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My eighth grader is on the JV baseball team this year, and like many young athletes, he’s spending more time on the bench than he’d like. Our small school has enough talented players to fill three teams, and while I’m incredibly proud of him for making the JV team in 8th grade, it’s tough watching him sit when I know how much he loves the game.

As much as we want our kids to succeed on the field, sports offer something even greater—lessons that shape them into strong, resilient young men. Here are my biggest takeaways from this season so far.

We Are Raising Men, Not Just Ballplayers

Don’t get me wrong—I love watching my kids play, and I want them to excel. But at the end of the day, their character matters more than their playing time. We refuse to bash coaches or criticize teammates who are getting more playing time. My son plays first base, and there’s a very talented ninth grader ahead of him. His time will come, but he has to wait his turn. Life will present this lesson over and over: work hard, be patient, and stay ready. This season does not define who he is—he is so much more than a baseball player.

It Takes a Village, and Coaches Are Part of It

I’m incredibly grateful for the coaches who have poured into my son over the years. They have helped shape him into the person he is becoming. Too often, I see parents complaining about coaching decisions, but I just don’t get it. If you don’t want your child playing under a certain coach, then don’t be on the team. Coaches are not meant to be our kids’ buddies—they are there to lead, challenge, and teach. When I played sports, I was a little scared of my coaches, and that wasn’t a bad thing. Today, too many parents expect coaches to explain every decision. But part of growing up is learning to accept authority, even when it’s hard.

Would You Rather Watch the Game from the Bleachers or the Dugout?

Wearing that jersey is a privilege, whether you’re starting or sitting. Being on the team means you get to spend five days a week with your best friends, doing what you love. The inside jokes, the locker room banter, the bus rides, the dugout camaraderie—those are the things you’ll remember long after the season ends. Don’t waste this time sulking about playing minutes. Enjoy the experience for what it is.

Life Goes On After High School

I was a high school athlete myself—volleyball, softball, and even one year of basketball. Someone recently reminded me of a playoff game my senior year. The last game for our senior class. We were about to win, just one out away, when our pitcher overthrew me at first base, costing us the game. You’d think I’d remember that moment, but I don’t. I’m sure it was hard at the time, but life goes on. So much has happened since high school. I made great memories in those 4 years. I have no regrets. But I am so glad I am not still holding on to some missed opportunity in high school. I hope my kids enjoy every stage as it comes. High school sports can be a very fun stage of life but the fun does not end there. 

Heaven Is Our Home

This might seem out of place to some, but it shouldn’t be for Christians. At the end of the day, our ultimate home is in heaven. Our time on earth—and on the ball field—is just a fleeting moment compared to eternity. Keep your eyes on the real prize, kid. Walk by faith, trust God, and know that even on the bench, He is shaping you in ways you may not yet understand.

Sports are an incredible gift, but they are not everything. The lessons my son is learning this season—perseverance, patience, humility, and faith—will last far beyond the final inning. And in the grand scheme of things, that’s what truly matters. I hope our family can keep this perspective as the seasons go by. 

Colossians 3:23:

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.

James 1:2-4:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Jeremiah 29:11:

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and a hope.

Last night (February 6, 2025), leaving the Middle School basketball game, I lost for the first time in a footrace with one of my children, in a typical boy-parent “I’ll race you to the car” moment.

It was bound to happen: at nearly 17 years old, he’s working out every day and currently outweighs me by at least 20 lbs. He might even be taller than me, but I’m not willing to concede that race just yet, because we’re very close on that metric.

What’s especially strange about the whole thing is that while I may have technically lost the race, I won in so many ways.

In the summer of 2022 (or maybe it was 2023) I was giving my kids a hard time about how they needed to work harder in the offseason, and doing general dad “back in my day” posturing.

One thing led to another, and I found myself lining up in the yard to run wind sprints. I had probably had a beer, and clocked in at 235 lbs.

I took off, completely un-warmed up (just like last night, for the record!) and made it approximately 40 yards before my legs couldn’t keep up with my torso and I toppled over.

Worse, my lungs couldn’t expand and contract fast enough to get oxygen into my system, and I had a moment sitting on my porch where I genuinely thought I was going to pass out or worse. My heart was beating out of my chest, and I needed at least 5 minutes to regain any semblance of a normal existence.

I wish I could say that was the moment I decided to get serious about my health, but that moment needed some more rocks to form on the bottom.

Fast forward to the grass beside the middle school last night.

As backstory this time around:

• I still have not sprinted even one time since that fateful somersault I tried to play off in the yard.
• For a time last year I was really into walking, and even had gotten into doing what I’d consider “cardio” by walking the large hill in the woods behind my house. I haven’t done that consistently at all over the past 6 months or so.
• I’ve been doing some body-weight exercises maybe 15 minutes per day but really nothing that’s gotten my heart rate up for anything over a few seconds.
• The only thing that has functionally changed is my diet, having gone no-carb carnivore in April of 2024, relaxed to a few no-carb veggies in September of 2024.

