Tales From The Bullpen by Jared Cudd

How many of you thought of Alan Jackson when you read the title of this post? This is the time in the blog where I have told the story of my spiritual journey and now I will just write what’s on my mind each week. I have several topics in mind, but it will also depend on what happens during the week and what all is going on as to what I actually write about. Who knows where each week will take me. I may get to rambling on multiple topics during a post. Kristin tells me I do that a lot. But I look forward to just writing from the heart!

The title of this post is the greatest commandment God gives us, to love. When Kristin and I got our wedding rings we wanted something meaningful engraved in them. We decided on I Corinthians 13:4-8, 13. It says, “Love is patient, live is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest is love.”

I have looked at that before in my ring and been reminded of that commandment. I have actually looked at it before when, like sometimes happens in a marriage, I wasn’t exactly feeling that love. Surely that happens in other marriages too, right? But it helps to remind me of what I should be doing. It reminds me to try and be more Christlike with those qualities that are talked about in those verses. I think about God and how he loves us no matter what. I get mad sometimes and forget to love. I mess up sometimes and am not too lovable myself. Then I think about God and what if he stopped loving us when we messed up. He would have a legitimate reason not to love us sometimes. But, his love never fails.

The very first thing in verse 4 says that love is patient. Anyone that knows me real well, or maybe barely at all, knows that is not one of my strong points. I struggle with patience. I have always been the opposite of patient. I’m still not very good at it. But, as I have grown spiritually, and also became a parent, I have became more patient. Parents, you know what I’m talking about. You sometimes either become more patient or you about lose your mind. Especially when you have 3 kids and they all ask about 10 questions per hour or say “mom” or “dad” at least 5 times a minute. Most of the time the patience increase over time with children. There was really only one way to go for me and that was to become better at it. I don’t think I could have gotten worse at it. I have prayed for a long time for God to grant me more patience. Over time, I feel like he has helped me with this. He has put things in my life to help me improve in this area. I may not always notice it at the time, but I look back and realize exactly what certain things did for me in becoming more patient.

I always knew that was a flaw of mine, but never really and truly associated that with love. I just associated it with being impatient. I used to not think a lot about love. Of course I loved my family. But when it came to getting deeper than that I didn’t really even think about it. I had deer to kill, baseball games to win, cattle to check, football to watch, you know, all the macho stuff. Love was something that was too sensitive for me to think about. I had more “manly” things to do. That was until the last few years. Don’t get me wrong, I still love to do those things. But, I started to realize what love really was. It is the greatest commandment there is and I wasn’t real good at it. I realized that if you do two simple, or sometimes not so simple things, that everything will take care of itself. Love God and love your neighbor. Pretty simple right? Pretty simple in theory, but maybe not always simple to do. But important? Absolutely so!

In Mark 12 one of the religious leaders asked Jesus what the most important commandment was. In verses 29-31 He responds with, “The most important one is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all our mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” Spoken from the mouth of Jesus himself, Love. If we love God and love others, everything else takes care of itself. If we do those two things, we will be the type of Christians that God calls us to be. This isn’t always easy to do. Other people aren’t always lovable are they? Sometimes we think there’s no way we can love that person. Sure, we can love God. That’s a lot easier to do. But loving that other person? They just aren’t lovable. They don’t treat people well. They are mean. They don’t have the same interest we do. They don’t have the same morals we do. They don’t do things like we do. The list goes on and on. But, how many times do we stop and think about us being that person that isn’t lovable? What if God determined if he would love us by those same principles? Would we be lovable?

Sometimes showing people love isn’t easy. Sometimes it’s not convenient. But it is God’s greatest command. We can show people love in so many ways that we don’t even realize. But that should be our goal. Sometimes we complicate things. Sometimes we want to make things difficult. Sometimes we want to outthink things. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. I like to keep things as simple as possible. Showing love isn’t always easy, but the concept is simple.

