Mamaw and Papaw Howard were both spiritual giants and great people. Everyone at our church loved and respected them. My papaw was a successful businessman who owned a jewelry store, a chain of discount stores, warehouse clubs, and a publishing company. I will write about these things later in the book, but they are not what made him great. He was also a man of great vision in the church and started several ministries that are still helping many people today. But that’s not what made him great either. What made him great was his love for Mamaw, whom he called “Queenie.”
Here’s part of their story. My papaw had been to war, and when he returned he fell in love with and married a beautiful young lady. A week after my grandfather, their first child, was born, my papaw was getting ready for work when heard the baby crying. He rushed into the kitchen to find my mamaw staring into space. He spoke to her, but she did not respond. Papaw had no choice but to take her to the hospital. After hours of crying and praying, my papaw heard the sad news that his sweet young wife had had a nervous breakdown. That started the journey that he and my mamaw traveled together for more than sixty years.
Not many medications were available to help Mamaw in those early years, so my papaw dedicated himself to helping her live as good a life as she could. Even though he was very visible in the community and at church, he was never embarrassed or ashamed of Mamaw. He loved her so much. He never hesitated to invite missionaries, dignitaries, or all of our big family to their home for meals, where he would fry fish and Mamaw would cut up potatoes for French fries.
As the years went on, better medication became available, and Mamaw’s quality of life improved. It seemed like a miracle. But that’s not the miracle. Here’s the miracle. “Jean Howard” is the name hundreds of people would say if asked to name a prayer warrior or woman of great faith. Papaw also wrote one time that Mamaw was “a Martha and Mary all wrapped up in one.”
Mamaw could practically quote the entire Bible. One of her favorite verses was Isaiah 41:10, in the old King James Version:
Fear thou not; for I am with thee:
be not dismayed; for I am thy God:
I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee,
yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
I can still hear her saying those words with great emphasis.
Papaw would later write that he could see how God welded their bond of love and how there were now thirty-nine of us who came from their great love. Almost all of us worship at the same church each Sunday.
As Mamaw and Papaw got older, Papaw’s health declined first. After he cared for Mamaw for so many years, the time came for Mamaw to take care of Papaw, and she did so with grace and love. She read him scriptures and cooked his favorite meals.
Their love was an awesome example of never giving up, even when your dreams have no hope of being realized. Papaw stood by Mamaw through some very dark days, and in doing so left our family a legacy of steadfastness and commitment that I will always appreciate and remember.
PAPAW PHIL: HE STARTED SMALL—AND KEPT ON GOING
When Papaw Phil was in college at Louisiana Tech, he was a great football player. He was so great that when he decided to leave the football team because it took too much time away from duck hunting, a guy named Terry Bradshaw took his place. Terry Bradshaw became a Super Bowl–winning quarterback, and now he is on TV talking about football. He’s so famous that he even does things like commercials for weight-loss products. I’m just saying that to make the point that Papaw Phil was really good, and if he had stuck with his football, who knows? Maybe he would have won the Super Bowl and would be in weight-loss commercials today.
But football was not Papaw Phil’s passion. His passion was duck hunting. That was probably the last thing he thought about every night and the first thing he thought about every morning. What he really wanted to do with his life was to hunt and be really good at it. But I’m sure he wondered how he would ever support his family if he did get really good at it.
Papaw Phil had a gift for knowing what ducks are supposed to sound like and figuring out how to build duck calls to make those sounds. So he started dreaming about being able to support his family selling the duck calls he made. He started with just one kind of duck call, and he worked on it and improved it over the years. Then he made another kind and another.
There’s a reason people call Papaw Phil “the Duck Commander.” He spent a lot of years learning everything he could about ducks. He knows how they fly and what their habits are. He knows the differences between diving ducks and perching ducks and dabbling ducks. He knows which ducks have good meat to eat and which ones don’t. But most of all, he knows about duck sounds, because every type of duck makes a different sound, and males make different sounds than females. His ear is amazing. It’s a gift not many people have, and he used it to make his dream come true by making the most accurate duck calls on the market.
He did not make the perfect duck call on his first try. He made one after another after another, tweaking and refining every one until he got it just right. He never allowed himself to get frustrated with a duck call that was not perfect just because he had spent a lot of time working on it. If it was not exactly right, he just kept fixing it or started over. Making those first great duck calls took a lot of patience and perseverance.
For Papaw Phil, being able to support his family by selling duck calls did not happen fast, and our whole family had to work in the business in order to make it successful, but it did happen. He reached a point where he was able to provide for his family—and he’s in pretty good shape today because of those duck calls!
