Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow Read Free Book Online Page A

doing four hundred of each, every day. I also began to add weights and certain exercises with them, but Dad wouldn’t let me use any weight heavier than one with which I could do at least fifteen repetitions. He was still being cautious, not wanting me to be injured or somehow stunt my growth or otherwise negatively impact the proper development of bones, tendons, and the like. In the process, I think I built up as much in endurance as I did in strength. As I began adding strength later, I think that foundation of stamina served me well, which was an expected plus.
    At some point, still in Little League, I believed and imagined that everyone around me was also trying to improve. In retrospect, I’m not really sure how much most kids were training at that age, but at the time, I was convinced everyone was working hard to get better.
    And that’s when I adopted one of my mantras for getting stronger and better and for all my workouts:
    Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard .
    Because I assumed that everyone was trying to get better, I began looking for ways that I could get an edge, an advantage that would serve me in competition. I would end up doing things above and beyond whatever was expected to get an edge. I also began working out at odd times of the day and night, thinking, I’ll bet there are no other kids in Jacksonville working out right now . Whether that was actually true didn’t really matter—what mattered to me was that I thought it was true. It was just another thing that motivated me to work longer and harder.
    I’m sure that God made me in such a way that I was willing to work hard, but there was certainly a lot of parental encouragement and nurturing as well. From the earliest days I can remember, my parents always told me they believed God had big plans for me, even though they didn’t know exactly what they were. Mom used to quote her paraphrase of Isaiah 64:4 over and over to me,
    We haven’t even seen a God like ours who acts on behalf of the one who waits for Him.
    My dad would also reinforce that promise of God. For my whole life, he has told me that he and Mom have always prayed for me, and knew that God had a special plan for me. They told all their children the same thing. That’s true, of course, for me, for my brothers and sisters and for all of us, because God clearly has a plan for all of us. But my dad felt that somehow the plan God had laid out for me was going to involve a lot of visibility. He didn’t say it exactly like that but, rather, more like this:
    “Maybe it’s through baseball or football, but somehow, some way, what we do in the Philippines to share Jesus with people, you’ll be able to do and share right here in America, in ways that we’d never be able to. I can’t walk into any high school to share the gospel, but you’ll be able to. I believe that God is preparing the way for that to happen.”
    That’s a great blessing to give a child. To remind them, pray for them, and assure them that God has a great plan—in His terms and for His purposes—for their lives.
    I tried to work as hard as possible in every area in order to live up to it. Waiting on the Lord, as referenced in the passage from Isaiah that my mom always quoted, doesn’t mean being complacent. It means understanding that He has a time and a plan, and that we’re not the ones in control. In the meantime, however, we need to strive to use our gifts and abilities fully and to the best of our ability for whatever He does have in store for us, whenever the time comes. I was beginning to see more clearly that God always has His hand on us—preparing us for His purposes.
    And I began to see that as not only a great blessing and promise, but a great responsibility.

Chapter Five
A Fair Farewell
    I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
    —P HILIPPIANS 4:13, NKJV
    After I’d been playing at Normandy and Lakeshore for a while, it came time for me to start playing for a