Tales From The Bullpen by Jared Cudd

I’m a day late writing again. We got back late last night from a Christmas vacation with our kids. Instead of buying them presents this year we decided to take them somewhere and make memories instead. We went to the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine, Texas. If you haven’t been there I highly recommend it. It is great for kids. There is so much to do at the hotel and in that area. We had a blast. We did a lot of cool activities and had a wonderful experience. Of course we ate well too. There is everything you can think of to eat right there in that area. Even if you don’t have kids it would be an awesome experience. On Christmas morning, we made them go on a scavenger hunt to find out what we were doing. They were excited to get to go somewhere. On the way down there we asked them if they would rather go on a trip or get presents. At first they said get presents. But after going they said no doubt, they would rather go there than get presents. It was a great experience and we will plan on going somewhere like that next year as well!

With the new year brings about all the new year’s resolutions. I have made them in the past, as I’m sure most of you have. I have made them before and stuck with them pretty good and then I have made some before and I didn’t get past January 2. Every year at some point around Christmas we will be in the car and I can count on my wife saying, “You have any new year’s resolutions or anything you want to do in the new year.” I can tell it’s coming usually before she ask the question because, well for one I know it’s coming at some point. But she also gets quiet and I can tell she’s in deep thought before she asks me too. For years I usually had the same answer of, “No, not really.” I gave this answer because usually at this point I hadn’t really given much thought to it. This is usually when I started thinking about it. Her question usually jump started my thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in the next 12 months. It would range anywhere from the typical lose weight, to pray more, to do a daily Bible study, among a lot of the other regular things that a lot of people use as resolutions. Like I said, sometimes I was successful at these things for the whole year, sometimes part of the year, and sometimes I might not have made it through the first day. But nevertheless, I tried!

But the last couple of years have been different. I have had a little different approach to this. First, I have thought ahead a little bit and have been ready for her question. We were driving this weekend on our trip and I had a feeling it was coming. The scene was set. It was around the holidays. We were in the car. I was driving and she was thinking. She had that look. She was in deep thought. I was just waiting for it. Then boom, she popped the question. “So do you have any new year’s resolutions or anything you want to do in the new year.” I was fully ready to answer. I had seen it coming. I should have asked her first and really thrown her off. But I didn’t. I gave her the same answer I gave her last year. She probably doesn’t remember my answer a year ago. But it was the same as this year. I responded with, “Be better.” I know it sounds simple, but I’ll explain what it means.

I try not to be a complicated person. I try to keep things simple. I feel like life is just easier this way. That is the way I’m wired. Some people aren’t wired this way and that is fine. Everyone is different. But I like to keep it simple. So to “be better” encompasses a lot of things, but they all have some common ground. I want to be better at life. I tell my players a lot to just work hard to be better. Not just at baseball, but at life. That’s not telling them they aren’t good already, but no matter how good we are at something, we can always be better. Whether it’s a specific skill or something more broad, we can always be better at it. So when I tell my players to be better that means to be better at baseball, be a better person, be a better teammate, be a better Christian, the list could go on and on. But that is the idea. Just to be better.

Here is why I have taken that approach. In the past I would choose specific things as my new year’s resolution. Those things were important to me. I really wanted to be better in those areas. In all honesty, I usually did get better at those things and was successful to a certain point with those things. But here’s the problem that I ran into. Maybe you don’t run into this problem. Maybe it is just me. But when I focused really hard on something that I made my new year’s resolution, something else suffered. That is what I didn’t like about it. For example, I would say that I wanted to be a better baseball coach. I would work hard to be better at that. I dedicated a lot of time to being better at the coaching. There are a lot of aspects of coaching, but I put a lot of time into being better at all of them. That is the way my personality is. When I decide to focus on one thing, I almost obsess about it. That’s all I think about until I accomplish whatever it is I’m working on. While this is a great goal to have, I didn’t always go about it in the right way. In the meantime I stopped focusing on other areas of my life that needed to be healthy as well. I would stop working out and taking care of my body physically and that would effect me mentally. I would lose focus on my family because I put so much time into other things. So then the next year I would make it part of my resolution to work out more and be healthy and lose weight. For that year I would do great with that, but my relationship with God would suffer. It was just a repeating cycle of something getting better and something else suffering. My priorities weren’t always in check. I didn’t like this because I felt there was a better way to go about things for myself. Like I said, other people may not be this way, but I am. So when I focused on specific things like that, something else went backwards.