So, in a less-formal-than-I-would-like start, my boy said “ready, set, go” and we launched out across the yard.

My Achilles tendon has been acting up for a few days (happens when I stand too much at work) and feeling it getting tender I wisely made the decision after about 10 really hard steps to ease off and take the L, but I still ran at what I’d estimate to be 90% capacity all the way across the lawn (maybe 75 yards at most). I don’t think I could’ve beaten him at 100%, either.

“That’s right, you’re slow old man!” the boy bellowed across the dark parking lot.

Then, in what I can only describe as a nearly out-of-body experience, I walked around the minivan, and got in the driver’s seat.

I was mildly winded, at best.

Reader, I don’t say this to brag. I say this because it has been a tectonic shift in my understanding of my own body. I’m still processing the ramifications of what “cardiovascular health” even is at this point. I thought that the way you get to a point of being able to sprint without being winded is to run long distances, or to get your heart rate up for 30 minutes every day. That’s the way I’d always “gotten in shape.”

I would have confidently told you yesterday at this time that, while I have lost a bunch of weight, I need to be doing more cardio because I’m not really in great shape.

That’s probably true to a certain extent. What is categorically untrue is (whatever I would have said about my ability to sprint). Welcome to 2025, where Ben gets to wrestle with his grasp of how his own body works.

So yeah, the boy’s right about one thing: I lost fair and square. But if you ask me, he’s dead wrong about that “old man” bit.

I’m writing this one down so that we can enjoy it for years to come.

It all started where epic tales do: Facebook Marketplace.

First, some background: Jacqueline and I have been sharing a home office since 2021, and it’s worked fairly well. We’ve had a good run, and with her client roster expanding it’s become a problem that both of us can’t hop on a call at the same time.

It’s also, despite what you might have scribbled into your teenage diary, not realistic to sustain a healthy marriage where you literally breathe the same air 20+ hours a day. I love my wife and she loves me. She’d lay down her life for our family, but if she has to hear the same story told on 4 separate 1:1 calls every Monday, she might end up choking me out with an ethernet cable.

That’s two paragraphs to get here: we need a shed. We’ll convert that into outdoor office space for her, and save our marriage while still both working from home doing jobs we love.

Where was I? Oh right: Facebook Marketplace, at the beginning of a journey of Alighierian proportions.

You know how FB marketplace works: it’s a mad-max style, no holds barred, first-come-first served buffet full of “is this still available” and “porch pickups.” So when we found a too-good-to-be-true (I know. We know. We’ll get to that…) shed for sale just an hour(ish) away, we pounced. Jacq hopped in a car to go (with her dad) and check whether it passed a sniff-test, and to beat whoever was “coming tomorrow” by showing up today, cash in hand. (again… I know.)

After all, the way you catch a deal is by acting fast, right? (I get it. In retrospect I can’t believe how many signs we just blew past. Rookie mistakes all around. But stick around. It’s a good story)

Jacq fell in “like” with the little shed in [name of town redacted], and offered half of the $[redacted]purchase price just to hold it. We paid hastily using [payment service redacted] and contacted a towing company to see about getting there over the next few days to move our bargain-priced shed to it’s new home in our yard.

We headed back home, shed keys in hand.

The next day it was rainy, but we went ahead and had the tow truck guy swing by to see what it was going to take to move the shed.

“There’s no shed at the address you gave me”

(Cue that feeling like someone punched me in the gut, and was raring back for a second lick.)

We spent the next few hours piecing together the story: around the time we laid out some cold hard cash (via a handy app), the folks at Westwood Sheds discovered the FB marketplace listing for a shed they had just leased (no money down! no first month’s payment!) to a Ms. Smith (name changed here—but curiously not on the Facebook Maketplace listing—to protect the ongoing legal proceedings) just a few days before.

It (perhaps obviously) violates the terms of your lease with Westwood sheds to… sell the shed, and so Westwood dispatched the truck to go and retrieve the shed.

It’s a good thing we didn’t take it two nights earlier: in addition to being out double the money, we’d be in possession of a stolen shed, and participating in crimes.

Here’s where the story gets extra good.

With the help of the [nearby county] Sheriff’s deputy, we had more than enough to execute a warrant and run through the legal come-to-Jesus portion of the event (still ongoing).

The only thing we didn’t have? A shed.

You know who *did* have a shed? Westwood.

We called up the fine folks at Westwood and asked nicely if there is a “scratch and dent” sale on repossessed sheds. After a few good laughs, and phone-haggling on the price, we had a shed, discounted by a little more than the price we had already given to Ms Smith.

