This week's Pep Talk: "Out of Love"

It was late on a Thursday evening and I’m driving back from Boulder, Colorado after an event that brings great joy to my heart: since September, each Thursday night “Coach Mac’s Feast and Fix” feeds, entertains and, we hope, inspires others. It’s a bunch of CU football fanatics who are buffs to the bone in support of head coach Jon Embree, staff, players and everybody else trying like heck to restore the fortunes of the football program.

It’s a fun night out that brings together folks around a common goal: unwavering support of the challenging restoration project ahead. The Buffs, from the late ‘1980‘s through early 2000‘s won a national title, many conference titles and recruited many great players who went on to great success in the National Football League. The Buffs during that span, under Bill McCartney, Rick Neuheisel and Gary Barnett were an elite program - not so much right now.

So each Thursday night, McCartney challenges a growing number of folks, bellies full of Pasta Jay’s great food served within the beautiful confines of Gebhardt BMW - great event space - to unite. It’s been a lot of fun hearing the funny, heartwarming and courageous stories guests - players, coaches, staff - share. The crowd also gets an inspiring leadership message and poem from McCartney. Yeah, that’s right, the tough and intense football coach? Yeah, he loves to write poetry and shares a poem, written to honor the guests, with the audience right before the event closes with the school’s fight song. Trust me, it’s worth the price of admission.

Anyway, back to the point. I was driving home from the “Feast and Fix” and had three “to go” boxes of food. I wasn’t hungry but I had grabbed three of the boxes before departing because of a great lesson I learned long ago, when covering the CU Buffs football team as a sports guy at KCNC-TV in Denver. I did that from 1988-2005 and traveled on the team plane for most of those years. You become part of the family in many ways. Well, former Buff All American Bobby Anderson, who was on the radio team back then, would always grab leftover sack lunches left on the plane once we landed back in the Mile High City after what was usually, considering the years we covered the team, victories by the Buffs.

A lot of the kids, after a grueling football game, get on the plane and sleep, listen to music, chill - lots of food is left over. Anderson used to scoop all the unopened meals and take them to a homeless shelter in the area. I always thought that was pretty cool.

So I had grabbed the food, headed back to Denver and pulled up to an area of downtown known for having hungry folks congregated. I pulled up and asked, “Anybody hungry?” A few folks immediately came to my window and, in a respectful way, took the food. Then another approached, looking famished and forlorn: “Do you have any more?”

I didn’t and felt terrible. The ten minutes that remained on the drive home changed dramatically: what had been a joyful night became quite reflective. Did I create more problems? Did they fight over the food? What about the woman who, unless the others shared, might go hungry? Doubts about whether it was the right thing crashed into my cranium.

I don’t have an answer for that, but this much I do know. In the best-selling book ever written, in Galatians, we’re encouraged to “never grow weary of doing good, for at the proper time, you’ll reap the harvest if you just don’t give up.”

It just makes sense, right? Hungry people, need some food, care for them. The gesture was meant out of love. Let’s try like heck this week to never grow weary of thoughts, words and actions meant out of love. I’m just a simple dude from Missouri, but it just seems if we dwell there, wow, against such things, there is no law!