Let another praise you, and not your own mouth;
a stranger, and not your own lips.
It was a great lesson for us toward living our lives with a humble spirit, a lesson we needed to learn and continue to work on. Our parents certainly have always lived their lives with humility.
We did, though, have family friends who knew the rule, and before long, they’d help us out, asking us on a Sunday morning at church, “Any of you boys had any games lately? Anything happen?” And so we would fill them in.
But at the same time, we began to realize that it was nicer to not hear ourselves brag, and so over time, we all just began talking about ourselves less and less.
Plus, we were given a dollar if someone complimented us on our character to Mom or Dad. We quickly became focused on those matters—such as character and humility—rather than on trying to impress someone with our exploits on or off the field.
Life on the farm,
like anything, had its pros and cons.
The good news? There was plenty of room to take batting practice without losing a ball in a neighbor’s yard or worrying about a nearby window, and to play whatever other games we wanted to play.
The bad news? My dad made it perfectly clear that ours was a working family farm, and he and Mom were thrilled to have three healthy boys available every day for all the manual labor life on a farm required.
Actually, even that was good news, as I look back on it. Shortly after we moved, I became “farmer strong,” simply from lifting hay bales or chopping wood or chasing down cows.
Dad used to throw us batting practice in one corner of the yard, and we dented the fence more than once from pitches that he threw to us or we threw to each other while working on our pitching technique. My parents are now having to replace the fence to keep their grandchildren safe around the pool—I guess we left too many dents behind. We would hit balls—for hours on end—toward the tree line on the other side of the pasture. Even with all the extra farm chores we had to do, living on the farm was tremendous. On one occasion, we had a visit from a former White Sox pitcher, Joel Davis, who met my dad through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He wasn’t going to be able to care for his dog any longer, so he dropped him at our house. The dog, named White Sox because of his white feet, became a family fixture. As did the stories of the balls that Joel hit, before he left that day, well into the tree line across the pasture.
Dad finally wised up before he threw so much that he tore up his shoulder. So he drove up to Fernandina Beach, north of Jacksonville, to buy some fishnet to make a batting cage. With a number of four-by-four posts, we built what turned out to be a pretty sturdy and functional structure, and then we put a pitching machine in it. From that point forward we were set. We could pitch to each other to our hearts’ content, without fear of losing baseballs to the surrounding woods. All with no further wear and tear on Dad’s shoulder.
Somewhere in there, in all the time spent with the stretchy surgical bands or the competitive streak in T-ball or the endless hours of batting practice, I realized that I never wanted to “fit in.” I mean, I was only five, so that exact phrase, “fit in,” never occurred to me. But as I look back now, it was clear that very early on the seeds of that concept began taking root and sprouting within me in everything I did. As I got older and heard kids talk about wanting to “fit in,” or wanting to be “normal,” I never quite understood why they felt that way. What’s the point of being “normal”? That sounds average to me, and I never felt like I was created to be average.
I remember reading Coach Tony Dungy’s book
Uncommon
and in it his challenge to so many, especially those of us within the younger generation, to not be “common.” From lessons in his own life, he encouraged us to always strive to be “uncommon” and align our lives with the ways of the Lord.
So if everybody was doing the same thing, the normal and usual thing, I looked for a different way. The crowd, by definition, gravitates toward average, which could tend toward middle of the road or toward mediocrity. If we’re all special
in the same way
, then nobody really is. A view of that kind of life, I believe, discounts the belief that God created each of us special, each with gifts and abilities like no one else’s. He created each of us different, fully intending that we would use our unique gifts and abilities to do what He created us to do.
You and I were created by God to be so much more than normal. My parents always told us that was true of each of my siblings and me.
Following the crowd is not a winning approach to life. In the end it’s a loser’s game, because we never become who God created us to be by trying to be like everybody else. I figured that out when I was five, but I couldn’t have expressed it then. I just knew that I wanted to be different in those areas that excited me. I wanted to be me—and then I began to understand that I wanted to be who God created me to be.
The most important thing
that has occurred in my life happened in those early years. When I was six, I knew I was ready to accept Jesus into my heart, to accept what He had done for me to allow me to go to heaven.
