I can remember the sixth grade like it was yesterday, especially one particular cold winter’s day when my dad took my brother and me fishing. Shortly after launching our boat and riding up a narrow creek, the boat motor hit a log in the river and I was thrown out of the boat into the cold, black, alligator-infested waters of South Georgia. With no lifejacket, one broken leg and the other leg gashed from the boat motor, my brother and dad said I bobbed under the water twice. Each time they didn’t know if I was coming back up or not. After near death and hyperthermia, the hospital patched up the exterior of my body with bandages and a cast on my right leg that came up to my hip. My faithful mother asked our preacher to come by the house and patch up my insides. I can remember him asking if I wanted to go under the waters for a third time (he was talking about the waters of baptism).

After accepting Christ as my personal Lord and Savior and being baptized fourteen weeks later, and after my cast was removed, I think the Sunday morning battles eased up for awhile. At least that was the case until my late teenage years. From age sixteen through age thirty-eight, I had reverted back to my Sunday morning battles. This time it was my wife that was forcing me to go to church. But once we started going to church, I could tell something was different. It was like God was quietly waiting on me to come back to Him. Once I stepped back into church, it wasn’t long before I was looking forward to church and I was looking for ways to serve the Lord. Thankfully today God has given me the opportunity, desire, passion, and love to serve in different areas of ministry in and out of the church… Interestingly, I am now teaching sixth grade Sunday school. I feel God called me to teach sixth grade through other areas of my life,  and honestly I didn’t relate my salvation in sixth grade to me teaching that age until I was halfway through my first year teaching.

God bless the battles (and mothers).