Michaels Birth

This whole blog is aimed at helping parents raise up athletes in their lives.  I am excited to not only start writing this blog from observation but from experience.  I am SO pleased, excited, and proud to announce Trevor Michael Hester has been born.  I don’t know if he will be athletic, musical, or academic. He may be none of the above, God has created Michael for a purpose and that purpose is what I want to see lived out in my son! 

Michael had a very interesting entrance into this world and I want to share the entire story for those interested.  This is a long post and very personal.  If you are looking for a normal posting of mine, those will resume, following a walk through this first part of our precious ones journey.

IT ALL STARTED ON FRIDAY

 

History

History

This year is Arsenal FC's (English Football Club) 125 year of existence.  They are having a ceremony and putting up statues this coming Saturday of some of the Arsenal "legends".  The three people being memorialized in stone are Herbert Chapman, Tony Adams, and Thierry Henry.

It got me thinking about "legends" and how much I knew about these "legends".  I have never been to a game in London and I may never be.  I have had the opportunity to watch Henry (French name pronounced - onray) here in Colorado. He actually scored and my friends said I stopped breathing for a few minutes, it was a very cool night. Let me tell you why these three are famous and then I'll go into some other "legends".

Witnessing

Witnessing

Let me start out by saying how humbled I am.  This blog passed the 300 views mark this week and I am just humbled that people not only read once but continue to come back for what I have to say. I hope that what I am writing down helps and helps you with raising your athlete(s).

Even though my hope is that parents and childrens ministry workers will come to this blog to see how they can help their child(ren) grow closer to Christ through sports and sports analogies.  I am going to take a break from that and speak about another way we can use sports for the glory of God.

It is in our interaction with parents/coaches/other observers. What better opportunity do you as a parent have to show and/or talk about your faith. If you are a childrens ministry person reading this.  Instead of fighting sports all the time, let's work on equipping parents who may be interested in using these ideas and reaching out while involved with sports.

Winning Again

Winning Again

Every game or contest has a winner.  Sometimes we are on the good side of winning and others we are on the not so good side of losing. If our children are on either side we want to make sure we teach them how to be a gracious loser and also how to be a gracious winner.

A gracious winner is somebody who takes winning in stride.  Knowing they won on that day but also know they won’t always win and that it’s ok not to win.  Somebody who respects their opponents, somebody who knows that winning is the outcome of hard work, somebody who strives to be their best, and somebody who is willing to help others get better as well. Gracious winners are what we are hoping our children become, now and later on when they grow up and move into the adult world.