I tried to write a blog post yesterday but writing with the entire family up and running around the house is not ideal or really feasible. So instead of getting my last day of my Thirties post, let’s get the first day of my Forties.

I was thinking about birthdays and thought I might tell y’all about birthday memories but to be honest, I kind of want to go a bit different route today than I was originally planning and actually spent 30 minutes writing and now deleting. Instead, I want to take a verse I read yesterday and talk about it because it hit me hard, and it is something I’ve been thinking about all day today as I have been trying to organize goals for the year in my head.

Before I share the verse let me explain what I mean by organizing goals. I have recently joined a men’s group that is meant to help us grow together as Christian men and we are currently going through a book that is meant to do just that. We are trying to take what we are learning in the book and apply it to our lives and just in time for my birthday is the lesson on goals. I have always been horrible at having goals. I’ve been a person who just lets it be what it be. I have always rolled with the punches and kept going. I am trying to change this and actually set goals for myself and so I am setting specific goals for my next year of life.

The verse I read yesterday and has been on my mind is

Job 23:10
[10] But He knows the way that I take; When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.

I am one who always likes to understand who and what, when it comes to Bible verses. Who is talking and what is the context of the verse, because you can take verses way out of context if you just take one verse and try and understand just that verse. This is why I steer clear of any person who preaches using one verse from here and one verse from there. I would rather listen to a person teaching a lesson on a portion of scripture, giving background and context.

In this case, we have Job sitting in his sadness and frustration, talking to his, as he puts it, Miserable comforters in his 3 friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. He has been listening to them tear him apart and judge him for being wicked.

He then looks at them and says “HE KNOWS”, It doesn’t matter what you think, HE knows. This has given me pause the last couple of days and I will open up about something I keep pretty close to my heart because well it’s insecurity.

I started coaching because my daughters asked me to. In the past, I said No I’m busy I don’t have time for it. I didn’t have that excuse this time so I jumped in and well sucked. No really the first season was horrible I didn’t know how to motivate a team and turns out I played soccer for years and didn’t actually know the real rules. I don’t even know why I signed up again to coach the next season or the next. It was easy being me to the kids, it was easy having fun. It was hard worrying about parents not liking the fact that I wasn’t winning. I got so worried one season I messed up and personally wrote each parent my plans to make their kid better halfway through the season. That was my anxiety and worry about whether parents liked the way I coached or not.

For many seasons I went home after a loss just blaming myself for every decision or not practicing the right thing or not playing the right kid in the right spot. I was worried parents would pull the kids halfway through a season because I was a waste of time. It caused many sleepless nights and was a source of agony for me BUT I kept signing up to coach.

Then I started coaching baseball and I am not lying when I say I came home after the first practice smiling and telling my wife how much lighter I felt. I’m not sure why to be honest it’s actually a much harder and coach-reliant sport than soccer. I also think I at that point had lost so much that I had developed a shell about myself that realized it’s not the wins its the progress.

I then started reading books on coaching youth baseball and they all said the same thing. If at a young age you prioritize winning over development you’re doing it wrong. So I stopped caring about the parent in the stands asking why such and such is at 3rd and not at 2nd or in left. It does not matter anymore.

I realized that I was assigning value to what others thought about me. I was worried about people’s opinion of the outcome of a game I didn’t even control. I needed to stop worrying about that and worry about how I conducted myself as a Christian man. I had screamed at my kids for messing up in the past and that’s not what a Christian father does he corrects in kindness and wisdom. I cared about performance over attitude and that’s not how a Christian athlete should behave.

This change is somewhat newer and has taken place over the past couple of months since I’ve embarked on this journey with other men trying to put a book on how to live a better Christian life to work in my life.

This week is about goals and making ones that seem harder than I can achieve on my own. I want to take the following goals and put them to work in my life and not worry about what others think of them but what HE thinks because in the end, I want my life to be as gold.

Goal 1: Read 40 books, must be something that helps me grow mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.

Goal 2: Teach my children how to be Christian Athletes not just Athletes.

Goal 3: Finish my Bible Plan with my wife.

Goal 4: Learn how and execute a plan to start a Travel Baseball team with a Christ Focus.

Goal 5: Find a Hobby I can continue doing and not give up on.

Goal 6: Enjoy more Sunrises.