Preparing the Child for the Path
From the desk of Wally Dawkins, Athletic Director:
I received the phone call one weekday afternoon from a classmate of mine, and the news was not good.
The fellow student relayed a rumor that our Bible Teacher at Abilene 51AVƵ High School had been killed in an accident. My stomach dropped to my feet. The news I hoped, could not be true. “There is no way God would allow this to happen,” I told myself. I immediately fell to my knees praying that the rumor was just that…a rumor.
As I look back on my life, I feel extremely blessed for what God has placed in front of me and provided for me. As a young child, our family was basically “poor”. The first house I remember living in was an old boarding house that my parents, my three sisters, and I shared with two other families. It was the ‘60’s and my dad had just retired from the Air Force.
My parents did the best they could, but we had no money. And yet, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world to be a part of my family. Being an “Air Force” brat, everything was pretty much black and white with my dad. There were rules and there was order. My mother was the typical “June Cleaver” type. Very prim and proper, extremely loving, and the great encourager.
My parents did a great job of preparing me for whatever path my life would take. And it was not without difficulties. Though compared to many, my life has been free from many obstacles much greater than the ones that I have experienced. When I look back at some of the “roadblocks”, I am thankful that my parents raised me to stand on my own two feet.
For example:
-When I was six years old I was hit by a car as I attempted to run across the street after Sunday Night church. I was knocked 30 feet in the air. While bleeding profusely from the head area that eventually required 43 stitches, I remember asking Mr. Roberson, the gentleman who picked me up, if I was going to die. He didn’t answer me.
-Two years later, living in a rent house and while sitting on the floor of my living room, my dad came in from outside through the back door and had to slam the door shut, due to the doors swelling on this cold and wet Tennessee night. The living room light fixture jarred loose and came crashing down on my head. Twenty-seven more stitches. The same Doctor at the Maryville Tennessee Hospital stitched me back together after both the car incident and the light fixture. He told my parents that I would either be a genius or an idiot. (I guess we all know how that turned out!).
-My best friend in the whole wide world had a little sister who was three, the same age as my little sister. My best friend’s sister whose name was Eleanor Ann, was diagnosed with leukemia, and six months later passed away. At nine years of age, it was the first experience with death that I had encountered and it rocked me.
-On a lighter note, I was cut from my JV Basketball Team, and basketball was my sport.
-My high school Bible teacher, Mike Warren, was tragically killed while volunteering as a fireman in a nearby community.
-My best friend in high school decided to end his life in a field adjacent to both of our houses one night in Abilene, Texas at the hands of a family shotgun.
-As a college basketball player, I broke the same bone in my foot three different times, resulting in months of lost playing-practice time.
-I’ve been fired as a coach.
-My parents divorced after 43 years of marriage. It affected me deeply.
-My daughter was diagnosed with a serious illness while in middle school requiring me, her Daddy, to give weekly injections of a high powered drug. The disease had been in remission for several years but has now returned.
-I lost my sweet Momma to Alzheimer’s.
-My Dad died in 2008, my first year at Brook Hill.
-Dana Regester and Pasha Zapolskyy.
I tell you these things not to lament any of the problems I have experienced (there has actually been few), nor for any sympathy, but only to inject that due to my parents, with their advice, words, sayings, encouraging words, rules, consequences, allowing me to learn from life’s lessons, encouraging…no, more like demanding that I get up after being knocked down prepared me to face the problems that life sends our way.
At the present time, I am a seemingly well-adjusted, healthy, middle-age (?) adult.
One of the great things about the Coaching Staff at Brook Hill, is that we take a similar approach to our athletes. Our coaches at Brook Hill find a great balance in mentoring our kids to protect them when possible, but to always prepare them for what might lay before them. Our goal is to prepare our athletes Spiritually, Academically, and Athletically, not only for college, but for life.
It’s what Mr. Fletcher calls “preparing the child for the path, not trying to prepare the path for the child.”
And that’s another reason to be “ALL ORANGE…All The Time”!