So I went with “Be better”. That has helped me tremendously. I want to be better in all areas of my life. I want to grow as a Christian, dad, husband, son, friend, and every other thing that I am. I personally can’t do this though if I focus on specific things too much. I get too wrapped up in that specific area. I have worked over the course of the last couple of years at just being better at life. For me, the spiritual, physical, and mental aspects of life go hand in hand. The closer my walk with God, the better I am at working out. The better I am at working out, the happier I am with myself and the better husband and dad I am. The happier I am with myself and the better I am with the way I treat people, the better friend I am. The better friend I am the better coach I am. You can see how this is just a circle that never stops. It doesn’t have branches that go all over the place and lead away from one another. They all lead back to each other at some point. They all effect the next area of life I will run into. It goes in a circle and at some point as I keep going around that circle, I will run back into whatever aspect of life I am dealing with at the present time. So for me, being a good Christian and following God’s word is at the top of my circle. It has to be. It is the most important thing in life and everything else feeds off of that. As I start around that circle I run into all these other aspects of life. Dad, husband, son, coach, principal, friend, uncle, son-in-law, brother-in-law, nephew, cousin, grandson, and whatever else is on that list. As I go through life and at some point I am all of these things, I will always get back to the top of the circle, being a Christian. There are days when I might encounter all of these in one day. I want to be the best I can at all of them. But they all have one thing in common, the top of the circle. GOD. All of these things are in the same circle and all have a common relationship.

Along the way it helps me if I take care of myself as well. This is just a small aspect of life and does not need to be my main focus, but I need to be active and do something physical just about every day to keep my mind and body as healthy as possible as well. I need to do this for a few different reasons, and the physical benefits are not the only reason. My wife and I get up around 5:00-5:30 every morning and do whatever workout we are doing at that time. Doing this makes a huge difference in my mental state. I am a better dad and husband among other things when I do this. I am more at peace when I do this. But perhaps all of these things are better because when I work out and take care of myself in that way, I follow that up with my morning Bible study and prayer time. That is why we get up so early. That gives us time after our workout to get our alone time with God before the kids get up. That is about the only time in our day that is quiet. That is crucial for me to keep my focus where it needs to be everyday. All of the other areas of life are really important. But I can’t neglect taking care of my body and mind or my attitude gets bad and everything else goes south too. This is because when I don’t get up early and do something physical in the mornings, I sometimes don’t get a Bible study or prayer time in because I am rushed to start the day and get where I have to be that day. When that happens that starts a downward spiral I have to work hard at to get out of. But when it does happen, I just have to remember what’s at the top of that circle. If God is not at the top of that circle, then things can get out of sorts. But when he is at the top and he is the main focus, everything else in life has a way of falling into place!!!

This may sound like a crazy idea to you and that’s ok. I encourage you to find whatever it is that works for you. Find whatever it is that motivates you and helps you to be the best you that you can be. If it is individual resolutions that help you to stay motivated and be better then that is great. Go with it. If you can have specific areas of focus and still be good at everything else, then you are better at that than I am. But to me they are all intertwined and I have to work hard at all of them to make any of them successful. My challenge to you this week is find your motivation. Find what works for you. Find what you need to do to be successful and do it. If you don’t have a plan then search for ideas and find what works for you. It may be a combination of different ideas from different people that you take and make our own. It may be precisely what someone else does. You may just come up with your own plan like I did that works for you. Any of these is perfectly fine. But just don’t get complacent with how things are. Don’t fall into the trap of that’s how it’s always been done or that everything is fine the way it is. I did that for awhile and I didn’t like where that was leading so I decided to make a change. I encourage everyone to find what works for them and to simply “Be Better”!!!

Well, I’m a day late but hopefully not a dollar short. I didn’t get to write yesterday because we were finishing up a wonderful Christmas weekend with family. It’s that time of year when schedules are crazy and people are out of their normal routines. It is also my favorite holiday season of the year. I love Christmas music. That is all that plays in my vehicle from the first of November until January. I am constantly humming or whistling one of those songs during this time as well. I also love getting to see family. I love the food. I love everything that the Christmas season brings. The Christmas spirit is contagious. It is just a wonderful time of year. Really the only time I don’t like the Christmas season is having to be in public this time of year. I have gotten better over time with this, but I’m still not great at it sometimes. I don’t like crowds to begin with. It makes me a little crazy when we are somewhere and it is shoulder to shoulder people. That is when the pleasant Christmas spirit leaves some people and the Grinch enters them. Sometimes that Grinch is me. With that many people around there are that many more opportunities for people to be rude. I try to be really positive and have that wonderful Christmas spirit, but sometimes the Grinch comes out. I’m especially tempted to be that way when someone is rude to my family. You can be a lot of things to me, but don’t be rude to my kids or anyone in my family.

