During my senior year I spent Friday nights under the lights, cheerleading at my high school’s football and basketball games. Our job was to support and encourage the home team, but we spent more time perfecting our cheers and dance routines than studying the nuances of the game. Once a coach gave us a mini clinic to make sure we understood the sport well enough to do the right cheer at the appropriate time.

I no longer fit in those short, pleated skirts or carry a crinkly pair of red and blue pom poms, but parenting and adulthood continually provide opportunities to hone cheerleading skills of a different sort in support of friends, family, and the students I teach one day a week in our Classical Conversations program. Just as often, those same friends and family — and yes, even the students — bless me with the same.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up . . .
1 Thessalonians 5:11

When my kids were younger, I served as president of our homeschool group. I soon learned that the best way to serve was not to take on more work for myself but to delegate authority to other moms and then step aside and become their cheerleader. If you’re a perfectionist like me, it can be hard to let go, but it allows someone else the chance to shine and it gives you the opportunity to cheer them on with grace and humility.

To read more about cheering on the people in our lives, please visit me today at (in)courage.

Cheering for the Home Team

I like to say I grew up on the back of a motorcycle. My dad and his stepdad owned matching Suzukis and enjoyed weekend rides in the mountains of northwest Arkansas. I often went with them. We would leave in the early hours before the sun rose high enough to bake both pavement and shoulders. I’d wrap my arms around my daddy’s waist and a bungee cord around mine, secured to the backrest in case I started to nod off on those sleepy Saturday mornings.

It always fascinated me that whenever we’d pass motorcycles coming toward us — usually people we did not know — my dad and the other drivers waved low to each other, a gesture that implied more than a simple hello. It communicated not only acceptance and camaraderie but also an unspoken message: you are one of my people.

When we rode that motorcycle we were part of something bigger, a special club, if linked by nothing more than our chosen mode of transportation. It was a bond which transcended socioeconomic, age, and racial lines.

Last weekend I once again witnessed that old, familiar wave between two motorcyclists, and I couldn’t help but wonder: what if the rest of us accepted each other so readily, without analysis or hesitation? Can you even imagine it?

Please visit me today at (in)courage for the rest of the post. I really hope you will!