Tales From The Bullpen by Jared Cudd

We live in a digital age. We live in a time where we can get information immediately. It is at our fingertips either with a computer, ipad, phone, or other devices. We want information and we want it now. We want results for something and we want it immediately. We rely on wireless connections a lot these days. Whether it’s at work or home, so much of what we do is wireless. We have wireless phones. We have wireless video surveillance. So much of what we use on a daily basis is wireless. But, perhaps the most effective and most important wireless connection we have is prayer to God. We have a direct line to God any time that we want. How much better could it be?

Prayer is such an important part of a Christian’s relationship with God. But, sometimes it gets neglected. Sometimes we feel like we can do it all ourselves. Having a strong prayer life comes with maturity as a Christian. As a young, sometimes immature Christian, my prayer life wasn’t real strong. I tried to pray sometimes at night. But, more times than not I found myself going to sleep while I prayed. I would shut my eyes and began my prayer with great intentions, and not too far along the way I was out. I would wake up the next morning and realize that I didn’t get very far along with that prayer. I guess kneeling beside the bed like you do as a kid sometimes might have been a better idea than being in bed, under the covers, tucked in all cozy while praying. Maybe I would have made it a little longer in my prayer before I fell asleep leaned up against the bed. But for a long time I didn’t do much about it. I just continued to pray at night until I went to sleep and that was about it.

I have chronicled my journey in this blog and have mentioned prayer several times. As I have matured as a Christian it has became a huge part of my life. I had to make it a point to make it a part of my day. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. It wasn’t always that way. I started getting better at it when we had kids. At one point when Kristin worked in another school district, I was in charge of getting the kids ready and getting all of us to school every day. I had someone at our church tell me about when they would take their kids to school when they little. She said that she would stop at the front door and pray with them before they left. The way some of those mornings went for us, I felt this was a good idea and possibly necessary. So we started implementing this idea. The kids got used to it and would even remind me when I forgot. I also wanted them to learn, just like I did when I was a kid, to pray at meal times. So we would do that. Then as they got older we have let them say the prayer sometimes. Now that is interesting because you never know what they will pray for when they are younger. Their hearts are so pure and their intentions so innocent. Sometimes, when they were younger, after about 5 minutes and praying for everything in our life, both fictional and non-fictional, we would have to shut it down and have more of a blanket prayer for all of our family and friends. Otherwise, we were going to ask God to keep everyone in our favorite tv shows, favorite sports teams, class, school, church, family, and county safe and healthy. But, the intentions were still so sincere.

As time went on I started making it a bigger part of my life. I started keeping a prayer list and prayed every morning after my Bible study. Then I would find myself praying in the truck. I was praying several times a day. I was praying more than I ever had. Not just at night while I went to sleep. As I did that I felt myself getting closer to God. I found myself having a different relationship with him than I had before. I was talking to him like a friend would to another friend. I realized that my relationship with him had grown into just that, a friendship. Now Garth Brooks was on to something when he said, “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.” That’s the great thing about God. He knows exactly what we need. We may pray for things for a long time and never see what we asked for. But, eventually we may realize that was for the best. Then sometimes we may see results right away. We just never know. We just put it in God’s hands and see what happens. Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer an petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Nothing is too big or too small for God. God wants us to trust him and bring our worries and concerns to him. It makes things so much easier to turn them over to him and know that he is in control. Does that mean that we won’t every worry about anything? No. But if we truly trust God and what he has in store for us it can help us to turn it over to him and know he is in control.

Back to talking about children and prayer. It’s so awesome to see how their minds think. As our kids have gotten older, it has been really neat to see how their thoughts on prayer have changed. Before it was at meals and bedtime. It was pretty traditional early on. We prayed for our family and friends and for God to keep all of us safe and healthy. Then we would pray for our food at meal time. Then as they have gotten older, is has been interesting to see how their thoughts change. We have seen our kids pray for other kids at school or church. We have heard them pray for their teachers at school, which was probably a very valid prayer since they had our kids in there. Just yesterday we watched a lot of football. We watched the Alabama game and watched their quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, get inured. He sustained an injury that perhaps ended his football career. It ended his season this year for sure. But we talked about it a lot. Our boys asked a lot of questions about it. They asked if he would play again and how it happened and what exactly was the problem. I answered all of them to the best of my ability and patience level would allow. As we got ready to go to bed I went into the boys room to pray with them. I prayed for a lot of the things we normally do. I got ready to leave their room and Traber, our 11 year old, said, “Dad, you forgot to pray for Tua.” That made me stop and think about how sometimes kids don’t think about things being too big or small for God, they just know that they can pray to God about anything and God will listen. I responded with, “Yes I did, but you can pray for him when you say your prayers to God.” He responded with, “even though we are OU fans, I still want him to get better and play again.” I just thought you’re right son. Sometimes in life as adults we complicate things. Sometimes we just need a child to bring us back to the simple things.