I tried to bring it up with my dad. After all, we talked about Bible verses every day as a family, and I’d heard him preach somewhere around a million times by then. Here I was, the last one in the family to trust Christ. I knew I was ready and that I wanted to. Every time I tried to bring it up with Dad and told him I was ready, he would question me on my understanding of the gospel message to make sure I was not taking this decision lightly. The first couple of times I talked with him, his questions frustrated me. Remember, I was only six years old.
There came a time during which, for several nights in a row, I went to bed, thinking,
What if I’m in a car accident or something else happens tomorrow? I want to end up in heaven.
When I was five, friends took Peter and me to Jacksonville Beach. I was wading near the shore, when I was suddenly caught up in a rip tide and pulled quickly out to sea. Eight-year-old Peter ran into the water to save me. Even though he was immediately caught up in the dangerous tide too, he managed to swim out to me and hold me up long enough to get us both rescued by the lifeguard. A close call.
So one morning after breakfast, after Robby and Peter went out to work with Dad, I went straight to Mom. “I want to ask Jesus to come into my heart. I’m ready to be saved. I tried with Dad, but he’s just too hard.”
Mom and I went over to the couch, and I prayed for Jesus to come into my heart. Since then, I’ve known that I am headed to heaven and have tried to live in a way that pleases Jesus.
We all laugh about it now, but Dad will tell you that he is very glad I went to Mom that morning.
And that afternoon we went to Epcot to celebrate.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
—R
OMANS 1:16
Every year,
whatever sport was in season, we played it—my brothers and I. Since there were only three of us, we set up certain rotations in order to maintain fairness while still being competitive.
For example, every time it would rain, we’d head out to play football in the yard. There’s something fun about football and mud. One of us would play quarterback, while the other two would face off against each other, with one as a receiver and the other the defensive back assigned to cover him. The receiver would have “four hard,” meaning four downs to score a touchdown. After those four downs, we’d rotate positions so that each of us would play each of the three positions at least one time through. If we played longer, we made sure we each played each position an equal number of times to fairly determine the winner. You’d get a point for scoring whether you were playing as the receiver or quarterback, while the defensive back would get a point for stopping you from scoring. In those early days, when we were still fairly small and our bones pretty resilient, we would also play tackle. It may just have been that my brothers only wanted to play tackle until I got bigger.
We didn’t have a set score that we played to, but rather played until we got called to school, to work or eat, until someone got hurt, until we got into a fight with one another, or it got so dark that we finally could not see well enough to play.
We played basketball in the rain as well, with puddles to navigate through and around as we tried to dribble. And forget hanging on to the ball when shooting. You simply tried to keep your hand as close as possible to the ball—as it began slipping out of your control from being so wet—and long enough to give one last guided push toward the basket with the hopes that somehow it would find its way there. We didn’t play in those conditions to make shooting difficult, but I’m convinced those years of informal “wet ball drills” probably helped my skills in both football and basketball.
We weren’t always outside, although my mom probably wished we were. We had a version of the old “Oklahoma” drill that every football coach has run at practice at one time or another. We’d play in one of our rooms—usually the room of whoever hadn’t been in trouble lately. Two of us would stand at opposite sides of the room, one of us with a football. The third one would watch for Mom, since she had a strict no playing ball in the house rule, and do a bit of refereeing or breaking up a fight, if necessary, while waiting his turn.
On a signal, we’d begin to run at each other, with the idea being that the defender would have to tackle the ball carrier before he reached the other side of the room. Our rooms weren’t all that big, so there was quite a lot of wrestling each other down to the floor before the guy with the ball reached the other side of the room.
So we’d play until something was broken or Mom came and kicked us outside. But it was never as good a game outside as inside, where you were in a confined space with very little room for escape or maneuvering to get by. It was definitely a power game inside.
