This is the 12th of 25 special reflections based on lessons I learned from my mother. These will run from my birthday on October 27 until her birthday on November 20.

Read

Psalm 71

Reflect

Mom loved sports. At least she loved the sports that we loved. I rooted for the Philadelphia Phillies, so Mom was a Phillies fan. Most of us rooted for the Florida Gators, so Mom was a big Gator fan. And she was a huge supporter of any sport that we played. If you were one of her children and you were involved in a game (or in the case of two of my sisters, involved in cheering for the game), you could expect to look in the stands and see Mom there.

There were only two teams I remember that Mom loved that had nothing to do with her children. One was the Dallas Cowboys. She had started rooting for the Cowboys in their early days and she had a soft spot in her heart for their longtime head coach, Tom Landry, and their Hall of Fame quarterback, Roger Staubach. No one was happier when the Cowboys won in the Super Bowl than my mother.

The other team was her beloved alma mater, the Carthage High School Bulldogs. Carthage never had much of a football team when she went to school there in the late 1950s, and they always seemed to fall short in the years after that. A little before she died she told me, “I would love for my Carthage Bulldogs to win a championship just one time.”

That was in 2007. Mom died at the end of July, and when the school year started in Carthage the next month, the Bulldogs welcomed their new head coach, Scott Surratt. That year the Bulldogs did something new – they won their district and made it into the second round of the playoffs. And the next year, Surratt and the Bulldogs made Mom’s wish come true by winning the Texas 3A state championship.

Since then, the Bulldogs have not slowed down at all. In the 15 years since Mom passed, Carthage has won eight state championships and is attempting to win a ninth and their third in a row. Carthage is in the midst of a 23-game winning streak and has gone 123-4 since 2017. Again, no one would be cheering any harder or feel any prouder of the Bulldogs than my mother.

Paul wrote that “these three remain: faith, hope and love,” and Mom had more than her share of all three. Her faith in the Lord seemed infinite and her love for others was always on display. But hope – that was something she never seemed to lose. She never gave up hope in the things she cared most about, whether it was her country, her children or her beloved high school football team. I really wish she had lived long enough to see just one of those eight championships, but it brings me joy thinking that she somehow knows about them on the other side.

Hope is another of those qualities that God prizes, in part because it’s a part of His nature. He is a God who has continual hope for His people, and so He wants us to be a people who display hope in our lives. We should always hope for the best in situations, and we should never lose our hope for the glory that comes from faith in Christ. We live in a cynical world that often reveals that it has lost its faith in goodness and its hope for better days. Christians have an opportunity to stand out and make a difference when we lead with our faith and share our hope with those who have lost theirs.

Reflection copyright © 2025 Doug DeBolt.