I know for me, prayer is what has made me grow as a Christian. I feel like the more I pray and have quiet time with God, the more focused I am. I once had a baseball coach compare baseball and life to climbing a mountain. He said you work hard to climb and climb and finally you reach the top. You finally get to the point where you feel really good about where you are at. There is always room to get better, but you feel like you are at a really good point in your journey. But, there is only one way to go at that point and that is down. People and things are going to knock you off that point. They are going to make you feel like you aren’t at the top anymore. They are going to shake your confidence as a ballplayer. The real question is how far will you fall? That is up to you. You control that. You will fall as far as you allow yourself to. How fast will you start climbing back to the top is the most important factor in how that will end.

I feel like the Christian life is a lot like that analogy. We all have times when our Christian life is better than others. We all have times when we feel like we are at the top of the mountain, and times when we feel like someone pushed us off the edge. The real question is how far will we allow ourselves to fall? How far will we allow satan to push us away from God? This is where prayer comes in. This is where sometimes I am not very good. I like to think I can take care of everything myself. I start to roll, sometimes snowball, down the mountain until I remember to take it to God in prayer. Sometimes it takes me falling far enough that I have to humbly say I can’t do this alone. I need God’s help. When I go back to God in prayer is when things start to pick back up again. We can’t get frustrated when this happens. We have to realize that it happens to everyone. We just have to keep our focus where it needs to be.

We all go through times when we are more focused than others. We all go through times when we feel closer to God than others. But, we must always remember that the wireless connection is always available. That line of communication is always open. Sometimes it’s in our hardest times that we grow the most. Sometimes it’s when we face trials that we learn to talk to God like a friend because we are that close to him. I have found that is when I have grown the most. Those times have been very trying, but also very beneficial. It is not always easy to see those times that way, especially in the moment. I have heard people say, myself included, that in certain situations all we can do is pray. That’s not all we can do. That is the best thing we can do!!! There is nothing better we can do than to take things to God in prayer.

Our maturity as a Christian and our prayer life go hand in hand. Our prayer life grows as does our relationship with Him. What we can’t do is forget to thank Him for all he does. I have caught myself so many times having a wish list of things I want God to help with, but forget to thank Him for what he has done and is doing right then. My prayer for everyone is that we would rely heavily on prayer. I challenge everyone to, if we don’t already, find a time each day to set aside for prayer. It may not be first thing in the morning. Everyone’s schedules are different. What works for one may not work for someone else. But find a time that we set aside for God each day. Try it and see how it changes our day. See if it eases our stress level and our worry load by realizing that God is in control and he will take care of us. I hope that as Christians we remember to take things to God in prayer and not try to do them alone. Nothing is too big or small for our God!!!

As I mentioned before, one of the things at Epic last year that impacted me was being around the Christian people that I was around for those 3 days. One of the coaches talked about having a passion for Christ and not being afraid to be different. He mentioned Revelation 3:16. In that verse and the verses before and after, Jesus talks about being a lukewarm Christian and how dangerous it is to be neither hot nor cold. That really stuck with me. It really made me self-reflect on whether I was being a true disciple for Christ or just when it was convenient.

We all have passions. We all have things that interest us. We all have things that we pour our time into. For most of my life one of mine has been baseball. When I was finished playing, it then became my career. I have poured a lot of time into baseball over the years. I was passionate about baseball when I played. If you aren’t passionate about a sport when you play, then why play? If you are not going to buy in and do it all the way, then you are really wasting time. I don’t mean that you have to eat, sleep, and breathe that sport. You can have a true passion for it and still have a life. I tell my players that all the time. I tell them I want them to love the game and love playing baseball with their friends. It’s some of the best times of their life. They may not realize it at the time, but they will at some point if they don’t in the present time. But, If they are going to be a part of it, they might as well do it with all they have. I still want them to be a kid. I still want them to have fun with their buddies. But if we are going to play baseball, then lets have some fun along the way and work hard and win as much as we possibly can.

