This morning it was nice and cool so I decided to take my son to practice baseball at the park.  I had to feed the kids as my wife slept in so by the time we got out there it was pretty hot.  We persevered despite the heat and got in a good session.  My son hit the ball well, there were many more balls in the field than in the backstop.  I saw a segment in the little league world series later in the day in which the kids that are the coaches sons and their dads were interviewed.  They talked about how it was such a special privilege to have their fathers present as many of their teammates do not, or for that matter did not even have them in their lives.  But, they all talked about what a truly awesome experience it was to be teammates with their dads and go through the experience with them on the field.  As I thought of how lucky they were, I realized this is me and my son.  We may not be at the LLWS, but we get to have this experience together.

In the afternoon my wife took all the kids swimming at their cousin's neighborhood pool.  I stayed home and begrudgingly pulled out my leadership in therapeutic recreation textbook to study.  I really didn't want to do this as I had coaching baseball on my mind and I wanted to watch the games to learn as much as possible.  I am worried that I will have to take on a more active role as an assistant this fall and I don't feel knowledgeable enough.  Well, low and behold, it didn't even occur to me that coaching baseball is leadership in recreation.  I thought that the team philosophy I will teach the boys will be attitude, effort, and execution.  I will guide them to focus on working as an orderly team, giving a full effort, and executing plays, rather than making emotional demands on them to win.

I got to go to a 12 step meeting tonight.  It was a speaker meeting with a friend telling his story.  I thought about how I will tell my story next week at another meeting.  I got to see 2 friends celebrate sobriety anniversaries for multiples of years.  I got to have several nice conversations with individuals going through spiritual growth and discernment.

Thanks be to God.