  Again, I want to point out that Grace should never be expected because it is beyond what we deserve.  Therefore, anytime we receive less than what we deserve we should be grateful. 

Grace is also not the absence of consequence.  When Nathan called David out for his sin with Bathsheba, God made it clear that He stilled loved David and showed him mercy.  However, God also outlined the consequence of his sin.  As we read on in 2 Samuel, we also see later consequences of David’s sin in his family. 

Therefore, it is a fair expectation that the school will love your child through their consequence and strive to help your child when they are in trouble.  A school should work with students to the best of their ability and use the resources available.  When your child’s school can no longer help them, they should work with parents to move them into an environment that can.  

Since our children are human, they will experience sin.  As a result of that sin, they will become broken at different times in their life. 

This is life in a fallen world. 

It was evident with kings like David.  When you read Psalms 51, you see just how broken David is about his sin. 

We will all be humbled at some time in our life.  The question is will we humble ourselves or will God humble us?  God breaks us down to build us back up.  He did it with David.  He did with Peter.  He did with Paul.  He did it with countless people in the Bible and he does it with us today.  I am not a big Michael Vick fan but I see similarities between him and King David.  Watch this video and see how he found himself broken.

Our children need to learn to work through brokenness.  They need to be broken at times and learn the strength to be built back up from us as educators and you as parents.  This is why a strong partnership between a school and a parent is so essential.  Unfortunately, this is what is wrong in education today.  That partnership is broken and our children are not prepared for a world that Satan uses to destroy us.  Satan’s goal is to leave us in our brokenness and stay in a life of despair.

In the end, this is the meat of the matter.  This is the substance behind what seems like a simple question of, “Where is the Grace?” 

The Grace is in the individual administering discipline - a person who will love them through the consequence.  It is not in the consequence or trying to get the person administering a consequence to take it away.

The Grace is that we have a God that loves us and brings us to Him even though we are not deserving to even bow at His feet and pray to Him much less receive blessings from Him. 

The Grace is that a Savior died a horrible death and paid a tremendous price so we could spend eternity with Him.

Therefore, that Grace should not be taken for granted or taken lightly.

What's Important

This past weekend was a bittersweet time for me.  I watched as my daughter’s boyfriend proposed to her.   Many emotions flooded over me as I watched him get on his knee and ask her to spend the rest of her life with him.  The excitement I saw on her face as she accepted his proposal was one I had seen many times.  One of my favorite pictures of her is seeing that same excited face as I was baptizing her and she was committing her life to Christ. 

As I looked at her that sunny afternoon, I was taken back to that day when she decided to live her life for Christ.  My thoughts quickly moved forward to the future as I imagined how proud I would be to see her raise Godly children with her new husband. 

For 22 years now, God has given me the responsibility of protecting and caring for her.  Now I will willingly pass that God given responsibility to another man.  It has come with much prayer and many sleepless nights.  It is hard to hand my little girl over to someone who doesn’t have the life experiences I have or who hasn’t gone through the stresses of budgets, marriage, children, etc.  Yet this is the guy I have been praying for.  I have asked God to provide her with a man who will lead my child and grandchildren to a closer relationship with Him and I ask for someone who will step up to the plate through those same difficult situations I started experiencing for the first time 25 years ago.  

At the end of the day, I have so much to be thankful for.  I have children who seek the Lord and want to follow Him.  I have children who truly grieve when they fall short and want to restore a life that honors Him when they slip up.  I have children who want others to see Christ in them.

There are a lot of things that we want for our children.  We want them to be financially taken care of.  We want our children to be successful in their career.  We want them to be respected among their peers.  We want them to be good at sports, art, drama, etc.  Yet with all of that, the only thing that is of the utmost importance is that our children honor God and grow up to live their life for His Kingdom.  If the only thing my children accomplish is honoring God, then I will truly feel like a successful parent.    

Be Quick But Don't Hurry

I am going to continue my conversation from my first blog with more lessons from John Wooden.  Coach Wooden ran one offense all year long.  If he had a small line up he ran a fast game.  When he had Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, he ran everything through the post position.  He ran one defense - man to man.  His players would always pull up and take a 15 foot jumper on a fast break.  His thinking was to keep it simple.  If you ran too many plays, then you had to spend time practicing to learn all of them.  The more plays you ran, the less attention each play received.  However, if you only had one play on offense and one play on defense, then you could spend you entire practice perfecting it.  As a result, Coach Wooden did very little coaching in the game.  He rarely called a timeout and he didn't give his players instruction.  In fact, if they had allowed him too, he would have preferred sitting in the stands and watching the result of his player’s incredible preparation.