This past weekend we went to Oklahoma City to stay the weekend with my wife’s family and do some fun things for Christmas. We stayed in a hotel downtown. There are 8 grandkids ranging from 12 years old to just a few months old. So obviously there is going to be a little noise when you have that many kids involved. Yesterday morning we were out in the hall getting ready to leave for the day. We were just standing around talking and this couple came out of their room. Their room was right there around where our 4 rooms were. We all greeted them with a smile. We didn’t think much about it. My brother-in-law said, “Oh sorry, hopefully y’all were able to get a little sleep last night.” He was just trying to be pleasant and make a little conversation. No big deal. Everyone just kinda laughed and went on. Except for the fella coming out of the room. He responded with a very sarcastic, “Um, no. Sure didn’t.” The wife came through with an eye roll and a, “Yah, sure.” I’m not sure at what point they lost sleep during this deal. It wasn’t like we were up until the wee hours of the morning running sprints in the hall or having one of the kids birthday parties outside their door. It was 11:00 AM by this time so surely they weren’t upset about us being in the hallway and them missing out on sleep that late in the morning. But, for some reason they were unhappy.

It didn’t immediately register with me exactly what they said and how they said it. It took just a minute for that to process. That’s probably a good thing because I might have went against all the things I wrote about in last weeks post about the things we say to people. My gift of sarcasm might have came into play because like I said earlier, don’t be rude to my kids or family or you might get the Grinch. But after that processed and we all understood what they had said they had already gone down the hall and out of sight. I really wanted to run into them again before we left the hotel. Not because I wanted to be mean like I might have done immediately after they made their comments. I wanted to take the opportunity to be nice to them. I wanted to greet them with some Christmas cheer. I was hoping maybe we would all meet them on the elevator and we could all start caroling. That would have been awesome. Can you imagine what it would have been like if all of us were on the elevator with the two of them and we would have broke out in jingle bells? Then they got 16 “Merry Christmas” when we all got off the elevator. Someone once told me when someone is rude to you, kill em with kindness. That’s what I wanted to do. But, we never saw the people again and we didn’t get to spread any of that Christmas cheer with them. But it did make me think about how they were perceived by all of us. It didn’t have a negative effect on the rest of our day. We went on about our normal business. But what if that type of behavior or attitude would have ruined someone else’s day? What if we treat someone like that and they are already down on their luck? What if they have some things going on and that just adds to their misery instead of lifting their spirits like we could do? Hopefully we are mindful of these things and work really hard, even when it’s not easy, at lifting others up.

When you hear the word Christmas what do you think of? When you were a kid you probably thought of gifts. As you get older you may think of family. You may think of your kids and the fun things you can do with them during the holidays. A lot of things may come to our mind. This is also the time of year when we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That is the reason for the season as the saying goes. Sure all these other things go along with it and they are great. The presents, family gatherings, great food, and Christmas cheer are all part of the season. But we also have an opportunity to celebrate the birth of our Savior. Luke 1:30-32 says, “But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High'”. This verse sets the stage for everything that came after this. We are so fortunate as Christians to have Jesus as our Savior!

The birth of Jesus is significant for us as Christians for so many reasons. One reason I think about it being so significant is that is shows God’s love for us. This was God becoming man and walking the earth. We all know the rest of the story when talking about God’s love for us. He gave that Son for us. I can’t imagine a greater love than that. That was the ultimate sacrifice for us. I can’t even fathom that. I can’t wrap my mind around that sacrifice and how hard that would be. But that is how much our God loves us and it all started with His birth. This is the time of year when we get to celebrate this. We get to gather together as family and friends and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and remember how important that birth is for our eternal life. What a blessing it is to be able to do that!

As we gather with family and friends over the next week or so I hope everyone has a great time. I hope it is filled with many laughs and great memories. This is a wonderful time of year. As Christians we have an opportunity to not only gather with family and have a great time, but also share that Christmas spirit with those around us. Being a Christian brings a feeling of peace to us. We can share that peace with others. We can perhaps have an impact on other people that don’t have that feeling of closeness and that relationship with God. We never know when our actions and the way we treat people will have a positive impact on people forever. Just like my story I talked about in the beginning, I would have been tempted to spread some Grinch at first. But, hopefully I would have spread some cheer instead. They might not have taken it that way, but then again maybe they would have. I might not have seen the results of that cheer being spread because they might not have let me see that. But maybe later with someone else they might have paid that cheer forward. We never know. So make sure this holiday season to spread that cheer around. As Christians, we have so much to be thankful for and being able to celebrate the birth of Jesus and being able to spread his word through our actions is one of them. My challenge for us this week is to be constantly mindful of what kind of Christmas cheer, or Grinch, we are spreading and to make sure that we are showing those around us of our love for Jesus Christ by our actions. We should do these things all year long, but this time of year is always a good time to refocus and realign our actions with the way they need to be. I hope everyone has a great holiday season and has an opportunity make wonderful memories with those they love. May God bless every one of you and Merry Christmas!!!

