Breakfast, Life Lessons and Gene Stallings

  Breakfast, Life Lessons and Gene Stallings

Today was a unique opportunity to leave the house early, and head out to breakfast with a few hundred folks. The 2nd annual FCA breakfast for Northwest Mississippi was this morning and we always enjoy supporting this ministry by being at the breakfast. This year’s special guest speaker was Gene Stallings. Stallings not only played for the legendary head coach Bear Bryant, but also joined his first coaching staff at Alabama when he graduated from Texas A&M. Stallings remarkable career spans several football programs including college teams Texas A&M and Alabama, and in the NFL when he coached with Tom Landry at Dallas, and head coached the Cardinals in both St. Louis and Phoenix. He has received numerous awards and recognition in his lifetime for both his playing and coaching and is a well loved coach for his kind spirit.

He shared today that he started the first FCA program at the University of Alabama, and when he left that Coach Bryant called him to complain about the FCA program. He shared that Coach felt it had made a mess of the team because they were always hugging and being nice to each other. Not long after that though Coach Stallings received another call from Coach Bryant, saying that FCA was the best thing that had happened to Alabama football.

It was wonderful to hear about the work that FCA is involved in here locally, and knowing that the work they do is important all around the country for the lives that are being invested in by coaches who genuinely care about their players and want to help them be better men and women. There are numerous chapters in high schools and colleges around the country and around the world. FCA seeks to engage athletes through coaches and other mentors at their schools and to give them opportunities to develop their faith and share it with other team members in their schools and communities. FCA sponsors camps, retreats and other events throughout the year to help be an encouragement to these athletes.

Coach Stallings also shared quite a bit with us about his son, John Mark - whom he affectionately called Johnny throughout the morning. John Mark had Down Syndrome and was a very present figure with Coach Stallings through his career until John Mark passed away in 2008. A quick internet search showed some really sweet photographs of Coach and his son and you can tell very quickly that he loved him very much. He shared many memories of his son with us today and I was struck by how very genuine and caring Coach is and how very much he misses his son. One very funny story was how he had coached his son to meet for the very first time Coach Tom Landry. It was a shortened practice for the Cowboys that day as it was a day to bring your kids to the workout. So Coach Stallings coached Johnny that he would introduce him to Coach Landry, and he would say “Coach Landry, I’d like you to meet my son, John Mark” and to which he should reply “Nice to meet you Coach Landry”. So they practiced many times and were ready. Coach Stallings introduced Johnny to Coach Landry and said “Coach Landry, I’d like you to meet my son, John Mark” to which Johnny replied - “Hi Tom!” Such a sweet memory and such a memorable moment.

Coach also shared that he was done with complaining. Nothing good ever came from it anyway, and so he was done with complaining. He shared with us that the night before John Mark passed away - he could tell he wasn’t feeling well as he was trying to sleep. He was very restless and having trouble breathing. Coach checked his oxygen saturation levels and soon realized that with it being in the low 60’s that John Mark was in serious trouble. When he asked John Mark how he was doing though, he replied that he was fine. You see John Mark never complained about anything and if anyone really had the right to complain it should be John Mark who had such difficulty breathing at that time. Perhaps what stuck with me most today is he shared that we all need to share just a bit of kindness with people today. He said that it can be just a little thing for us to do to be kind to someone today but it can be everything to that person we share the kindness with. Of course the story that went along with this point was also about his dear son, John Mark. He encouraged us to slow down and to reach out in kindness to others around us.

Ironically, as I caught up just a little while later on the different emails, and tweets etc. I saw a really beautiful tweet from Gretchen Carlson, Fox News reporter and TV host. She has been sharing recently some encouraging words and tweets and today she tweeted -

Sometimes its tough! So…#killemwithkindsness with the following picture

So today- after hearing about kindness twice before 9am - I thought a little more about treating others with more kindness and thinking that perhaps the greatest thing we can do for friend, family or stranger is to be just be kind!  It doesn't cost us anything but sometimes a bit of time and effort, but it can make a world of difference to someone else!

