KRISTY AND MILTON AND HGTV VS. FOOTBALL

Milton, here for Kristy:

It is football season again all across America, and I am crazy about football!

Roll Tide!

Get'em Jaguars!

Go Gators!

Go Gators?

Am I sick? Somebody call the doctor. Check my pulse. Take my blood pressure.

I never knew if Kristy was a Bama fan or Gator fan or Seminole. She never said or acted like she cared very much about any one of the teams.

I do know she was my best cheerleader, and I was her hero.

Remember Bear Bryant? I grew up watching his Sunday afternoon Bear Bryant Show and the most recent replay of the last Alabama football victory. "That's a goodie, or bingo!" he would say after a great hit by one of his players. I was hooked.

Then Kristy and I started dating and a transition began.

HGTV always won over football at my house, at least the last few years. While one of our first dates was to a football game, Kristy never ever got excited about sports. She tolerated it with me though she knew I loved it. Once she went with me to an Alabama Football in 1997 for the New Year's Outback Bowl Game in Tampa, FL, and she read a novel all the way through through the game. Alabama played Michigan and Alabama won 17-14! Roll Tide!

Believe it or not, she actually put together many tracks for witnessing for our state youth director that was handed out by the thousands by young people at that game. She wrote game stats and commentary on each team for the youth department for a game program and highlights that were handed out by the hundreds of thousands over a period of years at bowl games in Florida. I don't know how she did it because she didn't know anything about football.

She once asked me if the quarterback was offense or defense? I said you better let me read that before it goes to the printer. HA!

Two old Alabama fans sat in front of us at that Outback Bowl game reading her tract while I watched the game and Kristy read her novel. Too funny!

In the more recent years, I watched more HGTV with Kristy than she ever watched football or sports with me. We enjoyed all kinds of chick flicks together and I was won over to her interest in home decorating shows or parade of homes each year. I can't tell you how many shows we went to together. It was fun and it was something we could both get enjoyment. That is what marriage is all about. It is about sharing and giving and caring more about the other's needs than your own interests.

I would trade every sports event in the world for having Kristy here to share her interests. I am grateful that I can look back knowing that I wasn't selfish and unwilling to share with her those things that were special and important to her. I loved and love football and sports in general far more than any HGTV program they have, but none of that matters any more.

All across the land, husbands are hunkering down for another season of the pigskin pastime. There is nothing wrong with sports, but I would swap all the games in the world for watching just one more HGTV program with my beloved redhead.

Maybe some dumb man will get the message if some smart wife would read this to him.

***

Sunday I will preach for the first time in over two months, and it will be the first time I will preach as a pastor without my beautiful redhead. She was always in my corner cheering me on and I know she is cheering me own even more now.

I will miss her Sunday morning, but I am going to fulfill God's call on my life and win just like Kristy did.