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| Kassi |
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| Kelsi |
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| Kalli |
Over the years, I have had four really good fishing buddies. Although dad and I fished some when I was a kid, I was more concerned with football than fishing. So really, Kim was the first person to really turn me on to fishing. Since that day on Fontana when I got hooked (pun intended), I have loved to fish. God has blessed me with a big pond in my front yard so I get to go anytime I want to. The really fun thing though is when one of my girls goes with me.
Kim was my original fishing buddy (and is still the prettiest) but once Kassi could hold a fishing pole, she would come out and fish with daddy. She once caught a Blue Gill with only a hook, no bait! Kassi stuck with it for a little while but once basketball came along, she kinda lost interest in fishing. Then came Kalli. I gotta give credit where credit is due, Kalli has been my good-luck-charm fishing buddy. For some reason, I always caught more fish with her than with anybody. Kalli would also handle the fish more than most girls would. And now, there is Kelsi. She is going to be a really good fishing buddy. She started last year but she really couldn't manage her sponge-bob fishing pole then. This year, she is holding her own. She is the most patient out of all of my fishing buddies.
Last night, she caught her first fish and I wish I could have caught her reaction on video. She was so excited, once she could see the fish at the bank she almost through her pole down. She actually froze she was laughing so hard.
Over the years, I've had a lot of nice evenings with my girls just fishin. I'd love to tell you some emotional, tear jerking story like Trace Atkins' song 'she thinks we're just fishin' but I don't know if I have any. What I do know is that when we go fishing, shoot basketball, throw softball, play with Lego's, go swimming, or whatever we do together, I'm fulfilling God's word by bringing my kids up the way that they should go. I'm letting them know that they are important. They know that dad is busy with work and chores but I always should let them know that I'm not too busy for them.
I'd love to tell you that my years have including hundreds or thousands of evenings spending quality time with my daughters but unfortunately, that would be a lie. Fact is, I'm an imperfect father. I tend to get caught up in the "rules" and "discipline" side of fatherhood and I let mom focus on the "loving" and "nurturing" side. But as a Christian father, it is so important for us to truly live one day at a time. Yes, we have to plan for the future but some day, she's not going to be my little girl, she's going to be my young lady, then she's going to be my grown woman.
When my little girls are grown what have I taught them? Right now, who cares! Life's lessons will happen on their own, we don't have to make them happen. I just need to make sure that when they do happen, I'm there to help and to love them. I have to make sure that my girls will trust me and know that I care.
I hope you take time to cherish those "little" moments with your kids. They are the moments that they don't recognize today as being significant but someday they wouldn't take a million dollars for them. I know I'll always cherish my time at the pond with each of my girls and if I play my cards right, some day, they will too.
Live for Jesus completely today so that tomorrow you won't regret what you did yesterday.
I love you and God does too!
Regret!!! Life is full of it. In it's simplest form, regret is just the mindset of wishing you would have done something different, usually because of the outcome of a decision. I try to teach my children to not have regret in life because it is very hard to fix.
My life is full of regret; I wish I would have tried harder in school, I wish I would have been closer to my grand parents whom are all dead now, I wish I would have insisted on playing Line-Backer full time instead of Defensive End, I wish I would have had short hair, I wish I would have tried contacts sooner, I wish I would have taken my relationship with God seriously, I wish I would have maintained friendships...... I think you get the picture.
Now what does all of this have to do with wishing my brother (Jody Knight) a Happy Birthday? Well its simple, I have a lot of regret when it comes to the way I handled our relationship as children. Anyone who knows us knows that we have completely different personalities and we always have since birth. Basically, his personality was good and mine was bad. I loved my brother but I was jealous of him because he was "cuter" or "nicer" than I was. When you couple that jealousy with the fact that I was mean , I was more of a bully than a brother much of the time.
Now don't get me wrong, we had a lot of fun. We played football, baseball, and Nerf-hoop in our bedroom all the time and we played in the woods, swung on muscadine vines, played in the creek in the woods, went swimming, and rode our bikes a lot. But for anyone who has ever been in a bad relationship, the memories that tend to stand out aren't the good ones, its the bad. It would be too easy for me to tell too much about the negative so I think that I will just leave it at "I was mean to my brother, too mean".
After all these years I love my brother very much and I always have. I have always been very proud of him. I have the utmost respect for my brother. He was a great athlete in school, he was was always smarter than me, and he beat me at every video game we ever played. Now, he is a strong, reliable, Christian man. He is a loving husband and loving father. Like me, he isn't perfect but I think he is a lot closer than I am. I've done what I know to do to let him know that I love him and I know that he knows that I love him. The problem is that word "regret". I just can't help but wonder how things would be today (for both of us and our families) if I would have let the love of Christ overshadow my relationship with my brother.
And you? Do you have any regret like me? You can't go back and undo what has been done but you can ask for forgiveness and then move on. Maybe you were on the other end of the stick and you are harboring hard feelings because of the way you were treated. You must forgive.
Regret isn't healthy but it is a fact. All we can do is live our lives from this point on with no regret. If you live today completely for Jesus, then tomorrow, you won't regret what you did yesterday.
I love you and God does too!
A few weeks ago, pastor Brad used Jeremiah 18:1-4 in a message series that he preached. Since then, that scripture has been echoing in my mind. The NLT version reads like this:
The Lord gave another message to Jeremiah. He said, 2 “Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.” 3 So I did as he told me and found the potter working at his wheel.4 But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over.
Verse 4 is what resonates with me. God specifically was telling Jeremiah that Israel had not turned out as he intended, so like a potter does clay, he was going to crush Israel and start over. This verse makes me think about my personal life and testimony. I can see myself on the Potter's wheel and things are spinning and He is molding me as planned. But then a flaw comes out of the clay that messes up the pot. As long as I am willing to accept being crushed, the Potter takes me back to a form he can work with and starts again.
Sometimes, the Potter has to completely crush me because the flaw is so big that I just have to go back to the beginning. Sometimes, he just has to use a tool to dig out an imperfection. This may leave a scar but that will become part of my testimony.
Obviously, I use this verse when I do prison ministry because everyone knows that a felon needs to start over. But how about us? How willing are we to let God crush us into a lump of clay so he can start over with us? Too often, I'm afraid, we tell God "not yet, let me finish here and then you can have me". Or just as bad, we see other flawed jars and we tell God that our flaw isn't so bad, especially compared to our neighbor.
Probably the saddest situation is the person that thinks that their flaws are too bad for God to want to fix. Or maybe they think they aren't important enough for God to fix. I know this sounds crazy but after talking to the people that I have over the years, you should never be surprised how someone may think or feel. I have met so many people that just didn't feel worthy to be saved or "fixed". There are so many hurting people that don't realize that what they have done just doesn't matter to God. All He cares about is whether you are a willing vessel that is willing to let Him mold you. Are you?
God loves people, period! He may hate sin but he loves people. He loves drunks, drug addicts, child molesters, adulterers, homosexuals, murderers, and liars...to name a few. He will forgive sins and THEN put you on the Potter's wheel for him to mold. God is ready to forgive sins and accept you as you are, we just have to be willing vessels.
God loves you and I do too!