Sometimes we don’t even have to know the people to love on them. I have to brag on my wife’s family. The Kauk side of the family has this crazy uncle, Monty, that always helps comes up with different, fun ways to celebrate family Christmas. When I say crazy, I don’t mean in a bad way. It’s a good kind of crazy. But never the less, a little crazy. In the past, instead of the traditional Christmas at someone’s house, he has been the ring-leader of coming up with something fun for the family to do. Others have chipped in as well and helped come up with great ideas. For example, one year we went to Stillwater dressed in OU gear. While we were there we drew names and had one hour to find that person’s gift in Lowes. Then we went to eat at Eskimo Joe’s. You can imagine the looks we got there. Another year we went to Atwoods and dressed as Duck Dynasty characters and bought our gift there. One year I’m not sure who, but someone in the family came up with the idea to help a family that needed it. They got ahold of a school in Oklahoma City and asked them for the information of a family in need of help at Christmas time. The family we ended up with had 6 kids living in a 2 room house. The house had a living room/kitchen and 1 bedroom. Each branch of the Kauk family took a different person in this family and bought them a few things for Christmas. We just wanted their kids to have something to open on Christmas. The weekend before Christmas day we went to their house to deliver their gifts. We had to go in the house in shifts because it was so small. The kids were so happy to get their presents. It would bring you to tears to see how excited they were. You could tell that they didn’t have much. But one thing they did have was love to give. The mom had spent hours cooking authentic Mexican food for us. It was so good. She had enchiladas, tamales, rice, and beans for us to eat. We wanted to show them love by helping them have a nice Christmas, but were overwhelmed by the love they showed us by fixing all that food. They didn’t have to do that, but they did. That is an example of what love looks like between 2 sets of people that didn’t even know each other. It is a Christmas that I won’t ever forget!

This has really been on my heart lately. I try to start every day by thinking about how I can show love to those I will come in contact with that day. I don’t always do a great job of it, but I at least think about it. It’s the thought that counts, right? I also try to think about if I am being lovable. I know I can speak for Kristin when I say yes, everyday!!! (I’m sure she will have a comment). But love encompasses so many things that it is hard to wrap our mind around all the ways we can show love. But, just imagine if we all made this a focus. Think about how much different our country would be if everyone focused on love. It would change things. We don’t all have to agree with everything everyone does or says, but we should love the person regardless. If Jesus didn’t love or associate with people that weren’t like him, how effective would his ministry on Earth have been?

My challenge to everyone is to make a conscious effort to love and be lovable. Just think if we tried every day to be patient and kind, to not be envious or boast, to not be proud. What if we weren’t rude or self-seeking, or easily angered. What if we didn’t keep a record of wrongs. What if we never delighted in evil and we rejoiced with the truth. Just think how different things would be. I realize we can’t be perfect. Only one person will ever be able to say that they were. But, what if we all made a better effort to be I Corinthians 13 in the flesh? What if we were to strive every day to just simply love God and love our neighbor? What would that look like? According to Jesus in I Corinthians, it would never fail!!!

This is the final post in the series about my journey that basically gets me to the present time. It is also a very important piece of my journey. As I finished up last time, I had just spoke at friend’s funeral in October. That, just like the other things I have posted about, just drew me closer to God. It gave me more confidence as a Christian and I was able to help a dear friend. It made me believe that I could do anything if I just trusted God with what I was doing.

Now fast forward to April. I get a text from a friend of mine, Matt. He is a fellow coach and a guy I have known since high school. There was a period of time when I didn’t really see or talk to him for years because of different career paths. But, in the last few years we had been coaching in the same area and had talked more than we had in years. Maybe that wasn’t just a coincidence. What Matt text me would have a huge impact on my life. He asked me if I would be interested in helping with a sports ministry camp in the summer. I didn’t really know any details about the camp, but was definitely interested. A couple of days later he called me and gave me some more details. He didn’t know all the details because it was the first year that the camp was going to be held, but it sounded really good. I had helped run different Christian based things before and had ran baseball camps before, but never together. That’s what was so intriguing. He told me the camp was going to be called Epic. There was a lady named Shelley that had a vision and he trusted her vision and he wanted me to be a part of it.

I talked to my wife about it and the more I talked about it and the more I thought about it the more excited and interested I became. I mean, how often do you get to combine a sport you love with a Savior you love? I never had in this way before. This was a unique opportunity. This was different than anything I had ever heard of before. This felt like an awesome, or Epic, opportunity. But the more I found out about the camp and what all had to take place to make this thing work, the more I had my doubts about it taking place in 3 months. That’s right, it was 3 months away and we had just started the planning stages for the baseball portion of it. Not only was there baseball, but several sports as well. Shelley had ran a rodeo camp for several years now and it was a huge success. So no one had any doubt that this would work out too. There were just a lot of things that had to happen in a short amount of time. I couldn’t wait to get to have an impact on so many young people by combining two of the things I loved the most!!!

