Confessions of a Blogger

If my life was a fabric a majority of the threads would be cardinal red and navy blue.

My parents started taking me to Ole Miss games before I could read. In the days and weeks between games Ole Miss football lived in the stories I would hear my dad tell his friends or in sound bytes from late legendary Jackson sports anchor Michael Rubenstein on the 6:00 news. My dad watched the news every night from his easy chair, and I laid on the floor in front of the TV trying to catch a glimpse of someone in a red jersey. 

Ole Miss also lived in my imagination. My front yard was Vaught-Hemingway Stadium and depending on the year I was Timmy Moffett, J.R. Ambrose or Willie Green. My dad was always Archie Manning. Both of us thought highly of our make-believe abilities. I had hands like glue and jets for feet. Dad thought he could scramble. We won a lot of pretend games in that front yard, and I'm sure I set several Ole Miss records for both receiving yards and touchdowns. 

Somewhere in those years, about the time Steve Sloan was getting ushered out as head coach and Billy Brewer was brought in, I learned to read. Not long after that I discovered I could read about Ole Miss sports every day in the newspaper. It wasn't long before I was racing to the end of the driveway to pick up the morning paper, running inside while fumbling for the sports page and taking a seat at the breakfast table to read what Rick Cleveland or his Clarion Ledger colleagues had to say about the Rebels. My parents thought it was funny a kid my age enjoyed the paper so much. It wasn't the paper I enjoyed. It was stories about Ole Miss. 

That routine didn't stop until I moved to New York City as an Ole Miss graduate in 1999. Thankfully, the internet happened and my Ole Miss reading didn't miss a beat despite the move to the college-football barren northeast. In fact, I got to read about Ole Miss even more. The Ole Miss Spirit started this thing called a Message Board, and Ole Miss sports was at my disposal 24/7 from my small Brooklyn apartment. The internet was like a a fresh newspaper getting thrown to the foot of the driveway every hour on the hour. With Romaro Miller and Eli Manning leading Ole Miss to bowl games on a yearly basis there were plenty of reasons to click on that old Netscape browser. 

After that I started my law practice back home in Dixie. I took my hourly doses of Ole Miss sports from my office computer in between drafting pleadings and meeting clients and probably set a record for refreshing my browser that time Pete Boone and Robert Khayat traveled the countryside looking for the coach who would say yes to replacing David Cutcliffe. I followed that plane all the way to Ed Orgeron. What a waste. 

And then my life as I knew it changed forever. This skinny guy in a black turtleneck stood on a stage somewhere out in California and introduced us to what he called "the iPhone", and with it the promise that I could carry Ole Miss sports in my pocket. In no-time flat I was reading about Ole Miss sports in the back hallways and courtrooms of courthouses across the south. It was glorious. My favorite past-time was with me wherever I went and available with nothing more than a quick reach inside my pocket. 

And it was soon thereafter that I learned about this thing called a Blog. I received a tutorial on the practice of blogging courtesy of the scandal involving Oxford lawyer Dickie Scruggs, and was instantly fascinated. The most interesting, up-to-the-minute coverage of all things Scruggs wasn't found on CNN.com or FoxNews. It was on blogs. Anybody could be published anytime. All you needed was a blog and the ability to write a comprehensible sentence. 

I had to have one. 

It's hard to believe, but that was more than six years ago. I started writing about Ole Miss every day. The blogging experts said daily writing was the surest way to grow a blog's audience. I was determined to grow this one and so I wrote. Every day I wrote. I wrote fun stuff. I wrote silly stuff. I exhaled my frustrations with Houston Nutt, Pete Boone and Dan Jones on the world wide web for anyone to see. It was fun. It was also consuming. 

And then Facebook and Twitter came on the scene. Now, instead of refreshing ESPN every hour or so I could refresh my Twitter feed every 15 seconds with the possibility of learning something new about something. 

I didn't want to miss anything. My iPhone started spending more time in my hand than it did in my pocket.

For reasons unknown I decided whatever was happening on that phone was more interesting than anything else or anyone else. I may not have told anyone I believed that, but my actions told them otherwise. My iPhone-induced trance showed I thought it was more important than anyone.

I ignored my kids and my family....so I could look at my iPhone (so sad upon reflection). 

It was the first thing I looked at in the morning, the last thing I looked at before falling asleep and the only thing I wanted to look at anytime in between. 

Twitter followers and the perfect funny Tweet were more important to me than the four little followers who live in my house. 

My wife and kids saw it. I did not, and I might never have but for the kindness of a loving God who finally intervened last fall. 

My legal career took some twists and turns last year that finally laid me flat on my back about the time Ole Miss beat Boise State in Atlanta. Life got hard, I got scared, and Twitter and Ole Miss Sports were of little comfort. Some people might call it a mid-life crisis. I think it was deeper than that. My fear gave way to depression and I could not see a way out of it. I was blue, blue, blue. 

And that's when a friend reminded me about God's word. Thanks to his advice and the wonderful God-breathed comfort of Psalm 23, I started to find my hope again. That was in October. It's been a process, and God has been gracious, but in the last few months he's shown me a few things about my priorities. 

Tim Keller, who just happened to be my preacher when I lived in New York and is now a well-known Christian writer, says the things you daydream about when you're not thinking about anything else are ultimately the things you serve. I had heard him preach those words many times but had conveniently forgotten them. 

For years I have daydreamed about my next blog post or my next Tweet. As I wrote above, my iPhone was the first thing I looked at in the morning and the last thing I looked at each night. 

Psalm 1 says blessed is the man who meditates on God's word day and night. I was meditating on Twitter day and night, and therefore I was decidedly not blessed. 

This little blog about Ole Miss Sports and the social media that comes with it had become my idol. 

Philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, "There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”

I tried to fill the hole in my heart with an Ole Miss website. It filled my waking thoughts. 

Please understand that I know finding an idol in an Ole Miss blog sounds ridiculous, but it is nonetheless true. I was ridiculous.

And now that I finally realize exactly how ridiculous I was I'm grateful to be at last shifting my priorities thanks to God's merciful intervention. After a couple months of reflection I've decided that I'm not giving up enjoying Ole Miss sports as a hobby, and I'm not giving up writing about the Rebels. For me, to think is to write. I enjoy it. It clarifies my thought processes. Even in writing this post I've learned some things about myself that I hadn't actually thought all the way through. I am, however, slowing waaaay down on social media, and I am focusing my attention on the things that matter. That means I really am trying to find my identity in Christ, and I'm also shifting my focus away from my iPhone and onto my family. 

By necessity, these new, greater priorities will start showing up more in my writing. 

There's one thing that is finally crystal clear to me: Christ lived the perfect life we couldn't live and died the death we should have died so that we might enjoy eternity with our Father in Heaven one day. That news is more important than any Tweet, or any blog post ever. 

Ole Miss sports is a pleasure I will always enjoy, but Christ is who I want to live for. 

Twitter is a great communication tool, but my kids are far more worthy of my attention. 

Writing words on this website is a way I can use a gift God gave me, but God's Words are the only words worthy of my dreams.

Ole Miss hosts Tennessee this weekend. Should be fun.