That is the passion I want them to have as they play. It’s the same I had when I played. As I transformed from a player to a coach, that didn’t change. But, I know that it is not always going to work out that way every single day. Not for me a coach, or for them as a player. Just like a player, there have been times during my career that I have had to re-evaluate my passion. There are times when it has been really strong, and there are other times when it has not been so strong. There’s times when I have gotten tired. There are times when I’ve thought about giving in. There was a time I discussed in my earlier post when I was burned out and needed to take some time to re-assess what I did and how and why I did it. It happens. One thing I found during that time is that if your passion is filled with selfish desires, it cannot be near as effective as it can be if others are put first. Sometimes we all need that break. In any career things can get monotonous. Things can happen that cause us to question why we do things. Other people can get us down and frustrate us and make us question why we do what we do. A wise man once told me that there are two kinds of people in this world, drains and fountains. You can just imagine how that analogy applies to life. I had never thought of it that way, but it made total sense when he said it. The drain sucks the life out of everyone and everything around them. They are negative people that complain about everything and cause others to do the same. The fountain brings life and positive vibes to those around them. They lift others up. We have all, at some point in our life, been a fountain and also a drain. Hopefully more times than not we are a fountain! We all know people that are fountains in our lives, but unfortunately we all know some lifelong drains as well.

There are times in our careers when we have been on top of the mountain. There are times when we have it all figured out and things are going well. We feel like we can conquer the world. These are the times when we are fountains. These are the times when we make those around us better. These are the times when our confidence is highest. These are the best times. These are the times when we are excited to go to work every day. It’s funny how this works. We never really know when the highs and lows will come, but we know they will. We know that our true character will be tested.

The Christian life is no different. There are highs and lows as a Christian. This is the most important passion we can have and there are times when it is stronger than other times. There are times when the drains seem to suck the life out of us. They get us down. They make us question a lot of things. They have a negative effect on our attitude. They cause us to question what we do and why we do it. They cause us to question if it is worth it. They cause us to possibly become drains ourselves. But, it’s not always someone else. Sometimes it is us. Sometimes we do it to ourselves. Sometimes we just lose our passion. Sometimes we just don’t make the Christian life a priority. We don’t place the emphasis on it that we should. We don’t want to put forth the effort to be different from the world. Sometimes it’s a combination of things. But, no matter the cause, sometimes it happens.

But in the same way that drains bring us down, sometimes the fountains pick us up. We all know those fountains that as a Christian we look up to. They are those people that have that peace and burning desire to be like Christ about them that makes us want to be better at life in general. Those fountains are just as contagious as the drains. They motivate us to be better. They help revive our desire to be like God. They in turn help us to help others. We can have that same impact on others that they have on us. No matter who you are, someone somewhere looks up to you as a Christian. You have a chance to be someone’s fountain!

I have talked about my spiritual journey during my earlier post. I talked about how I went through years of being lukewarm. Satan had tricked me into thinking everything was just peachy. My passion has been restored over the last several years and gotten stronger as time has gone on. But that day at Epic I was challenged. That was one of those ah-hah moments for me. With all the experiences I have talked about, each one brought me a little closer to God. This one was no different and completely unexpected. I had read the verse he talked about before, but apparently wasn’t in tune enough in my Christianity then for it to work on me. I wasn’t ready for what that verse meant to me before. What’s crazy was he wasn’t even really talking to us. He was talking to the campers. They were the ones that were supposed to be inspired. But what he said hit me right in the face. That was all I could think about. I thought about all the times in past when I didn’t do what I knew I should because I thought I was good enough. I truly felt like at that time in those moments I had everything under control. I thought for years that I had this life figured out. Satan is powerful. But so is our God. I’ve said several times that I have no doubt that God puts certain people in our lives at certain times for certain reasons. This is just another example. Coach Boone has a passion for Christ and a burning desire to make others around him better. I cant’t speak for anyone else there, but in that moment that day he was the definition of a fountain for me!!!

We wake up every day with a choice. We have a chance to be a drain or a fountain. When Jesus speaks about being neither hot nor cold in Revelation 3, that made me realize that I never want to be that way again. It is dangerous when we get complacent. That is when we get to fooling ourselves into thinking we have it all figured out. That’s when our passion suffers and we don’t work to get better. That is satan at work. We don’t always identify that as satan. But that is exactly what that is. He is telling us we are good enough. He is telling us we don’t have to work so hard to be like Christ and that it will be ok. He tries to convince us we are good enough. I can’t tell you how many times I have thought about that lesson Coach Boone gave to those boys that day at camp. I hope it impacted them the same way it did me. We have to be dedicated to being set apart. We have to be willing to be different. We can’t worry about being like everyone else. We can’t worry about what others think about us. People may say things about us, or treat us different because they see our desire to follow Christ. But that’s ok. We can’t let that get us down. They may not understand it now, but just maybe we planted a seed that will one day grow. We never know when we are doing that for other people.