As the time got closer, things started falling together. There are a lot of stories that can only be explained by God having a hand in it as preparations intensified. The people that would not only help with baseball, but the other sports as well started falling into place. The camp was to be held at Oklahoma State University. That was a huge deal as well that a major university like that would open up its campus to a christian based program like Epic. Due to the nature of this event and what it stood for, it wasn’t even difficult for me to put away my Crimson and Cream for a few days. I won’t go as far as to say that I put on that bright orange, but I had nothing but respect for OSU for opening their campus up to us.

I prayed for the success of this camp for 3 months. To keep my thoughts simple, it would either go good or it wouldn’t. But, I just prayed that it would be good. I prayed that the people that Matt had put together to help with the baseball would all mesh together well and that it would be a huge success. I also prayed for all the other sports as well and that they would have the same success. I prayed for Shelley too. I completely understood where she was coming from. She felt led by God to do this. She listened as he guided her to do this and took a leap of faith that she was going to be able to put the right team together to make this a success.

The time for camp finally arrived. The baseball crew was amazing. We met the night before camp began and when we did I felt completely at peace with the men that Matt had assembled. We had a group of men that not only knew baseball and loved it, but more importantly knew and loved God. I knew this was going to be a blast. But, that didn’t change the fact that when registration began the next morning and a lot of campers began showing up, that we weren’t all a little nervous. We weren’t nervous about what we were doing. We all felt confident in that. But, being the introductory year for the camp, we wanted it to be a success. We wanted to help all of these kids spiritually as well at athletically. We also wanted this to be a camp that them, as well as others, wanted to attend in the future.

I must say that what I experienced that week was not exactly what I thought. It wasn’t exactly what I had hoped. It was a lot more, in a lot of ways that I never expected. Here is a quick run down of how each day went. The campers began camp at 8:30. They worked on skills in their particular sport until 11:30. Then for about the next 30 minutes one of the coaches spoke to the kids that were there for their sport. I spoke to the baseball guys the first day. The next two days two of the other coaches spoke to them (more on that later in the post). Then the campers went to lunch. Following that they went to speed and agility training. Then they went to some mental classes that focused on mental toughness and the mental approach to sports. Then from 4:30 to 5:30 we had worship with all the campers.

Now, I said it wasn’t exactly what I expected. The activities throughout the day were what I expected because I knew the schedule prior to camp starting. But, what I didn’t expect was the impact that this camp would have on me. I went into it excited about what this camp would do for so many kids, but I had no idea what this camp would do for me. It was amazing. I was so uplifted throughout this week. That’s what was so crazy. The campers were supposed to be the ones that were uplifted and changed. I think all the other coaches can probably say the same thing. It was so uplifting to be around that many Christians every day. Everyone that was there had a love of sports and a love of Christ that bonded each other together. I was absolutely amazed at what God did during that week. The Holy Spirit no doubt filled that theatre every night during worship. It was powerful. At the end of each service the coaches went to the front and any campers that wanted to pray with any of the coaches could come forward, and they did. In fact, I was impressed there were so many players that came forward to be prayed with. We were blessed with great speakers. They touched the hearts of so many coaches and campers alike. I was blown away by the response of the campers as well as the parents. On the last night we had parents in tears and thanking the staff for how it had changed their children as they walked out with their campers. I would say Shelley’s vision was a success!

I talked about coaches speaking to the campers at the end of each day. The last day one of the coaches spoke and it was something that I will never forget. I can’t speak for everyone else there, but it spoke to me. It has been on my mind ever since, and that was 3 months ago. He spoke to the campers about peer pressures that they face every day. But, as he went along he spoke about having passion as a Christian. He quoted a verse and talked about it and that is what has stayed with me more than anything. He quoted Revelation 3:15-16 in which Jesus says, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were one or the other. So, because you are lukewarm -neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth”. I had heard that before, but WOW, it stuck with me for some reason that day. I guess probably because I was at a different part of my journey than ever before. Like I have talked about in my other post, I spent years being “lukewarm”. That is so scary to me. I am so thankful for God’s grace and mercy. Since I heard that scripture that day, I have been even more motivated to not ever go back to being that type of Christian again!

