Don’t Call it a Comeback

The last few years have been a battle between my flesh, heart, soul and mind.  It is a battle that has taken many huge and rough defeats, but has also experienced some beautiful victories.  You see, my friends, I know the war is won… In the end, Jesus has got my back!!  But we still have to live on this Earth and deal with our worse enemy, our own self!  I mean I know the Devil is real and his influence and attacks are as well.  However, many of my downfalls come from believing lies I tell about myself.  I am tired of my sin life being on automatic!  If you don’t know what I am talking about its when your body just does it, no thought, no preparing, it is just so accustomed to the action that it just happens.  Several of my emotions are like this as well.  Coaching has a become a great outlet for me, a healthy one, but I have to be on alert that I do not fall into the traps of the coaching life.  I have battled my strength in Christ for several years of my life and much like the rest of the country it happens in seasons.  The one season I seem to stay in all year is really not allowing myself to love myself.

Now, if you met me and talk to me or see me coach you would probably not believe that I do not love myself well.  I think it started many mango seasons ago when I was very little.  However, the impact it has had on my life, especially my personal life is devastating.  Now, when I am close to God and things are aligned, I feel amazing and I know this because I have no fear to share the Lord.  It is in the moments where I look at myself and sabotage myself into believing lies, like I am not worth it, or of course she wouldn’t want me etc.   The crazy thing is, the women that I have met most recently are cool and down to Earth, but guess what, No Jesus!  This is a big problem for me and then I haven’t been going to church.  I am not saying to use church as a dating place, but I need to find someone who is running this same race with me towards Christ.

I went to celebrate my mom’s 11th anniversary in Heaven with Jesus the other day.  I asked God to bring my mom along for the chat, if He didn’t mind of course.( I don’t think He did)  Anyways, it was in that chat with God that I heard myself and realized how easily I can be bamboozled by Satan.  Instead of taking every thought captive and allowing Jesus to investigate and dissect it, I am taking them and trying to make pizza out of clay!!  Its not going to happen and in the end, I end up a lot worse off in the brain and thoughts and emotions department.  I know in my life I have been  led by my eyes, whether it be food, women or material things, but lately those things have fallen off and I know I want more.  When this started to happen I started to care less and less about myself, without realizing it!  I gained over 80 pounds and ended up near 350 pounds!  When this happened I realized, along with some close childhood friends dying of heart attacks, I needed to change something.  That change has started and the more I realize the importance of church and being around others who love Jesus the more I believe these lies will be a lot easier to call out on and not believe.

I have come back to Christ, what feels like a millions times, but you know the truth is He has never let go from the moment He embraced me into His family!  I am his adopted Beloved son and in that he simply awaits for me to see my worth and for me to see myself as He sees me!

My prayer is I will fall back in love with my first love, Jesus Christ and allow the Holy Spirit to take the lead and guide me in my life of coaching, living, personal and growth as His beloved.  Amen!

One Love, One King, All Christ!!

The Battle Within

There has been so much on my soul the last few years and God has been molding me.  In his molding of me, I have found myself resisting the call to lean on him.  I go to him when I need him, but rarely am I just going to him like before.  The life we lead has many people crossing our paths and a lot of times we get so busy, we fail to realize how much of their spiritual baggage we carry with them.  I miss my times with Christ when it was just us and he could love on me and I could deal with the issues I felt were burdening me.  However, Jesus has placed me in a place of leadership and guidance.  He directs me to stand for what I believe in and then pour that into the people who are in my crown of life.  I was very worried because recently I have used some foul language, but in my frustration I realized God knows my heart and knows my battle.  I wasn’t going to let something like that turn me away from the people, especially the young men, He has placed in my path.  One of the other things I have realized is God is busting down the doors in the South Florida Amateur Wrestling World.  He is allowing these young men and women to hear about who He is and what He has done for us.

Now don’t get me wrong, we work and grind to compete for championships, but more importantly we need to focus on these kids becoming adults with integrity.  People who say what they do and do what they say.  The desire to build a strong family environment, where they can feel safe and at the same time turn the Animal on when it is time to compete.  The battle for me is to not take control, learning that I do not have to do everything.  The wisdom of knowing God has got me is an amazing feeling.  It is one I need to hold onto more and GRAB onto it.  When those temptations come in life or those whispers, those inner demons start chattering, I need to remember the battle is no more when I surrender it to Christ.  I love being a Coach because the Ultimate Coach and the Ultimate Champion is Jesus and there truly is no better way to grind.  Sacrifice and Grace… Giving up things we know take away from our grind and Grace knowing God didn’t have to but still did give us the freedom to compete and grow and become the Champions He designed us to be.

We all have a battle within, but with Christ you feel the comfort of your savior and redeemer.  He lays His hands upon you and whispers ever so quietly in your ear,  YOU ARE MY BELOVED AND WITH YOU I AM WELL PLEASED!!  I pray for a healthy season for my team and all the teams around me.  I pray for a great season for all the wrestlers in the country and pray God grows me closer to Him and guides me to be the man of God He wants me to be for those people in my path.

One Love, One King, All Christ!

Why I Coach!!

There are so many reasons to list like winning championships and wearing rings but there is so much more.  Now it would be easy to say I can make that point because I don’t have any state championships or rings so I am trying to make an excuse.  However, I think the men who win those championships realize after a while those will all be meaningless in the end.  The treasure of coaching is watching boys because young men.  The battle they have with the evil influences in life.  We all have battled those influences and many of us have fallen to it, but it has been the coaches who have given us those multiple chances at making it right that have allowed many of us to become coaches and not statistics in jail or dead.  I was definitely on the track on the latter but a coach saved me.  I believe Jesus placed a heaviness on my moms heart to have her go to my coach for help.  It was a feeling she had and she was right.

This coach came and asked me to start being a part of what he was doing.  I should have been away in college playing football and doing school and instead I was living the Miami life ( If you are from down south you know what that means!)  It was through coaching and watching men coach that I saw the impact coaches truly have on their athletes.  I wanted that because I felt like I missed out on that as a player, especially in high school.  It was God who opened up the doors for me to start coaching and he closed the doors for me to play college football.  I have been coaching since I was 20 years old and I am now 41.  I meet so many kids, who are now men, that I have coached and they tell me the impact I made on them.  God is constantly reminding me the lives that I have impacted because of the path he set me on.

I coach to develop these athletes into strong competitors but mostly for them to become men of integrity so that their word means something.  So many people we encounter today have no integrity they are simply for them self and that’s it.  Now it doesn’t mean you cant have success and be this type of coach as well.  I coach in an area where I am surrounded by Championship programs and wrestlers and it keeps me on my feet to want to be the best.  There is a love your guys have to have for you. It is not how much wrestling you know, but how WILLING are your athletes ready to run through a wall for you.  When it comes down to that deep down fight, how much does their love for you, their teammates and their team matter.  That’s why I coach, these kids I have now WANT to be Champions and honestly they all are.  The rings and championships may come but they are all champions by committing and sacrificing  to work to be the best.  Dealing with the off the mat issues brings the father figure out in all coaches.  We have to deal with what the outcome of some bad choices can be and then guide them in a way where they learn to make the right choices.  I am Happy and Solid to know my calling and it is in the trenches of this evil world where we as coaches reign.  Be a light in the darkness of most of these kids lives.  The relationships created through coaching become, for the most part, life long friendships with the athletes and their families.  I am excited to extend my crown of life and pray that Christ will shine through me,

One Love, One King, All Christ

Live Like You Are Loved