blog post 11/14/2011

I was sitting by the lake at 6:15 this morning after finishing my morning workout (insanity for now). What a beautiful day it was. The sun was already risen in the sky and the lake was so calm and flat it looked like I could throw on some ice skates and glide around on it. I found a rock to sit on and dangle my feet above the water and listen to some music as I enjoyed the peace and still of a beautiful new day.

            It takes a conscious effort to look and count the blessings you receive every morning. As I sat listening to “Still” by Hillsongs, I saw a reflection of a flower next to me on the rock I was sitting on. The flower was in bloom peeking itself out of a crack in the lava rock I was sitting on. I looked around at all the other hundreds of large lava rocks which make up the shoreline and realized that this was the only flower on all the rocks, and it was next to me.

            How could a beautiful flower bloom from the inside of a rock? It shows that even from the ugliest and darkest of situations a flower can grow. Taking away any scientific thought or wikipedia explanation of how a flower could grow from the inside of a rock, it seemed pretty cool to me. It made me think of all the people and places in the world that we can look at from the outside and write off as hopeless, and even the people we may look at as “lost causes”. People and places in this world can portray an empty, baren, and hopeless feel that we give up on, but could there be a flower blooming from within these people or places?

            This is my mission as a coach, to grow flowers. I want to take kids and foster the growth of the flower within them. Even the kids who act the hardest, have the least, and seem to have no direction in life, I want to be able to water them with teachings and direction so that within them can grow a beautiful person, and also a great basketball player J.

            Its funny that it is the little things in life that spark so much thought. This little flower that I would usually not even notice stuck out to me today. Makes me wonder, who have I been neglecting that might have a little flower inside of them that I should be helping to grow? I feel like being here in Congo I hope to plant a seed with the children so that even in this desperate, war-torn, seemingly hopeless nation can begin to bloom into the culturally and resourcefully rich country that it has so much potential to be.

            When we as humans begin to learn that within every situation, within every person, within everything there is a flower waiting to bloom. No matter how desperate, how neglected or how hopeless it may seem, we must always do our best to recognize the potential for growth. It is our duty as human beings to not only plant the seed of growth, but foster that seed into fruition so that we can change the world for the better.