In almost every practice, Coach Wooden would preach, "Be quick but don't hurry."  This was the key to his team's preparation and execution of these plays.  What Coach Wooden preached was to be quick to the ball but don't rush the tempo.  He knew that prepared players would respond quickly to the opposing offense or the basketball.  However, he also knew that people who hurry things and get into a rush make mistakes because they are off balance.  This entire concept is based on quickness with balance.  This is a lost concept in the world we live in today.  We are told we have to react quickly and we should expect fast results. 

We expect it when with our sports teams.  Coaches get fired if they don’t produce quick results. 

We expect it with our transportation.  What is the quickest flight to get us from point A to point B. 

We expect it with our food.  We look for dinner recipes that are under 5 minutes.

However, if we look at reality, it tells us that rushing things gets us inferior results. 

Coach Wooden was one of the most successful coaches in history but it took him 16 years to win his first championship.  Tom Landry expected to be fired in his third season. Instead he received a 12 year contract and subsequently produced 20 consecutive winning seasons, 5 Super Bowl appearances, and 2 championships.

Car trips are long but so much is missed when you take a plane.  The experience is lost of seeing all of the sights between here and your destination.  Sometimes the journey is better than the destination.  Watch this clip from Cars. 

 

The difference between a baked potato in the microwave and a baked potato in the oven is significant.  My son recently experienced bacon in a frying pan instead of from the microwave and now he wants to cook it the old fashioned way all the time.

In life the things that take more work are the things that help to build a firm foundation on things that are better and last longer.  When we hurry we lose quality and make mistakes. 

The same is true in parenting.

Don’t complicate things.  Keep it simple.  Work on the basic things with your children every day.  Don’t get too caught up in the latest book or parenting idea.  Spend every day measuring what you expect from your child against the two most important principles of all time.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.  Love others as yourself (Matt. 22:37-39).  If you focus all of your parenting on these two areas your children will be prepared for the game of life.  And in doing that, be consistent and don’t make compromises. In more simple terms, look at yourself as a coach like John Wooden.  Keep your practice and preparation simple and focus on perfecting Matt. 22 principles.  In doing that, follow these simple guidelines:

1. Be purposeful with lessons and activities and look for ways to tie their activities to these two principles. 

2. Be organized and make sure you have the day prepared and focused on these principles through prayer, Bible study and application.

In doing this you will prepare them for game time – the game of life.  At that time, if done successfully one day you as a parent/coach will be able to watch from the sidelines.

Riding the Pine

I have recently read a couple of books about John Wooden.  If you don’t know John Wooden, he was the coach of the UCLA Bruins Basketball team from 1948-1975.  During that time he won 10 National Championships in 12 years and was named the Coach of the Century by ESPN in 1999.  He retired with the highest winning percentage of any other coach.

Coach Wooden considered himself a teacher rather than a coach.  He never disciplined his players with wind sprints or extra basketball drills.  These were things he worked on in practice not as a punishment but as conditioning.  His only form of dealing with disobedient players was to let a player “ride the pine” (sit a player on the bench), or dismiss them from the team.  He would meet with players who struggled to do things his way and simply tell them, “Do it my way or play for someone else.”  He once told Bill Walton, the perennial All American and Hall of Famer before the first practice of the season to either come back before 4:00 PM with a haircut or be kicked off the team.  Walton (who was the nation’s best player the year before) said he ran as fast as he could to the barber shop to get his hair cut because he knew his coach was serious. 

When people asked Coach Wooden the key to his discipline, he responded by saying he never had to discipline his players.  His job was to set the boundaries or the rules and the player’s job was to discipline themselves to work within those boundaries.  A player never had to follow the rules. Coach Wooden said he never forced them to follow his rules.  He simply gave them a choice.  Discipline yourself to follow these rules, “ride the pine” or go somewhere else.  It was always the player’s choice.

That is the way discipline should be.  Set clear boundaries and clear consequences for not following those expectations.  Explain the consequences if those boundaries are crossed, then give the child the choice of whether or not they want to cross that boundary.  Be consistent in holding them accountable.  I consider this my role as an educator and as a parent.  Students I have dealt with understand that I am not disciplining them, they have chosen to discipline themselves by not following the rules.  The choice will always be theirs.  They will always decide if they want to discipline themselves to follow the rules or face the consequences.  It is always better to be proactive as a parent than reactive.  Giving your child the choice and clearly explaining consequences helps you be proactive rather than reactive to situations.  This helps you lead your child in the direction they should go.