After I came home from this camp I did a lot of self reflecting and wondering what I could do to be better. I wanted to continue to have an impact on people. Not just 3 days a year during this camp, but every day. This week drew me closer to God. There were so many things at this camp that had an impact on me. I don’t have time to go into all those in this post, but it helped guide me to what I am doing today. It had an impact on me starting this blog. I wanted to do more. I wanted to do something that would be uplifting to people. I wanted to do something that would help further God’s Kingdom. I prayed to God every single day after this camp to show me what that looked like. I prayed that he would lead me where he wanted me to go. Seeing Shelley’s vision and how she followed what God wanted her to do inspired me to follow God’s vision for me as well. She chased a dream she had and it helped me to branch out and chase one of my own. As I said before, I have wanted to write for along time. This whole experience helped me with the passion Coach Boone spoke of that day. It made me want to do everything I could to bring others to Christ. It also helped me to have more courage and realize that dreams are just that unless we are brave enough to chase them!!!

My hope is that anyone that has a dream will have the courage to chase it. I also hope that anyone who is “lukewarm” like I was for so long will be that no longer. I pray they will find the passion Coach Boone spoke of and be on fire for Christ and not worry about what anyone else thinks of them. I pray they will do anything they can to help others and will live every day motivated to make the world a better place. I love quotes and use them all them time. But one of my favorites is by Brandi Snyder which says, “To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world”. I love that quote for so many reasons. I try to think of that each day and realize that we don’t ever know who all is watching us. But just know that someone is. We might just be the person that gives them courage or confidence or changes their world!!!

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I finished last week by mentioning stepping out of our comfort zone. This week will deal a lot with that. I feel God puts people in our lives for certain reasons. We may not know who or for what reason, but God does. I grew up in Sentinel going to the Church of Christ there where my dad preached. During my JH and HS years there was a couple there that sat close to where I did every week. Cody and Paula Combs were their names. They would talk to me each week and Cody would always joke around with me. He was hilarious. Paula was and still is one of the nicest people I know. Just a side note, they lived on the end of my block. I had to pass their house on the way to church. Cody had this pewter colored Z71 truck that I thought was the coolest truck ever. I wanted to buy that from him when I turned 16, but he didn’t have it by then. They were positive influences on me as a teenager and I thought a lot of them.

During my college years my dad took a preaching job in Hinton. Since he no longer preached at Sentinel, I didn’t see Cody and Paula as much as I had before. But, as I began my professional career several years later, a coaching job landed me back in Sentinel. Guess who my principal was? That would be Paula. We had a great working relationship. She was great to work for. We started going back to the church I grew up going to and I saw Cody and Paula weekly. A couple of years later, career moves led Kristin and I away from Sentinel. But, unlike before, Paula and I stayed in touch. We stayed close. We would text often and see each other at ballgames or other school events. Cody would always give me a hard time when I would see him and many times he would chime in when Paula and I would be texting. It was great to get to stay in touch with them.

So that is a little background into my relationship with the Combs family. So fast forward several years. My grandpa passes away in July of 2018. Our preacher, Aaron, asked me to teach that Wednesday night Bible class. So I am doing that and enjoying it. I am continuing to ask God to help me grow and help people any way that I can as I grow as a Christian myself. I get to school one day last October and I get a text that shocked me. The person text me and wondered if I had heard about Cody Combs. I said that I hadn’t and asked them what was going on. They told me apparently he died in the middle of the night from a heart attack. I immediately went to Facebook, because that is the source of all the up to date information anymore. Sure enough, that is what happened. I didn’t really know what to say to Paula. I was kind of lost on what to do. I wanted to gather my thoughts before I text her and I wanted to give her time as well because I knew that she was dealing with so much right away. So I waited a couple of hours before I text her. I sent her a text simply telling her I was thinking about her and their son CJ and would pray for them. I didn’t really know what else to say at that time.

So you may wonder where the comfort zone part comes in. Well, it is coming next. So Paula responds quickly with a text saying thank you and that she was going to call me in just a little bit because she was struggling with a decision. I didn’t really think much about that because I knew in the coming days she would be making a lot of decisions. So she called and we talked for a few minutes. She told me what had happened and I listened, still shocked myself. She said that she was wrestling with who she wanted to do Cody’s service. I was honestly thinking that she was wondering if I thought my dad would do it, even though he hadn’t been their preacher for about 15 years. But then she said, “A week or two ago Cody and I talked randomly about who we would want to do our funeral. I said that I wanted you to do mine because I wanted it laid back and entertaining and uplifting and I felt you would make it that way”. I thought man that is pretty cool that she would think that. It still hadn’t hit me what was coming next. Then she said, “So I would like to ask you to do Cody’s funeral if you would be comfortable doing that”. Comfort zone exited!!!