Before she hung up the phone, my wife got that gleam in her eye and I knew a funny line was coming. “So, now that we’ve got a price set for the shed, what will you give me for the key?”

As she signed the last of the paperwork here at the local Westwood branch, the sales guy mentioned that if we refer any friends, we get a $50 check. Again the gleam in Jacqueline’s eye: “Oh, please put down that Ms. Smith referred us. She could use the cash.”

So please come visit us! I’d love to give you the tour of the [Smith] Center for Excellence in Online Commerce. It’s in green:

This is a modified-for-a-blog-post version of a talk I gave at my kid’s high school FCA meeting this morning.

Three quick stories, if I may.

Before we get into it, to address two pressing points:

First, YES, this is another instance of some 40-something white guy insisting that Eminem is the best rapper alive, and that it’s not close. But the fact that Em singlehandedly created the genre of “I’m going to stop trying to compete with Eminem and just be impossible to understand instead” mumble-rap is not what I’m here to talk about.

Next, YES this is a “sermon” about Eminem and NO I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share it at a high school, so if I get escorted out someone please grab a photo for Instagram, because that will seriously up my street cred.

Ok, to the stories: First up Marshall Mathers, who you might know as the rapper Eminem. But to understand his story you should grasp something critical about the genre of rap (which I’ll also refer to as Hip Hop even though there are distinctions).

Hip hop started as a protest genre, speaking truth to power. Rappers, DJs, Break Dancers, and MCs were in large part a mostly-peaceful alternative to gang violence and aggression. Instead of taking up a gun, an emcee could pick up a microphone to resolve a beef. By its very nature Hip Hop is explicit.

A good rapper or rap lyricist therefore is someone who looks around (or looks internally) and then describes what they see in ways that help others see and feel something. That’s honestly true of any artist, only that rappers get a pass for making the explicitness a feature of the art.

Back in 1997 Eminem released an EP (Extended Play–like an album, but shorter) called “Slim Shady” where he introduced an alter-ego who was like an uncensored version of himself. Eminem (who he’d self-reference as “Marshall”) might not get away with saying especially offensive and lewd things, but Slim could get a pass.

Slim Shady is a character who represents what it’s like to remove all morality and sense of “right and wrong” from who Eminem (or Marshall) is. He’s “free” to spew whatever blasphemous, vile, and sick things he thinks without having to worry about the “shackles” of a conscience.

The Slim Shady EP was a monster hit that got Eminem noticed and the rest is history (financially speaking) as Marshall skyrocketed in popularity and notoriety. Nearly 30 years later, and he’s honestly still playing with the concept of Slim Shady.

That brings me to story 2: the one about Henry Jekyll.

It’s a “story” in a more literal (and literary!) sense, written down in the 1886 novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

I can’t help but think that Marshall Mathers used the story as inspiration for Slim Shady.

As the story goes, Henry Jekyll saw in himself a similar evil impulse, and sought a way to repress those tendencies. There’s even an alter-ego (this time named Edward Hyde… a wonderful play on the fact that we humans naturally try to “hide” this side of us). Stevenson follows the same train of thought as Eminem, exploring what it would look like if there were a potion that actually turned Jekyll into Hyde. How dark could it get? (spoiler? pretty dark.)

Sidenote: In 1997 Dr Timothy Keller gave a sermon on Romans 7:1-25 where he does a better job of making the point I’m going to aim at today. I owe much of the insight to Dr Keller. I’m honestly just tacking on a more-recent example of Slim Shady to his already-masterful application of Romans 7.

Last week Eminem released another album, and as before ever since the concept of “Slim Shady” was introduced, he spends a lot of time making Slim the scapegoat, and playing with the concepts of causing offense, being a sort of dark prophet committed to truth-telling at all costs, as well as typical “I’m the best rapper ever”-style bravado and machismo.

In 2024 Marshall is still dealing with the same exact struggle and he even went about solving the problem (so far!) in much the same way that Henry Jekyll did.

It should go without saying, but just so we’re clear: I don’t recommend listening to this album on a regular basis, and I certainly don’t condone anything that Eminem says, how he says it, or the implications that might flow from it.

But as a case-study in how the non-Christian mind works, I’ve never seen a better and more honest text.

In the song “Guilty Conscience 2” (again, lyrics not for the faint of heart, and don’t say I didn’t warn you) takes a blatantly Jekyll/Hyde approach and has Slim and Marshall rap at each other, battle-rap style. From a production standpoint, whenever he’s “Slim” the tone of the vocals are a little more compressed and filtered, and when he’s Marshall it’s clearer and unfiltered.

