So, if you know me you know that we are still living in a hotel due to a flood in our house. It is week 3 and we are a bit…tired. That being said, life goes on. That also being said I have an excuse for anything and everything in life that I don’t want to go on. Quite easily it can roll off my tongue like this: “I am going to have to cancel, we had a flood” or “Maybe another time, we had a flood” or how about “I would like to help but, we had a flood”. Do you get my drift?
Well, thankfully, I didn’t drift this weekend. I kept my commitment to travel with 50 high-spirited football players to Palm Beach for the Heath Evans Foundation 7 On 7 tournament. Had I not gone I would have missed one of those precious slices of life that so easily slip through the fingers of fleeting time and are gobbled up by the black hole of eternity, never to be seen again.
Had I not gone I would have never heard the hilarious banter of 6 football players for 4 hours in the car to AND from the tournament. I would have been deprived of the exhilaration of 7 nail biting games that led us to a victorious tournament championship. I would have been blind to the inspirational vision of our amazing “David” sized lineman winning the lineman’s challenge because they trained harder than the “Goliath’s” they were up against.
But most of all I would have never witnessed Don Davis (former NE Patriots player) capturing the attention of 800 young men when he explained why every football player needs a Swag Bag. In “footballeze”, he explained that this was not a swag bag from retailers who want athletes to “rock” there stuff, no this was a Swag Bag from God. In this Swag Bag they would get three gifts – forgiveness, love and peace. All three were free but they couldn’t have the gifts without the bag. The bag was Christ. Then Davis invited the players to pray to accept Jesus and receive God’s swag bag.
At that moment I couldn’t think of a better visual for these aspiring athletes and I couldn’t think of a single place I would have rather been (take that flood fatigue!). Heath Evans is an amazing man for having the vision for his foundation and for this tournament that was so much more than a tournament.
Read more about the tournament and the Swag Bag: http://www.gatorcountry.com/football_recruiting/article/heath_evans_tournament_sends_message_to_players/11736#ixzz1Pka8SXHj