You never know when you will have an opportunity to learn a life lesson. It can happen anywhere, anytime. I recently heard a story about the tongue and how powerful it can be. It was told by a guy that sat at a basketball game one night. He was sitting with some people he knew. The gym was packed. There were also people all around him that he didn’t know. As he sat there for a little while, he couldn’t help but hear the people above him. He had no idea who they were. They were talking negatively about everything that there was, except their own kids of course. He listened to them talk about their team’s coach, the other team’s coach, their team’s players, the other team’s players. He heard them talk about all kinds of subjects during this game. The one thing that he noticed was that nothing they said, literally the entire time he sat there, was positive. Everything they said was negative about someone or something. They complained about things. They made fun of and criticized people. This went on for quite some time. He thought several times about saying something to them, but didn’t think that would probably end too well. Just down the row from him sat a lady by herself. He thought to himself she had to be hearing everything that he was hearing. He looked over casually at her one time and noticed that she was crying. His curiosity was getting to him. He wanted to ask her what was wrong. He didn’t have a clue. He wanted to ask her if there was anything he could do to help. It was just unusual to see someone sitting at a ballgame crying. Then he noticed the lady turned around to the people behind him. Without raising her voice or saying anything in a demeaning manner she told them, “I have sat here and listened to you criticize or make fun of pretty much everyone in this gym. But the last person you made fun of was my son. I would really appreciate it if you would keep your comments about other people, including my son to yourself. If you want to think negatively of people and have that conversation, please do it when you aren’t around other people. I know you don’t know me, or my son, but he is doing the best he can and doesn’t deserve to be made fun of by some complete strangers, or anyone for that matter. Thank You!” He wanted to stand up and clap and cheer for her, but he thought that might kill the mood that she had just established. He wasn’t sure how the people behind him would take this. But, to his surprise one of the gentlemen behind him said, “Mam, I am so sorry. We had no idea that was your child and we are so sorry for saying anything negative about him.” As I heard this story, I had a lot more respect for those people after hearing how they responded. I also had a lot of respect for that mom that stood up for her child. Perhaps the biggest reason why I respected that mom so much is the way she went about it. She could have turned around and let it eat on those people. But she chose to get her point across in a very mature, effective way. Maybe she helped some other people realize the impact their words were having on other people. I don’t even know if this story is true, but it illustrates very effectively how powerful the tongue can be.

This is a topic that is hard for me. I have a lot of things I struggle with. I have a lot of personal flaws. But the tongue might be the hardest for me to control. I’m not sure why, but I have always wanted to have the last word in an argument. I always wanted to be right. But as I have gotten older, I have tried to be more careful with what I say about others and how I say things. But that doesn’t mean that I have mastered it yet. I have talked about before how I have prayed for patience, and controlling the tongue is one thing that goes along with that. I struggle with this and I work hard to try and get better at it. But just like many other things, I catch myself sometimes not being very good at it.

My wife are I don’t argue very often, but when we do I like to get the last word in. I don’t know why, maybe because I am always right (just ask her). She might not agree with that. This might in fact spark another debate between us. The problem is sometimes we are so much alike that it takes awhile to end one of these arguments because we both like to have the last word. We are both pretty good at sarcasm. We both are too competitive to just give in. We don’t like the other one to feel like they got the best of the other one. So we just keep on with those little sarcastic jabs. Then that turns into frustration for one while the other walks away feeling like they just conquered the world.

