Shepherd Stealers

My wife and I will be traveling this weekend. It won’t be a long trip. Going back and forth to Jacksonville. Our son will be playing basketball, and it will be the first time this season we will get to watch him. His team is ranked in the top five in the nation.

I know, it sounds like a typical dad’s pride completely out of control, but this is a rather unique situation. Corey was in a catastrophic accident more than a decade ago. He suffered a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

He plays basketball for the Shepherd Stealers, a team based out of the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, one of the most reputable rehabilitation centers in the nation for spinal cord injuries, head trauma, and stroke care. Corey was flown there from Charleston, South Carolina a couple of weeks after his accident, and has lived just a few miles from the Center since his discharge.

When I watch the Stealers play, I admit that I do so with mixed emotions. There is a measure of sadness, because I watched that same boy running and jumping up the court when he played high school basketball. I also watched him play soccer, the sport in which he excelled. I sometimes wonder why. And I wonder what if.

But I also get into the games, cheering for Corey and his team, griping about the referees, and hoping that they will come away with the win. I am just a bit competitive.

The fact is that life throws us curveballs. It does not go the way we would always like. God does not answer every prayer in the manner we wish He would. But don’t be fooled. He does answer prayer. And He never forgets us. I need to be reminded, and you probably do, too, that God’s love is never in doubt. He settled it on the cross. We trust Him because we know He loves us.