So what’s your main passion? It’s kind of like what I talked about last week with our identity. Our identity will be in what we are passionate about. If our main passion is in our job, so will our identity. If our main passion is in something else, so will our identity. If our main passion is in Christ, so will our identity. It’s not hard to tell. Other people see it daily. Us seeing it for ourselves is just us being bold enough to self-reflect. It’s us being able to evaluate ourselves in an honest way. That’s not always easy to do. Sometimes we want to make self-reflection end up a certain way, but then it’s not completely accurate. I hope that we don’t let satan win. I hope that we don’t give him the satisfaction of accomplishing his mission within us. Any time that we aren’t furthering our relationship with Christ and we feel like we are good enough, satan is winning. It’s a daily battle and we have to wake up everyday determined to win. Battling satan is like battling an opponent in sports. We can’t approach satan with the mentality not to lose. We have to approach the daily battle with him determined to win. We cannot defeat satan ourselves. That victory is only possible with God! We have to be willing to be different. Sometimes that means stepping out of our comfort zone. We all probably have multiple passions. My prayer for all of us is that our strongest passion is a selfless passion for Christ that has a positive impact on people daily. May we be a fountain that lifts others up and our Christ like spirit be contagious. If we all strive to have Christ as our top passion and priority in our life, the world can’t help but become a better place!!!

I was fortunate growing up playing baseball on the teams I played on. We had good players, good coaches, and good parents. We won. We won a lot. There was nothing more fun at that time than winning. I went to college and played baseball. I was blessed to be part of some successful teams there as well. I didn’t know anything else by that point. I knew baseball. I had put all I had into that. People would ask what I was going to be when I got done with college. I hadn’t really thought about it. I hadn’t planned on having to get a job. I hoped I would play baseball until about, well now to be exact, and then I would retire and follow my kids and grandkids around. But, I guess if I had to have another option it would be coaching, because baseball is the only thing I really wanted to do at this point in my life. It’s not all I did as a kid. We didn’t play near as many games as some kids do now. This was back in the bag phone days. The internet wasn’t a big factor in life. A lot of things were different. But, I played every inning all the way from little league through high school for Sentinel. We played about 20-25 games a summer. We played enough to love the game and then enjoy being a kid. That’s probably why I loved to do it. But, I came to that fork in the road in college when they told me I had pick something to pursue. I had to pick a major, and baseball wasn’t an option. So I chose the next best thing, coaching.

That’s what I was identified with. That’s what people knew me for. Why wouldn’t I coach? What else would I do if, for some crazy reason, I wasn’t playing baseball for the next 20 years? It looked like at one point that opportunity might present itself. But, God had other plans for my next 20 years, which I have told a lot about that over the last several post. My dream was cut short because of things that were out of my control. In one day, one pitch really, it was gone. One pitch. Essentially one second and the thing I loved the most and aspired to do for a living was gone. So now it was on to plan B. That plan that everyone told me I needed. It wasn’t quite that easy of a transition just to hop on to plan B. It took awhile to come to grips with it. In the back of my mind I always just thought they told everyone to have plan B, but no one ever used it. Or at least I wouldn’t. Sometimes when I write I wish I could insert emoji’s and gif’s. This would be a great place for one here.

So now that my career was over, it was time to figure out how to accomplish plan B. As I neared the time to get my first coaching job, I had one goal in mind really. Win as many games as I could. Whatever it took, I was going to work as hard as possible to win. I was lucky enough to have great people around me when I played and we were successful, so I wanted that for the people I was around. I had great Christian coaching examples when I played, I just didn’t always follow what they did in the right way. My first several years of coaching were the times in my life that I discussed in another post where I was that Sunday morning Christian. I wasn’t a bad guy, just not as dedicated as I needed to be to the Lord. If I was as dedicated to the Lord as I was to winning baseball games, no telling what would have happened. But, the reality was, I wasn’t.