What I’ve learned from Papaw Phil about never giving up is that there is nothing wrong with starting small if you just keep going. You just take what you have, whether it’s a little idea or a little bit of extra time or a little bit of money, and you make the most of it. You do the best you can with that little bit, and you keep working at it, and pretty soon it will grow. It might even get so big that the whole world knows about it someday.
There’s a Bible verse that talks about this. Zechariah 4:10 says:
Do not despise these small beginnings,
for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.
If God tells us not to look down on small beginnings, then we can feel excited about the little things in our hearts. If God can love the seed of a dream or an idea that seems minor or random, you and I can love those small beginnings too. If God gets happy just seeing somebody begin to work on something, you and I can also be happy about taking a first little step toward our dreams and about taking more little steps after that first one.
Maybe you have a dream today, and something inside of you is telling you it will work out someday if you just don’t quit. Maybe it’s something really specific, like Papaw Phil and his duck call. Maybe it’s something you don’t think you could ever make any money doing. I’m sure people thought that about Papaw Phil. Maybe it’s something you know you will have to work really, really hard to accomplish. The truth is, most dreams are like that. If they are dreams worth having, they are worth working hard to achieve.
No matter what your dream is, go for it. Don’t think you can’t start working on it just because it seems small right now. Do what you can with your small dream, and it will eventually become your big dream.
DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER
One of my great-grandfathers on my mom’s side was named Luther Neal Shackelford. Our family called him Papaw Shack, but most people called him Luke—this is where John Luke got his name. Well, Papaw Shack had a father who was an alcoholic. His mother eventually left his dad to support and raise her seven children who were still living at home. Their life was not an easy one, but my papaw and his siblings made the best of a bad situation by staying in school and playing sports. My papaw’s dream was to play college basketball. That dream gave him a purpose and goal in life. After high school, my papaw, like his older brothers, knew the only way he would go to colle
ge was to go on a GI Bill. So he did. He and all five of his brothers joined different branches of the armed forces and served our country during wartime.
Papaw Shack joined the Marine Corps in 1948, just before the Korean War. He was the only man in his barracks who could type, so he was designated “clerk typist” after finishing boot camp. Papaw claimed that God made sure he could type so he would be spared the front lines of war. He laughingly said that if he was sent to the front, he could strangle the enemy with a typewriter ribbon.
When people realized Papaw was an athlete, he was allowed to join the base sports teams. He played on these basketball teams for the five years he was stationed stateside, in California. Each base had teams that competed against other bases, colleges, and Amateur Athletic Union teams. These base teams were highly respected, and Papaw was honored to continue playing the game he loved to play.
This arrangement lasted the five years Papaw was stateside, but then he was sent to Hawaii and Japan. There, Papaw found himself in a tent camp in freezing weather and extremely rough conditions. He thought his basketball dream was over. But he soon heard that the base was forming a team to entertain the troops, so he set out to find out how he could play. When he asked his commanding officer about trying out, the officer told him no because all the players on the team had to have played in college. Papaw hadn’t gone to college yet, but he didn’t take that no as a final answer. He found out where the team was practicing and went to watch. God once again intervened in Papaw’s life when Papaw discovered that the coach of the team was a former coach of his. That coach immediately requested that Papaw be assigned to the team. He even got to play against the Harlem Globetrotters!
When Papaw did get to go to college, he wasn’t able to realize his dream of playing college basketball, even though he was accepted as a “walk-on” at Oklahoma State University under the famed coach Hank Iba. He already had a growing family and schoolwork to think about, so he chose to give up college basketball for his family. But he did get to play for the United States Marine Corps for six years, and he valued his assignment to that team so much.
Papaw left a family legacy of basketball. I am now the fourth generation of basketball players in our family, and my coach is my uncle Jeremy Luther Shackelford, Papaw’s youngest son, who did get to play college basketball. Most important, Papaw left us with a strong sense of what makes life valuable—and that is family. When he was a child, he didn’t have the kind of family life that many dream about, but he made sure his children had that life. And his children passed that love on to their children, and now I am blessed to have the family I love surround me with constant support. It’s not unusual for me to have as many as twenty family members watching one of my games. I love looking up in the stands and seeing their smiling faces, knowing it all started with my papaw Shack, who didn’t take no for an answer when he had the dream of basketball in his heart. You may not have a big family like I have, but you can have a big dream, and if you never give up, you’ll be amazed at what God can do.
THE MONOPOLY MAN
If you are like me, you have probably played the game Monopoly. But do you know the story behind the game? Someone told it to me, and I want to pass it along to you.