Someone was always getting hurt when we played—regardless of the game. And it was usually Peter. Once we were playing a three-way game of catch in the yard. We were each a pretty good distance apart, forming the three points of a rough triangle, and instead of following the pattern that we had followed all that day, where Robby was throwing to me, Robby decided to switch things up. Thinking that Peter was looking, Robby crow hopped and wound up to put his full weight into the throw. Of course, Peter wasn’t looking, fully expecting that Robby would be throwing to me, as had been the pattern that day; and so we ended up having to take him into Mom with a bloody nose and bruised face for some patching up.
Another time, we were playing baseball but decided to use a basketball instead of a baseball just to see what would happen. Nothing good, as it turned out, at least as far as Peter was concerned. I was pitching, and the bat richocheted with Peter—swinging as hard as he could to see how far he could hit the basketball—right into his face.
More blood. More bruises. Back to see Mom.
Our favorite Peter injury, however, was less about sports and more about one of his moments of pretending he was a superhero. Funny that a kid who is so smart could have done something so crazy. I was about eight when he climbed a rope which had been attached to the ceiling in the barn, and decided to swing from one end of the barn all the way to the other. All went well until his shin discovered, at a high rate of speed, the post-hole digger that hadn’t been put away and was sitting sideways in the barn, causing his shin to split wide open. Blood was everywhere.
Enter Mom, once again, on the scene.
Living on a farm, there was always a certain amount of excitement around the house, and if it wasn’t one of us getting injured, it was the realities of farm life that kept things interesting. On one occasion, my dad decided, this being a working farm and all, to have a controlled burn to get the weeds out of the pasture. Controlled burns were normal but occasional occurrences, and completely necessary in settings such as ours. Apparently “controlled” is in the eye of the fire starter, especially when you don’t call the forestry department to forewarn them.
The first indication we had that things were no longer under control was when Dad ran into the house frantically to get our help. As it turned out, the pasture was ablaze, and the fire was moving rapidly toward the woods. If it had reached the woods, it would have been devastating not only to us but to the families around us as well. All of us—Mom, my sisters, my brothers—struck out to help Dad contain the fire.
The fire hadn’t yet reached the woods, but we all noticed that it had jumped into our neighbor’s pasture. The good thing was that our neighbor would no longer have a weed problem. Hopefully he would still have a house.
For the next few hours, we used shovels to beat on the edges of the fire. All of us did, although Christy got out of working early. She had a piano audition that day but was worried about leaving us. We all insisted she go, however, and she focused well enough to earn a college scholarship. The rest of us followed in her footsteps, earning scholarships to college, and it’s pretty funny that it started that day, during the fire. Even Otis, our dog, was pawing at the flames. Finally, through what had to be God’s grace and our collective efforts, we won out.
From that point on, Dad has always called the forestry department for a burn permit ahead of time for a number of good reasons, one of which no doubt is that he doesn’t have a bunch of kids on hand to help put out any more “controlled” burns. Afterward, Dad took us all inside and used a teachable moment to have a brief Bible study on James 3:1–12. With the smell of the fire still on our clothes, Dad got us glasses of water, sat us down, and picked up his Bible. “Just like a small spark can cause a big fire,” Dad said, “the smallest part of the body, the tongue, can cause great damage when we do not control it. A wrongly chosen word can hurt a reputation, alienate a friend, or break a heart,” he continued, and had us each name a word that could hurt someone. A memorable lesson.
In general, all these activities—“controlled burns” and sports—served to toughen us up, usually because no matter what, we wouldn’t stop working or playing. Looking back, my injuries were numerous but much less serious than either Robby’s or Peter’s. I was never as much of a daredevil. But whether we twisted an ankle or cut a chin (my brothers, my dad and I all have chin scars), the competition and winning was what mattered, so we played through everything. Anything not to quit.
And just as the farm made us tough, it also helped make us smart. As we were growing up, it was the backdrop for much of the learning we did—starting when we were toddlers and continuing until we were packing our bags for college. From the moment I was born, homeschooling was our way of life.
It’s funny how, because I enjoyed homeschooling so much, it seemed like such an obvious choice for our family, but back when my parents first did it, it was far from common. My parents made the decision to homeschool their children long before I came into this world. It happened at some point after my older sister, Christy, was born, but before she’d started school. Dad was seeking direction and was struck by this passage in Deuteronomy 6:4–7:
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
After reading and studying that passage, he knew he wanted us to homeschool. That way, they could focus on the curriculum and character lessons that they thought were most important, while emphasizing the best teachings for their children on a daily basis.
