Blogging for that "ear to ear smile"

I love reconnecting with old friends. We attended a wedding this weekend and caught up with friends from our old church. We also went to a graduation open house and saw more friends there. One of the young ladies there (I remember her as a high school student) is married and expecting their first baby (her parents are younger than I am..........).

Internet connecting is fun too. I don't know what I did in the days before e-mail and blogging. I've had a small part in encouraging others to blog, too, including my sisters, my dad, my friend Theresa (all their blogs are on my sidebar) and now an old friend Rick.

Rick is a family friend from my youth who discovered my name while searching for another friend on classmates.com. He dashed off an e-mail, I responded and told him about my blogging. Before I knew it, he started his own blog, found here. In just a couple of days he has already posted three times--and his latest post particularly touched me. It is about his coaching experience, and specifically about coaching a young neighbor boy named Mike.

He writes: About 3 weeks ago, Mike's mom asked me to come over and help him. Mike was getting down about Little league. He had not been picked for the main league and was now playing in a "developmental" sort of lower level. In laymen's terms he was not any good. Mike's mom knew I had coached for over 15 years and said she thought maybe I could help.
I spent some time joking around with him, building some trust, and just playing catch. Mike is a great kid who loves baseball, but, is not blessed with inborn talent. Like lots of kids his age Mike wants to pitch. Now being a former high school and college catcher, I think pitchers are dumb as rocks, and I told him this. He laughed and said he still wanted to pitch. I spent about an hour with him and gave him 2 small things to work on. Both of these involved positioning his leg.....this way he could just throw the ball and not try to reinvent the wheel.

I had forgotten about this session when Mike's mom came by last night and said Mike had a game, would I like to go ? I was pretty stuffed from the restaurant show...(see yesterday's blog) and really wanted a nice "sit-on-the-deck" type evening but I never miss a chance to see kids play ball. So off I went to the local park. When I arrived, I stayed out of sight for the first several innings. I did not want him to feel any additional pressure having me there....after all, this is the developmental league. Now don't get me wrong, pressure is great for kids. We don't give kids enough credit these days. We think they are these tender little butterfly's who can't take any pressure. Quite the contrary....they THRIVE on it. Anyway, enough preaching.

Well I watched Mike and almost cried. He was doing exactly as I had instructed....leg came up parallel to the ground and delivery was perfect. HE LISTENED ! Now Mike did not pitch a perfect game and his team won...but not completely because of Mike. But the kid came off the field, hugged his mom, and was smiling ear to ear !!!
Some people coach to get their kid a good spot on the team, and some coach because they cannot admit they were not good enough to keep playing at the next level. Well.....I coach for that ear to ear smile. That's it. 100% (Read more....)

That ear to ear smile. I have that ear to ear smile when reconnecting with old friends and seeing God at work in their lives. Like Rick, I love kids and their responsiveness. I've been away from kids' ministry for awhile--but maybe it's time to do some reconnecting with the younger generation. And one of the greatest rewards a kid can give a teacher, a mentor, an adult friend, is that big grin. I love it.

Till next time,


Suzi