Why Get it GOD it Good?

This is not as long as it looks. Please read.

So what's be big deal? It started when our family of five was either coming home from church or going to church. I honestly can not remember, but let's not focus on my memory. My son Tanner was causing me to go into some sort of discussion about how to behave. Sometimes I believe his job was to push my buttons and make me go into some LONG drawn out discussion. On this day I concluded my discussion with Get it GOD it Good. I truly intended to say GOT and not GOD, but my Missouri accent along with my speed talking evidentially blurred GOT to sound like GOD. After saying it I stopped, looked around and said hey... get it GOD it good. For some reason this single moment made me feel compelled to do something more with this so I went home and purchased GETITGODITGOOD.COM. Time went by and I did nothing with it.

September 22, 2007 was ten years to the day that my Dad had died. It was the first year that I did not remember what day it was. I woke not thinking about the death of my Dad. It probably would have hit me later in the day, but after returning from our daughter's soccer practice I found Tanner, the one that had inspired Get it GOD it Good, laying lifeless next to his bed. This is still difficult to say. It does not feel real and I would give anything to not be making t-shirts and setting up this site in his memory (For more about Tanner go to 4uTanner.com).

In exchange for having our son back as a living part of our family I would sacrifice the possibility that these t-shirts and this site could educate thousands of people and maybe even save a few souls. If that sounds selfish it's because it is. If it is true that Tanner will be in heaven then it would be stupid to want him back on this planet that at times can be down right cruel. Some may think that means I am not a true Christian because I must not believe fully that Tanner is in heaven. To that I must say I am a Christian-N-Training. To those that must quantify everything I would say there are days I believe 90% that Tanner is in heaven. There are days that I believe 50% that he is in heaven and there are days that I question the existence of God altogether. Do you have to believe 100% 100% of the time?

Let me explain the way I see it with an analogy. Let's say you are a sports fan and you have a favorite football team called the California GodHogs. They are not expected to do very well this season and you do not have very much confidence that they will win more than two games. A true fan still loves their GodHogs and will turn on the games in hopes that they will pull out a miracle. A true fan has their doubts, but will still pull for their team. A true fan may even get a bit angry at the team and say a few curse words when they only have one win and get their 4th loss in a row. We are human and therefore not perfect. Christians can get angry too. Christians can make mistakes and yell at their team and act like a fool because they lost again (I'm not making an excuse for my stupid behavior). It hurts to lose and sometimes we do not know how to vent the anger or who to blame and nobody wants to be associated with a losing team. If there was a 100% chance that your GodHogs would win every game what would be the challenge for the team and what would be fun in watching? Without taking this analogy too far let's end with the point that even if you lose faith in your team at times you still love them and believe that it will eventually get better.

The goal is to be a true fan and not just a fair weather fan. Believe in your team even when everything seems to be stacked against them. Don't abandon your team just because there are a few players that make a lot of mistakes or are poor sports. Try to help and encourage those players. Yes, we are all Christians-N-Training.