In life there are good examples and bad examples to follow. I believe we need both. We need the good examples to emulate how we want our life to be and the bad examples to know what we do not ever want to become.

I had to leave home when I was 17 years old and a senior in high school. I was the captain of the varsity football team and senior class president and yet my home life was a mess. I found a room to rent with a gentleman that was a friend of a friend and got a night job at the Rex Chair Factory. I would go to football practice and afterwards when all the other players went home to dinner with their family, I went to work at the chair factory.

Why am I telling you this? I am telling you this because at the age of 17, I had to choose the examples I wanted to follow and the examples I didn’t. In all of our lives we come to a point that we have to choose what we want to be when we grow up. I had to choose a little earlier than most but looking back on that period in my life, I clearly see God’s hand at work. God saw to it that I met the right kind of examples to follow and recognized the examples that I didn’t want to be like.

I guess you could say that the bad examples in my life almost played a greater role than the good ones. See, it was the bad examples that keep me from going off track and becoming someone I didn’t want to be. While even though at that time I didn’t have a wife and family, I did however know what I wanted it to be like when I did.

Much of life’s most precious blessings can be seen when we step back and take an honest inventory of who we are and how we got here. In my young years I had family members and people I worked with that showed me the way. I also had family members and people I worked with that showed me what I didn’t want to become.

Sometimes in life you are faced with having to change your heroes and examples in order to be around people you most want to be like. There are a few mental imagines that I developed when I was young that I carry with me to this day. They are images of the type of man, husband and father I want to be. You probably have similar images of who you want to be and what it will feel like when you accomplish the images you have dreamed of.

Choosing life examples are important so be careful to choose wisely. KT