I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way. There is absolutely nothing wrong with winning. Nothing at all. Sports teach so many valuable lessons. I could write a whole post about that, but I’ll save it for another day. I still love to win as much as I ever have. I just try to do it a little different now. The reason for that is that my identity was completely wrapped around winning baseball games. I sacrificed time with my family. I sacrificed time I could have been doing things for others. I sacrificed a lot. Anyone that has ever coached or been around coaches closely, knows that there are sacrifices in order to be successful. But, I took that to a whole different level. I went beyond the necessary sacrifices to win. I did that to the point that I burned myself out. I was so tired of doing what I was doing because of how I was doing it. Because of what my identity was in. I had coached for 8 years and I was exhausted from it. The way I did things had stole the joy I thought I would always have coaching and teaching young people.

So I got out for a year. I learned a lot about myself in that year. It was very humbling. I had to be real with myself and my family and admit that I had done this wrong for 8 years. I liked my new job that I went to outside of coaching, but I realized after just sitting back and observing former colleagues, that there was a better way to coach than what I had done in the past. I watched and looked for good and bad in every game I watched. I observed and talked to different coaches about how they did things. This is what I found after all those years of doing it. My identity was in the wrong area. I had focused so much on the outcome, that I had forgot about the journey to get there. I had lost focus of that, or maybe never had it.

I had the awesome opportunity to get back into coaching again. This time I was determined not to mess it up. I had a whole new outlook on life. I had enjoyed my job the previous year outside of coaching. But the reality also was when you have a lifestyle that is on the go constantly for so many years, when that stops abruptly it changes the dynamic of your family as well. Kristin had never had to put up with me as much as she did that year. She handled it pretty well, but I think after the new wore off and I was messing up the routine her and the kids had for years, she was ready for me to coach again. I was so thankful for the opportunity and went about it with with a new focus.

When I say the focus was different, what I mean is I still wanted to win. But, I was going to focus more on the process. If the process was done right, we as a team could accomplish so much more than just winning. And, if the focus was right, God would also take care of everything else. A few years before this I had a parent come up to me after a ball game. He was also a school board member. He stopped me after the game and asked if he could talk to me. I said sure, but had no idea where this was going. We had won the ballgame and were having a good season. He said something to me that night that at the time, due to my focus, didn’t resonate with me as much as it does now. He asked me, “did I see you pray with those boys before the game?” I wasn’t sure where this was going. He was a great Christian man and is still a good friend to this day. But, I still wasn’t sure where this was leading to. But, I was going to be honest with him. I said, “yes sir I was. I do every game.” So I waited for his response, totally anxious to see what he said. This is what still sticks with me to this day. He said, “please don’t ever stop doing that, because hopefully he will get more out of that than he ever will anything you teach him about baseball. Baseball will end for him eventually, but hopefully following God never will.” Wow, that was impactful!!!

So as I came back 6 years ago with a new focus, that moment has also been with me ever since. He may not even remember that conversation, but he helped change what I identified myself with. I still coach and am still identified with baseball, which is great. I still love the game. But, hopefully I’m not identified as baseball coach that goes to church and is a Christian. I want to be known as a Christian that coaches baseball. I want my players to know that. I want them to see me as more than a guy that wants to win baseball games. I want to be identified as a Christian no matter where I am. I am going to mess up just like anyone else. I have times when people probably don’t think of me as Christian by the things that I say and do. But, hopefully more times than not they do. Luckily when things like that happen I get to receive the grace of God and am forgiven of those and get another chance to make it right.

I don’t know what your identity lies in. It doesn’t matter what our job is or what we do on a daily basis, we have an identity. We have a way that people see us. More importantly, we have a God that knows our hearts. Our identity is what we put emphasis on in our life. I challenge all of us to take a look at it. It’s not always easy to do. Especially when it’s not focused on the right things. As I said, mine wasn’t. I had to swallow my pride and admit I was wrong and make it a point to change things. I’ve also enjoyed my job as a coach, teacher, and principal more the last 6 years than ever before. I don’t think that’s just a coincidence. God’s timing is awesome too. The guy that made that statement to me said it a few years before I got out of coaching. I didn’t think much about it at the time. It was cool that he said it, but at the time the “Sunday Morning Christian” didn’t feel the power of what he said like I did later. So I’m fortunate that it stuck with me and what he said was able to make an impact on me several years later. God puts people in our life at certain times for certain reasons, even if it takes years to realize the significance of it! Sometimes our focus can get off track and we have to re-evaluate what our identity lies in. My prayer is that our identity will be in our Savior Jesus Christ!!!