Sole Story

You can see the clothes. You can see the shoes. But you can't see the soles ... Some soles match the immaculate, perfect looking uppers, the tops of the shoes. Others, not so much. But you can't tell the full story just by looking.

Early one never-to-be forgotten morning, I received a devastating call from my aunt. My uncle had gone on to be with the Lord during the night. Later, a doctor explained what had happened. A blood clot had lodged in his heart and, just like that, he literally took one breath here and the next in heaven. Good for him (he got to be with Jesus), heart-shattering for us.

My uncle had mentored so many young people through the years that his funeral had to be held at the high school gym, with TV monitors in adjacent rooms to accommodate the overflow. During the celebration of his life, many shared how he had impacted theirs. The litany of his accomplishments is long, but there is one morsel of my uncle's history I learned that day that touched me in a life-changing way.

To be honest, I had often enjoyed the reflected glory of being the niece of such an accomplished coach. To my shame, though, I had never stopped to think about the cost, all that he had to surmount, in order to achieve his success. I had seen the glory of his shining shoes, completely ignorant of the state of the soles that had carried him there.

Raised by his widowed mother, money had been scarce in his growing up years. One day, as "luck"—more like God—would have it, one of his high school teachers went looking for him during his lunch hour. He couldn't find him. That's how he learned that my uncle, a star football player, often had no lunch or money for lunch; on those days he would spend his noon hour simply resting outside. He never complained, never shirked his classes or practices, but there were days in which he did not eat during the long school and rigorous training hours.

At this point, some of his teachers determined to put an end to that state of things. From that time forward, they made sure he had something to eat every day.

Despite such economic suffering, my uncle went on to achieve recognized success in his career. He is lauded for developing the Sea Wall Defense in South Texas, a tactic that afforded his football teams great success. He is also credited with bringing the Fellowship of Christian Athletes to the Rio Grande Valley, an organization that has been instrumental in helping young athletes. Every fall, on top of their regular activities, that same FCA sponsors Fields of Faith, an outreach that has afforded many a young person an introduction to the Christian faith.

There were other accolades, but the way the story mentioned touched me in a never-to-be-forgotten-way is this. My uncle worked his way through college. He worked in the cotton fields in the summer to subsidize his scholarships. He got no free ride. And the complaints from him about his growing up years? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Although I had known him all my life, I had never, ever heard the lunch story or any other that smacked of complaining about lack during his early years. Why? Because my uncle never looked back (like Lot's wife), and he never, ever complained. Instead, on the back of hard work and determination, he pulled himself up by the bootstraps to accomplish his goals. The boy who had no lunch grew up to feed the bread of life to others and encourage them in their way. He died with his prayer list in his hands, thinking of others to the very end. In all the ways that matter, he was an unmitigated success.

The contrast of his never-once-complaining to the envy rampant in today's society hit me "upside the head," as we say colloquially in Oklahoma. What a difference! What a difference in life perspective! And no wonder. Wasn't envy the motive for the first murder? Wasn't envy the driving force behind Joseph's brothers' evil conniving? Wasn't envy a huge part of the push to kill Jesus when He walked this earth as a man? Envy never leads to anything good. How refreshing, then, to see the life of a man who was able to live free from self-aggrandizement, free from complaining about his lot in life, free from envy, a man who instead focused on what he could do.

May we each strive to have a heart like my uncle's—embracing the glory of today's accomplishments, not dwelling on the cost of yesterday and the sacrifices required to bring us to where we are today. Not looking with envy at what others have, ignorant as we may be of their Grapes-of-Wrath-like soles, but instead rejoicing in the ability Jesus has given us to get where we are, and in the hope He endues on us of a better tomorrow.

"For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work" (James 3:16).

"Let nothing be done though strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves" (Philippians 2:3).