In 1929, America was in a very bad situation because the stock market had crashed and people hardly had any money. A man named Charles Darrow could not find a regular job, so he took every little odd job he could find to support his family. One day, he sat down and invented a game with play money. He made the game so people could pretend to buy and sell real estate—something most people could not even dream of during those days.
He started the game by drawing on his kitchen tablecloth, then he improved it by using little pieces of material or scraps he found, then improved it again by building and painting its pieces. Family and friends soon came to his house to play the game, and it became very popular because it gave people without much money a chance to dream of being involved in high finance.
Eventually, Darrow was able to sell his board game, starting at four dollars each. Then he tried to sell it to the Parker Brothers game company, who turned him down because they counted fifty-two things that were wrong with the game—fifty-two reasons they thought their customers would not want to play it. But Darrow did not give up. He went on to manufacture the game himself. Later, Parker Brothers had a new president who found out about the game and offered to manufacture it and give royalties to Charles Darrow. Those royalties made him the first game inventor to ever become a millionaire.5
Live Original Challenge
1. What’s the hardest thing you have ever done or the hardest day you have ever lived? How did you get through it?
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2. Is there someone in your life whom you shouldn’t give up on? How can you continue to love that person?
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3. What small steps have you started taking toward your passion or your dream? Are you determined to keep going and not give up, no matter what?
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4. Why do you think it’s important to never give up?
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DON’T FORGET
Anybody can quit.
Only a real champion and a person of character and strength can keep going and refuse to give up.
Do not throw away this confident trust in the Lord. Remember the great reward it brings you!
—Hebrews 10:35
CHAPTER FOUR
Confidence Is Key
Have you ever met someone who is really smart or talented, but they act like they don’t know it or like they don’t believe in themselves? They walk around looking at the ground. They slump and slouch, they mumble, and they avoid other people. Often, the biggest problem these people have is that they lack confidence. They may be great students, athletes, or musicians, but if they do not have confidence, they don’t become everything they can be and they don’t inspire anyone else. Instead, they just go through life being above average in some areas, but not truly great.
In this book, I try to offer a lot of encouragement about ways to live original and ways to live a good, happy life. Confidence is the key to actually being able to do all of these things. It’s the difference between “average” and “great.” I believe you can be great. It’s not always easy, but if you can develop a strong sense of confidence, you will take a huge step toward greatness.
A former football player named Joe Namath says, “When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.”6 I have not ever met Joe Namath, and I don’t really know anything about him. But I like what he says about confidence, and I totally agree with him. I hope this chapter will encourage you to become a confident person so you can do amazing things with your life and have fun!
SHE HAD CONFIDENCE
One of my all-time favorite movies is The Sound of Music. I just love it. When I was in the fifth grade, in our middle school choir program, I sang a solo of one of the songs Maria sang in the movie. Ever since then, it has been “my” song and it’s a happy, upbeat tune called “I Have Confidence.”
In the song, Maria is on her way to the Von Trapp family’s home for the first time. She knows she will work as the governess (like a nanny) for seven children, and she knows their father is a military man. But there is a lot she doesn’t know about her new job, so she is excited and scared at the same time. She also has questions and doubts about whether or not she will be good at being a governess.
As the song goes on, Maria moves from being worried to figuring out what she will do to teach the children and to earn their respect. By the end of the song, she has a plan based on simply showing them she has confidence in herself. She knows that they will never respect her if she does not respect herself, so she decides to find in her heart the courage and confidence sh
e needs. The song is like Maria’s personal pep talk. She starts with admitting that she is intimidated by her new job, but by the end, she is ready for it.
I love the way Maria sings “I Have Confidence” because it shows us that reaching a point where we can really be confident does not always happen quickly. To get to that place, we sometimes have to face our fears, think through what we need to do, tell ourselves to just get courageous, and take a step of faith—then believe it will work out well. That’s the way Maria found her confidence, and that’s how you and I find ours too.
CONFIDENCE TAKES TIME
In many ways, I was confident when I was little. In the video that shows my five-year-old self standing on the coffee table talking like a little preacher, I said, “If I become famous someday, I will not just remember about myself. I will remember God. Let’s give it up for G-o-d!” But when I was young, my confidence was like a roller coaster; sometimes it was high and sometimes it was low. I figured out at one point that if I let another person’s words or actions affect my confidence, I really was not confident at all. At that time, I did not know how to hold on to the confidence I did have and keep it strong, but I eventually learned. Now when something happens that might cause me to lose my confidence, I can see the dip coming: I know my confidence is about to sink. Maybe someone says something rude to me, or maybe I make a big mistake or don’t perform as well as I would like at school, in sports, or at my job. As soon as I recognize the temptation to lose my confidence, I have to fight against it.
Live Original (Sadie Robertson) Page 4