The setup is that “Slim” has taken “Marshall” hostage, setting the stage for the conflict. By the end of the song “Marshall” convinces “Slim” to untie him, and the song ends with a self-described murder-suicide. The “good guy” murdering the “bad guy.”

There’s a masterful bit of production that goes on through the song. As he has this internal battle between “the real Marshall” and “the fake Slim Shady” there’s a spot a little over halfway through where “Slim” says this (with parenthetical interjections throughout by “Marshall” and only one bit of censorship—which feels like a record in quoting Eminem 😆)

Yeah, and I scare you ’cause (why?)
I’m who you used to be (who?)
The you who didn’t crumble under the scrutiny (wait, what?)
When it was you and me (yeah)
I gave you power to use me as an excuse to be evil (I know)
You created me to say everything you didn’t have the {guts} to say (yep)
What you were thinking but in a more diabolic way
You fed me pills and a bottle of alcohol a day (okay)
Made me too strong for you and lost control of me (you’re right)
I took over you totally
You were socially awkward ’til you molded me (yeah)

Eminem

As this section of the song builds, the two “styles” of production start to blend, and you can hear both Marshall and Slim rapping together. The track is literally doubled, and the two sides are perfectly in sync.

Back real quick to Henry Jekyll.

Apologies for potentially spoiling a 135-year-old book, but late in the novel, Dr Jekyll is sitting on a park bench, having run out of the “potion” that turns him into the unfettered and evil Edward Hyde, but something happens: he begins comparing himself (favorably) to those around him, and that “vainglorious” thought is the direct preamble to him once again turning irrevocably into Edward Hyde. The “bad guy” summoned by dark impulses of the “good guy.”

Wait, what? What’s going on there?

That brings us to the Apostle Paul, for a potentially shocking take.

By way of introduction to this Biblical text, it was written by inarguably the most famous Christian preacher of his day, and the author of a significant portion of the New Testament (most likely after he’d written much of it!), so I want you to take special notice of the verb tenses.

This is a world famous pastor, and he’s speaking very intentionally in the first person, singular, present tense.

Here’s Romans Chapter 7:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Romans 7:14-25

If you stop reading before the last paragraph there, the story bears a LOT of similarities to how both Jekyll and Marshall’s ends come about.

The preacher here is saying something majorly profound: if you follow through on *effort* to be holier, trying really hard to be the “good guy” or to do the “right thing” it’ll end the same place as Eminem so explicitly draws out: staring down the barrel of a loaded gun that your own effort to be good enough is pointing at you.

That vainglorious comparison, that insidious and self-justifying pride, that scorekeeping Jekyllism is exactly the fuel that the unredeemed flesh feeds on, and it will (guaranteed) end in the same spot Paul gets to: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”

Both the Slim Shady obscenity and the Marshall self-justification (though he never really gets to that corner to turn it) are attempts to not need Jesus. The “good guy” turns out to not be so “good.”

So how is Paul’s response any different? Well we have the last few lines of the text to show us.

We’ve established that there’s no hope in just muscling it out to do better, so the only freedom can come from *gratitude*. Paul rebounds HARD off of the “ground” of reality by aggressively turning to GRATITUDE. “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ.”

Thanks for what? Well you kinda have to read the entirety of Romans up to that point to really get it, but here’s the summary, which Christians have called the “gospel” or good news.

Paul has spent the previous chapters of this letter to the Romans explaining the NEWS. (Sidenote: there’s a difference between news and instruction. The Gospel is news.)

Briefly: Jesus Christ came and lived the perfect life that Eminem, myself, and you couldn’t. Even at the level of motive, all of his deeds were right, his actions were glorifying to God, and he never failed. He never once gave in when tempted.

Then, he died the death that we deserve, and offers his record of perfect righteousness for our record of sin. His death pays a ransom, averting the righteous wrath of God that has to exist against sin.

Paul goes on later in the letter to tell the Romans exactly how to be saved: rest in Jesus, declaring with your mouth and believing in your heart that he was raised from the dead for you.

I really do hope that Eminem can make it there. As it is, I’ve got such respect for his ability to own, call out, and publicly do battle with his demons. But it’s not enough. I don’t have a hundredth the platform that Eminem does, and I can’t imagine calling out my sins and owning them the way he does. He’s both flippant and dismissive of the hurt he’s caused and deeply and openly troubled by it. His lyrics are startlingly raw.

My challenge to Marshall, that he seems to have already figured out: keep digging into that self-justifying and “righteous” facade, and what you’ll find is that no matter how you slice it from skin to core, you’re a bad apple. A “wretched man.”

Then bounce off of Jesus, turning the corner. All you need to turn that corner is nothing. Surrender. Discover the news of what Jesus did for you. Cease the striving to save yourself. Join our line of screwups and failures.