As basketball coaches, most of us are in the very intense part of our basketball seasons. There are certainly lots of challenging things this time of year for a Kingdom Coach! The x's and o's require a lot of knowledge, experience, time, and wisdom. And for those "outside the lines" issues, well they are challenging, too. Did you know that the term coach was taken from the word stagecoach? A stage coach was used in the wild west to take the gold from one place to another. As a coach of a basketball team, we are trying to take our players from one place to another, on and off the court! Do you feel there are lots of cowboys and Indians along the way trying to capture our gold?

I wanted to take a break from Jim's book and share an aha moment with you. One of the best things about coaching is watching young people transform right in front of you! Haven't you enjoyed when your players grow and mature and realize the potential that the Lord put into them? Of course the other side of that is dealing with the sadness when they don't seem to get the awesome potential that is inside of them. The frustration of watching them self-destruct right in front of your eyes. I was experiencing that frustration with one of my players a couple of weeks ago. A very wise friend sent this to me and I wanted to share it. It is written by Jan Karon. If you read the Mitford series of fiction books, you know Father Tim. He is the main character in those great novels. He adopted Dooley, who was to say the least, quite the project. This is how he recalls the journey of raising Dooley:

"He (father Tim)was asked, "How did you do it?" His answer: "With prayer. A lot of prayer. With patience too, of course, but not enough. As for love, I had no way of knowing how to love a wounded boy-perhaps because I had been a wounded boy myself, I don't know. We think of love as warm and cozy, and that's certainly part of it. But it was hard to master those feelings toward someone who vented his lifelong rage on me. I felt pretty sorry for myself sometimes. It's not the sort of thing romantics like to hear, but I found that in the end, love must be a kind of discipline. If we love only with our feelings we are sunk-we may feel love one day and something quite the other the next. I realized I must learn to love with my will, not my feelings. I had to love him when he threw his shoe at the wall and cussed my dog, love him when he called me names I can't repeat, love him when he refused to eat what I had cooked after celebrating and preaching at three Sunday services...you get the idea. And so I enjoyed the warm feelings, the stuff of the heart, when it was present between us, as it sometimes was, even in the beginning. And when it wasn't, there was the will to love him, something like...a generator kicking up. I learned over a long period of trial and error to see in him what God made him to be. Wounded people use a lot of smoke and mirrors; they thrust the bitterness and rage out there like a shield. Then it becomes their banner, and finally, their weapon. But I stopped falling for the bitterness and rage. I didn't stop knowing it was there; and there for a very good reason, but I stopped taking the bullet for it. With God's help I was able to start seeing through the smoke. I saw how bright he was, how talented, and how possible it was for him to triumph over so much that hounded him. To put a fine point to it, I stopped praying for God to change Dooley; I asked God to change me; to give me his eyes to see into the spirit of this exceptional broken boy. I started talking to Dooley as if he were bright and industrious and savvy and trustworthy. I believed it was already real, that he was already whole and able to love. And all I can say is, it began to work....for both of us."

My prayer for you this week is that you can join me in seeing each of your players as bright, talented, and a wonderful Child of God. And as great basketball players, too!

Keep the Faith

Jane