What a Life! for February 21-25, 2007

Probably most of my readers know that the Super Bowl Champion’s head coach is Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts. Besides being one of the first African-American head coaches to take his team to a Super Bowl, he is also a deeply religious person. Before the Super Bowl, he went to Detroit to give a talk at an Athletic Prayer Breakfast. It was a great talk on suffering and pain. The following are some of his main points.

After some general comments, Dungy told his audience that he was going to talk about lessons he had learned from his three sons. The crowd fell silent because one of his sons had committed suicide about thirteen months before this event. He first spoke of his middle son, Eric, who he said shares his competitiveness and is focused on sports “to where it’s almost a problem.”

He then spoke of his youngest son, Jordan, who has a rare congenital condition that causes him not to feel pain. “He feels things, but he doesn’t get the sensation of pain,” Dungy said. “That sounds like it’s a good thing, but I promise you it’s not. We’ve learned a lot about pain in the last five years we’ve had Jordan. We’ve learned some hurts are really necessary for kids. Pain is necessary for kids to find out the difference between what’s good and what’s harmful.”

“Jordan,” Dungy said, “loves cookies. Cookies are good, but in Jordan’s mind, if they’re good out on the plate, they’re even better in the oven. He will go right in the oven when my wife’s not looking, reach in, take the rack out, take the pan out, burn his hands and eat the cookies and burn his tongue and never feel it. He doesn’t know that’s bad for him. Jordan has no fear of anything, so we constantly have to watch him.”

The lesson learned is simple. “You get the question all the time, ‘Why does the Lord allow pain in your life? Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is a God of love, why does he allow these hurtful things to happen?”’

“Often because of temporary pain, you learn what’s harmful. You learn to fear the right things. Pain sometimes lets us know we have a condition that needs to be healed. Pain inside sometimes lets us know that spiritually we’re not quite right and that we need God’s healing power so we can make the necessary changes.”

Finally, he spoke of James, Tony’s oldest son, who died three days before Christmas 2005. As he did when he delivered James’ eulogy, Dungy spoke of him eloquently and steadily, speaking of lessons learned and of the positives taken from experience.

“It was tough and it was very, very painful, but as painful as it was, some good things came out of it,” Dungy said. “People asked me, ‘How did you recover so quickly?’ I’m not totally recovered. I don’t know that I will ever be. I could come back because of something one of my good Christian friends said to me after the funeral.”

“He said, ‘You know James accepted Christ into his heart, so you know he’s in heaven, right?’ I said, ‘Right, I know that.’ He said, ‘So, with all you know about heaven, if you had the power to bring him back now, would you?’ When I thought about it, I said, ‘No, I wouldn’t. I would not want him back with what I know about heaven.’ That’s what helped me through the grieving process. Because of Christ’s spirit in me, I had that confidence that James is there, at peace with the Lord, and I have the peace of mind in the midst of something that’s very, very painful.”