Last year, I made thsee football chocolate covered strawberries along with homemade pretzels ... the year before, football shaped oreo balls. This year, I think I am cooking nothing, doing school stuff and watching the commercials. I'm ok with that.
I LIKE college football, I tolerate all other televised sporting events .... ok, well, more like I can tolerate pro football, maybe a little pro baseball ... and yeh, that's about it. My defining remark is always, "Yeh, my TV doesn't play sports!"
I know the Ravens and 49ers are playing. That's progress for me. I've been known to walk into a party completely oblivous to the teams playing. I'm ok with that.
I even know (thanks to the news coverage ... which, by the way, I don't watch much of that either) that the coaches are brothers ... and that this monumental game has been referred to as the Har-bowl. And I wonder how the fam is gonna navigate that one. Cause sadly, in the end, one of those brothers will win BIG ... and one will lose. Not exactly a win-win!
But, I digress. This year, the cool thing about this game (for me) is that Michael Oher (of Blind Side fame) and Patrick Willis are both playing. Sports became an outlet for these two guys who didn't have the all-American family portrait. People stepped into their lives and took them in, encouraged their talents, not only got them through high school ... but they both went on to play college football for Ole Miss. And, now, here they are, playing pro ball for a Super Bowl win!
I don't know their whole life history. I do not know much about their lives now. I will not pretend to think that every decision they have made has been wise. But, still, their lives are a beautiful picture of love and redemption.
Michael Oher's story has been front and center since The Blindside. Adopted by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, he was given the food, shelter, love and support to move forward with the football skills he had had all along. Patrick Willis, apparently, was not much different, raised by an abusive single father, in a small trailer in TN without many amenities, let alone food or the other basics. When he grew weary of the abuse he and his siblings were suffering, he told the counselors at school what they were living with ... and he and his three younger siblings became foster children to the 25-year-old basketball coach and his new wife. They gave him the support and resources to get to Ole Miss.
So, bring a teacher in a public high school with kids not so different from Michael Oher or Patrick Willis, this is what I take away from this Super Bowl game day ...
1. That sport the kid is playing could just be their ticket to a better life. For some of my kids, playing sports is not only their outlet in a less than stellar home life, but it's also their chance to get out of that life. I'm not going to pass a kid just because he plays sports, but I will work with them to try to help them be who they can be!
2. You might not be able to help everyone, but you can help someone. The Tuohys and the Finleys could have easily looked the other way, or given money rather than opening their homes. It was a huge sacrifice to take in older kids. At some point, they stopped wondering "what if" and just did what needed to be done ... for that one. Sometimes we need to do the same.
3. What a difference a family makes. I have friends who foster parent, being willing to love kids like they are theirs forever, even if they are only theirs for a short time. I have friends who have moved to the ghetto to invest their family and their lives in a neighborhood most folks are afraid to even drive through. They have given family to kids who don't have that in the home they were born into. I would LOVE to adopt ... and I hope that is part of my life soon. It's a risky, gutsy, messy, beautiful gift. Just this morning at church, Doug referenced the fact that adopted children were chosen. They were known and chosen ... just as each of us is with God.
So, tonight, as I channel surf for commercials, make lesson plans for the week, and enjoy some diet coke, I'm going to cheer for Michael Oher and Patrick Willis and the families who chose them. I am going to pray more for Becca and Adam and the kids they've brought into their family and their lives. I am going to take a little more time with my own kids this week, realizing many of them don't have that picture-perfect family either and humbly realize that I am in a position to make a difference to one as well ...
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