Mom thought he was crazy, but she’d gotten used to his ability to follow wild ideas to some logical conclusion—regardless of what the crowd thought. It was the early 1980s, and she didn’t know anyone who was homeschooling. She didn’t know if it would be a good idea for her or for our family in general. In fact, people told her that her children would never be able to play sports or even go to college if she homeschooled. So they began to pray specifically about it: Dad for guidance, wisdom, and clarity on the direction God wanted them to go on this subject, and Mom that God would take the idea out of Dad’s mind if it really wasn’t the right decision for them as a family.
Ultimately, they both felt led to teach their children at home, which at first proved to be a struggle for Mom. Not only was the bulk of the responsibilities for homeschooling assumed by her, but at that time there weren’t the support structures and resources for homeschooling that are available today. In fact, in researching the materials to use that would be appropriate, a number of times she would call publishers or educational-resource providers in the hope of getting the proper materials. When the companies realized that Mom was interested in using their materials to homeschool, they refused to sell them to her.
Anyhow, Mom was determined to do it right and in the best way possible for us, and she stuck with it, tracking down materials or creating them herself. Her persistence turned out to be a wonderful blessing for all of us, not just because of the quality education we received, but also because of the flexibility that it afforded us.
Even though I was young, I understood and appreciated the flexibility that homeschooling provided. My parents were able to design the structure, schedule, and content however they wanted. During the sports seasons, they could shift the bulk of the workload to earlier parts of the day so that we didn’t have a conflict with any afternoon or evening practices, games, or other activities. If they had to, they could also move studies to a different day altogether.
The flexibility with travel and sports was convenient, but the real success of homeschooling came from the fact that we were actually learning. Mom set the curriculum, and she could tailor her teaching to the needs of each of us. She used games or whatever methods were necessary to reach us and get the lessons across—a freedom she took full advantage of. In our house, school could be happening at any moment—even at meals—so you always had to be prepared. She’d put different placemats at various times at our places around the table—United States presidents, the periodic-elements table, state and world capitals—and we would be challenged to learn everything on our placemat before the others could. Everything with us always had to be a race or a competition; Mom knew that and used it to enhance our learning process. We even had manners contests.
Of course, as my parents would eventually find out, those placemats gave a decided advantage to Peter and to my sisters, Christy and Katie. My dad had long known that he was dyslexic, but it still took a while before my parents recognized that Robby, too, had dyslexia. By the time I came along, it didn’t take them long to spot it in me as well. The fact that I was still struggling with reading when I turned seven was probably a pretty good clue that something in my head was working differently and that I had dyslexia.
Simply put, my brain processes things differently than most people. It’s the same for my dad and Robby. All three of us are kinesthetic (or tactile) learners, meaning that we learn best by doing. My most effective learning style is not particularly visual, so I don’t ordinarily retain as much simply from reading about something. I’ve heard others describe the feeling as reading when they’re tired and looking back at a page, knowing all the individual words and yet not being sure what the page was about. That often happens to me in the normal course of reading anything, whether I’m tired or not. Therefore, I learned to use other ways to supplement my reading to make sure I learned all that I should.
Mom was always great with it. She had seen how things like this could stigmatize children and adults—into feeling that somehow they were less than, or not as smart or capable as, others. She had seen it in society, in schools, and in other settings, and she was determined that this would not be the case for her children. She explained to Robby and me that our dad has great intelligence as measured through his IQ score which is off the charts, but he just has to learn in a different manner. Through Mom, we learned and believed that it had nothing to do with intelligence, but was just the way our minds processed the information before us.
She helped me realize that dyslexia wasn’t a disability, just a difference. My learning skills and information-processing abilities mean that I’m predisposed to learning much more quickly from “walk throughs,” which football coaches love to have anyway, where the players literally walk through the plays they will want to execute during the game, and walk through them at a slower speed than actual live-game or practice situations.