From My Point of View

I'm sure by now many of you have realized that Courtney wrote the first post.  Also, I'm fairly certain by now that many of you are wondering what I am thinking about everything that's going on.  Let me be clear Courtney and I are in agreement about everything that she said in the original post; this is just me taking a slightly different spin on it.  This is looking at the situation "from my point of view."

I haven't exactly kept it a secret that one of the things I wanted to do as I grew older and became a father was to be able to play basketball (or any sport) with my children and coach their rec basketball (or another sport) teams.  I wanted to do that because my dad had done that for me, and it was one of the things that I feel was important to me and made me feel important to my dad.  However, while I am not writing it out of the question that Trae would like to and would find a way to play basketball, that likelihood is unlikely.  One of my grand dreams of being a father is, for all intensive purposes, gone.

I don't know why I was holding on to this dream, though, or that it's surprising that I am going to have to give it up.  There have been many times in my life when God's plans and my dreams have conflicted, and I have had to give my dreams over to Him.  In high school, I wanted to play basketball for the school, and I did for one year.  However as a sophomore, I was cut from the JV squad.  I wanted a degree from my favorite college, Virginia Tech.  I got in, but I messed around while I was there and was eventually suspended.  I dreamed of having a calm life without any great tragedies.  That, too, was going pretty well until April 16, 2007.

Many people know what happened on April 16, and for those of you who do, please indulge me for a second as I fill in those who don't.  On that day, a gunman went on a rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech.  By the end of the day, thirty students and professors had been shot and killed, plus the shooter.  One of those killed was my good friend Stack.  Most people knew him as Ryan, but to me and my friends in the Marching Virginians, he'll always be Stack.  He was an RA, and he was one of the first ones who was killed.  He was just doing his job as an RA when it happened, and it wouldn't be a lie to say that there were things that he did that I hoped I could do just as well him.  He was pursuing a double major, in the band, an RA, in other clubs, and still found a way to maintain a 4.0 GPA.  And then, he was just gone.

Some of you, maybe even all of you, are wondering at this point what these things have to do with Trae.  Well, I'm getting to that; this wasn't just a rabbit trail.  Each of these times I had to give a dream over to God, I have found that He has given it back.  I have truly experienced what Paul says in Ephesians 3:20a, "to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine."  I now play basketball at Milligan College, something I never imagined was attainable for someone who only played one year of high school ball and is seven years out of high school.  He led me to Milligan, a place I had never heard of, but one that has proven to be a blessing many times over.  The shooting at Tech He used to bring me even closer to Him.

It should be becoming clearer what this has to do with Trae.  I trust that, even though I am having to give up the dream of playing basketball with my son, He'll give it back, someway and at sometime.  Who knows, maybe Trae will end up playing basketball with his old man.