So today after church, knowing I was going to write on this today, I had an opportunity to put this into practice and see what the end result was. She told me that we needed to go by the grocery store to get some things so she could make something for our church Christmas party. So when I hear grocery store I think United or Homeland. To me that is a grocery store. It is also so much easier and quicker than Walmart. But she says she needs to go to Walmart. There are times when I would rather have teeth pulled than go to Walmart. It just takes forever and is so frustrating. Men will understand this part. Sometimes you go in the store with your wife. But, sometimes she says that it won’t take long because she just has to have a few things, so you drop her off at the front and go park. You park thinking that she was serious about just needing a few things. You watch that clock as the minutes tick by. Ten minutes go by and that could be due to long lines. Twenty minutes go by and that could be that she is talking to someone. Thirty minutes go by and it could be a combination of several things. Past that it is unexplainable. I sometimes envision her standing in an isle just waisting time to frustrate me. I imagine her just standing there on Facebook or texting someone with a big smile on her face knowing that I am getting a little perturbed. Now there are times in the past when I would send little jab text of sarcasm thinking that was going speed her up. I would ask her if she got lost in there or I would tell her the fresh food was going to spoil before she got back to the car. I’m not sure why I thought this would end well or speed her up. But repeatedly I did. So then would come the time when she arrived back in the car. It wasn’t enough that I sent those text, but I would just have to get another little jab in there about finding everything alright or needing to fill up with gas now because it took so long. This would no doubt end with a sarcasm filled spat. These sarcasm filled spats are what caused my sister-in-law, and probably others, to question whether we should get married. But here we are, still surviving one Walmart trip at a time. Then today I tested a new method.

Today I sat in the car for 30 minutes or so outside Walmart, all for just a few items. I had things to do this afternoon. But I didn’t send her a text. I waited PATIENTLY. When she came out I went and picked her up. I didn’t say a word about the amount of time she was in there. I had so many good one liners to throw out there, but I didn’t. I refrained. I held back my sarcasm. To my amazement there was no arguing. There was no sarcastic aura about the car that caused frustration or dissension between us. In fact we had a great conversation on the way home. It was productive. I guess maybe it is better to just remain silent and not be negative about some things. A little piece of me felt defeated because I still wanted her to know that I felt it could have been done quicker. But I still remained silent.

As I said earlier, I am as a bad as anyone about talking about others sometimes. Sometimes we think of controlling the tongue as not cussing. It is so much more than that. It is about not gossiping or saying rude or negative things about others. It is about not having a negative impact on other people by the words we use. They don’t have to be about that person to have a negative impact on them. If our words cause them to have negative thoughts about someone or something then we haven’t used our words wisely. The saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is not really true. We have all been hurt by someone’s words at some point. We have also all hurt someone else by our words at some point. James 3:6 says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” James compares the damage a tongue can do to a fire that can spread quickly. The tongue can do severe damage. Once things are said they can’t be erased. Satan uses our tongue to destroy a lot of relationships and cause a lot of problems. Sometimes we think that even if we say some hurtful things that we can apologize later and everything be ok. While we most certainly can and should apologize to those we hurt, we also can’t take the scars away that those words caused. Proverbs 13:3 says, “He who guards his lips guards his life. But he who speaks rashly will come to ruin.” The things these verses warn against are so difficult to do. So many times we say things without thinking. We don’t intend for anything negative to happen when we say things sometimes. Those people in the first story of this post didn’t mean to hurt that lady’s feelings. They weren’t purposely thinking about talking bad about that lady’s child. But they spoke without thinking about the ramifications of their words.

Then there are other times when we know what the result of our words are going to be. I know every time that when I say something about sitting in the Walmart parking lot my wife is not going to respond with, “You know what, you are right honey. I took took too long and next time I will do much better.” If she came back with that I wouldn’t even have a response. I might have a false sense of victory thinking that I had won the battle and made her realize she took to long. But I know that’s not going to happen. I know that she is going to feel attacked and come back with a response and we will go back and forth. So what I learned today was that if I can’t say anything positive, just don’t say anything. It just makes the rest of the day go better.

My challenge to everyone this week is to be very aware of the words we use. Be aware of those around us and what our words are doing to them. Think before we speak. Ask ourselves if what we are about to say is going to have a negative or positive impact on others. Ask ourselves if what we are about to say is gossip, truth, or even necessary to say. I know I have a lot of work to do on this. Not only in my conversations with my wife and kids, but also with everyone else I am around on a daily basis. It is so easy to talk about others or say things that we aren’t sure are even true just because that’s what we heard. What if we all thought before we spoke. What if we focused on being positive with our words. How much better would our lives be? How much more positive would our outlook be because of getting rid of so much negativity? Negativity is everywhere. It is in the way we talk. It is all over social media. It is all over television. Nothing can change if we don’t start with a change in ourselves. Sometimes we don’t realize how much negativity we are around or cause ourselves until we take a deep, purposeful look at it. Let’s focus this week on only positive words and see how that changes us and the others around us!!!