I remember thinking that I was glad she couldn’t see my face because my mouth was wide open and my eyes were about three times their normal size! These are things I didn’t tell her at the time of course. I was blown away, honored, humbled, and honestly and little bit scared. Actually a lot more than a little scared. I remember telling her, “Paula, I’ve never done anything like that, but if that’s what you want me to do, I will do it to the best of my ability”. So we went forward from there. I had spoke to Christian groups before. I had spoke in front of a lot of people before. I had taught school and Bible class for many years. None of that bothered me. In fact, I liked speaking to people. But, I had never done anything like this. So I immediately did the only thing I knew to do. I prayed. I prayed a lot that day and for the next several.

I thought a lot about this the next few days. I had prayed to God for a long time, as stated in previous post, to use me however he could. I prayed that he would use me to help other people, however that may be. This was an opportunity I had to help a dear friend in a trying time. I was determined to do my best to do that. I was absolutely humbled at the opportunity, and just hoped that I could provide their family some sort of peace through all of this. I met with Paula and CJ the following day. We talked about some things regarding the service and some things that they wanted to include about Cody. I felt better after having seen them face to face and talked to them about what they wanted. Really, I wanted this service to be exactly what they wanted and to help their family and make them feel loved and uplifted. I felt I had a better understanding of how to do that after meeting with them. But that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t still nervous.

Over the next couple of days I prayed that God would give me the right words to say and the right way to say them. I had watched my dad do this for years. But, now it was my turn. It made me more confident that Paula and CJ had the confidence and faith in me to do something like this. So finally, it was the day of the funeral. I woke up that day still a little anxious, but I felt good about what we had discussed and I felt prepared. I just continued to pray to God that he would guide me through this. It was held in the school auditorium at Sentinel, where Paula was now the elementary principal. I felt better and more confident that morning than I had all week, until I saw how many people started coming in. The auditorium began filling up quickly. I don’t know if this made it better or worse, but I knew almost all of them since I had grown up there. I said a lot of prayers as the time grew closer to begin the service.

When the service began I was sitting on the stage looking out at the crowd just hoping that when my time came to speak that I could remember what I had prepared. My dad sang at the service. In fact, he sang right before I came up to speak. I had seen him preach funerals countless times. But now he wasn’t the one speaking, I was. As he walked off the stage after singing, I walked up to the podium and the strangest thing happened. All that worry and all those anxious feelings were gone. I had a peace and calmness about me that I have only one explanation for. When I hear “peace and calming” I think about my wife’s oils, but this was before she was really into that. So it wasn’t the oils. The only answer is God’s hand was on me. All those prayers were answered at that very moment. Now, I don’t know if in preacher’s standards how I presented the information was very well done, but I had a peace about what I was doing. I hope that what I had to say as a tribute to Cody at his Celebration of Life did his life and the impact he left on people some justice. I hope that I helped their entire family through the grieving process.

I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone. I had a good Christian friend that helped me do that. She had the faith and confidence in me to do something I had never done. I don’t know exactly why, but she did. I’m glad she did because that was just another way that I feel God answered my prayers to help people and to grow as a Christian. I was able to help a friend when she was going through a really tough time in her life. This gave me the confidence to continue to pray for boldness and to be able to do things that I may not be comfortable with. That is how we grow as a Christian. That is how we grow our faith. I learned first hand that if we trust what God leads us to do that he will take care of us. I truly believe that God places people in our lives for a reason. Paula and I remain close to this day and we will always have a special bond.

In I Corinthians 2 Paul talks about being guided by the Holy Spirit. Verse 3 says, “I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling”. Verse 4 goes on to say, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power”. I went to these verses several times as I prepared for Cody’s service. God will guide us if we trust him. I have learned this as I mature as a Christian. I still have a lot of growing to do. But, I have learned that some of the times I have grown the most and learned to trust God the most are when I stepped out of my comfort zone and just put all my trust in him! I hope I never shy away from those things again that require me to have faith that God will take care of everything. I hope that I can have faith and be bold enough to go and do whatever God leads me to do!!! That is my prayer for everyone I know as well. Just think of the difference we could all make together to those around us!!!