Balance

I have put off writing this now for over a week. It will be the hardest to be able to discuss because it is the one I struggle with the most. If you have followed along in the blog you have already read about Perfectionism and how its a true creativity killer, and Mediocrity being it's polar opposite. So the only answer to the above problems is Balance. BUT…this is the one I struggle with this most, so here I will share what I have learned, and what I am learning but don’t misunderstand - I do not have this one figured out at all. I’m not really sure why achieving balance is so difficult, but it does seem to be an ongoing problem. There are lots of books about balance and I’ve probably read at least half of them. As a matter of fact, I just scrolled my kindle list of titles and it's quite silly how many books I have regarding balance, and organization and time management!  I have great intentions to level balance in my life at all costs, but my personality and ambition tend to just interfere with my good intentions. People much smarter than me, and more knowledgable on the subject have written multiple blogs regarding the need for balance and just how much it affects just about every area of life including homeschooling, spirituality, food prep, sports, music and a plethora of other topics.

So I have avoided this one, mostly because I know I can be almost manic when I get an idea of something new to do, because I must achieve it all right now. That’s certainly not balanced and I know it - but yet there must be a way to manage it and do it well. If you are a Christian you know there are verses that tell us to live balanced lives and that a “just balance is His delight” So, to me, that means it’s definitely doable and something that we should strive for.

I had just finished my time of Bible study this morning. Getting up at 5am is still a great habit, although I still don’t automatically wake up - it definitely requires my alarm to go off and some mornings I do hit snooze - I’m not gonna lie. But I love being up once I’m up. I get to see the moon hanging low outside of our large windows in our living room and I have gotten comfortable identifying where Venus and Mercury are and catching up on what stars are where each morning. It’s a relatively new thing for me to do this stargazing - especially since prior to my birthday I couldn’t get out of bed if the sun was not streaming through the windows! Let’s just say I could get up before then, but I definitely prefer sun streaming through the windows and rising gently.

I know at this point of the blog you are wondering what in the world this has to do with balance so bear with me I promise I’m getting there…

So I love checking out the moon and stars and planets, and I have my coffee and my quiet time. And then sometimes I read some devotional books or other writings - like my new favorite book on prayer “Quiet Talks on Prayer” by S.D. Gordon, or the BE Commentary books by Warren Wiersbe, or another favorite “A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a distracting World” by Paul E Miller.

But this morning as I drank my second cup of coffee I decided to just sit and reflect on the beauty outside. The sky was wondrously clear and set my brain to thinking how perfectly balanced and orderly our transition from night to day is. There’s no chaos in the process, because it happens the same way each time - right before dawn it is the darkest part of the night, and then as the light is dawning, the light starts to spill over the horizon before the moon and the stars exit the picture. I took some pictures to go along with what I was viewing because I thought - here is an example of balance.

Each morning the sun comes up, and a new day begins.

I don’t do anything to make it happen. Our Creator set this into motion from the beginning of our time, and He made it in such a way, that the earth spins on it’s axis, and rotates and revolves and moves through space in an orderly fashion. It’s really remarkable when you sit still and think about it.

But to top it all of, there’s such a beauty about it all. That balance has color and has variety and is awesome. I sat and took a few pictures and contemplated this balance. Night moves to day, and then back again. We have the same 24 hours each day, the same 7 days a week, and the same 52 weeks a year.

We all have the same amount of time - but we don’t all use it the same way.

I am approaching now a time in my life where I want to use my time wisely and not fritter it away aimlessly or on the things that just don’t matter in the end.

• I need to pursue the things I love to do, but also handle the responsibilities that don’t ever leave my plate.
• I need to nurture my relationships, but also have time to grow myself and to recharge.
• I need to say yes to the activities that I know are the right ones for me to handle and to do, and to find the freedom to say no without regret to the things that are not for me.

I have to be okay knowing that I don’t have to do everything and the world still continues to move without me handling it all. Because surely when things are out of balance, doesn’t that mean that I have tilted my orbit out of axis a bit and tried to be at the center of it all. This is not the way our lives are intended to be lived out- we can find true happiness when we seek to live balanced lives.

"To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short." ~Confucius

"What I dream of is an art of balance." ~Henri Matisse

"Next to love, balance is the most important thing. ~John Wooden

"Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life.  It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.  ~Thomas Kinkade