Through My Eyes

by Tim Tebow

  With football season behind me, I moved on to the other sports I played for Trinity—basketball and baseball—both of which had rigorous schedules. In basketball, it seemed that my strength helped me to level the playing field a bit, balancing my basketball abilities and performance against my young age. When we played against Hawthorne High, just outside of Gainesville, I faced Cornelius Ingram, even at that time a great football and basketball player who was taller than I was and two years older. He went on to play both sports at the University of Florida. When we played Jacksonville Country Day, their lineup included a seven footer. It was obvious each time out that I needed to find something else that would give me a bit of an advantage—a balance against taller as well as older and more experienced players.

  On both of those occasions, I was the one assigned to guard the tall guys. I was able to more or less hold my own due to my strength and by playing physically. It wasn’t pretty, however.

  Baseball was still in the sports mix as well. In fact, it was probably my best sport and the one that seemed to come to me most naturally—I had played varsity since the seventh grade. We even played some golf on occasion. But we did it on the cheap—it was not one of those sports that at the time fit into a missionary’s salary. So Dad let us take the weed whacker out into the pasture and create our own putting greens, and then we used the posthole digger to create the cups. We were able to create four holes on our own farm this way—one of them was even a water hole over the pond—and messed around with playing a few holes whenever we could.

  As much as I enjoyed playing sports for Trinity, though, my parents and I were still troubled with the quarterback situation at the school. And so we came to the conclusion that the time had come for us to look for other schools where I could play football. It was disappointing for all of us in the Tebow family. Trinity had always had great talent. More important, I had played with Peter, and our football team was on a run that culminated with our being crowned as state champions—the first time in school history. Peter had a great year and a great experience at Trinity and was named best defensive player for the year, but as a family, we came to a place where we knew we had to figure out a different plan for my future. We weren’t going to say a word about our leaving during the season, but once the decision was made, our search began in all seriousness to find the best environment for me to fully develop my passion, and what seemed then to be talent, for playing quarterback.

  No one in the Tebow family was pleased about reaching the end of the trail they had been running, walking, and filming at Jacksonville Trinity Christian Academy.

  It was a disappointment to us all, but somehow we all knew it was the right thing to do.

  Chapter Six

  Overcoming

  Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

  —PHILIPPIANS 4:6–7

  Homeschooling allowed us to pick my next school much in the same way we’d picked Trinity all those years before, and it didn’t take long for my family to start looking around for another school where I could play quarterback.

  Dad visited several select schools and spoke with their coaches. Some coaches weren’t interested in taking a homeschool player, and some coaches and schools didn’t seem as though they would be a good fit. Dad was talking to people about the types of offense that schools were running, the character of their coaches, and other pertinent matters. To him, the goal was trying to match my passion for playing football with a situation that would more fully develop my abilities. He likened it to when my sister Christy showed a passion and aptitude for playing the piano. For quite some time, they saved money and eventually bought a piano for her, so she could practice, learn, and more fully develop her God-given abilities. The way my dad and mom looked at it, finding the right situation at the right school was a matter of being a good steward of my talents. They felt like it was always our responsibility to identify and fully develop the abilities, talents, and gifts God created within us.

  That and the fact that I couldn’t stand playing linebacker anymore.

  Dad looked at schools in Jacksonville and even considered schools in south Georgia and Ocala, Florida, trying to find the right setting for me to play.

  Dad called Kerwin Bell, the former University of Florida quarterback and current head coach at Jacksonville University, who ran the BMW Camp that I had attended and who at the time was a very successful head football coach at Trinity Catholic High School in Ocala. Coach Bell told us that he was very interested in having me come to play for him at Trinity Catholic. My parents were considering and exploring the significant challenges involved in my playing at a school that was a couple of hours from our home, when Dad also asked another good friend who he would recommend I play for.

  He was clear and direct in his response. “Craig Howard,” he said, “who has just been hired for the Nease High School head football coaching position, runs a wide-open, creative offense.” When we met with Coach Howard, we knew in three minutes that he was the right coach.

  Because Nease was a public school, Dad started checking into the Florida statutes, as well as the Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) rules and the rules of participation governing play in St. Johns County. Under Florida’s homeschooling law, homeschoolers can play at the public school within their district. However, as it turned out at that time, if you lived in St. Johns County, you could participate in sports at any one of the four high schools in the county, regardless of the particular district the school was located within.

  It also happened that my dad’s sister Sharon was just finishing some work on an apartment in St. Johns County that was meant to be for their parents’ use in the future. Apparently the future was now, and she made it available for us to use so that we lived in the same county in which Nease was located, even though we weren’t in its district.

  My mom spoke to her good friend, Brenda Dickinson, whose deceased husband had authored Florida’s homeschool law in 1985. In 1996, Mrs. Dickinson, now a Florida homeschool lobbyist, wrote the legislation that allows homeschoolers to participate in extracurricular acitvities. She carefully went over every necessary requirement with my mom.

  Dad spoke to the head of the FHSAA and four different lawyers to make sure that our understanding of the law and governing rules was correct and that we were doing everything in an above-board, upstanding, and legal manner.1 We were assured that we were. Dad knew that if I enjoyed any success, some might move to challenge my eligibility. Sure enough, challenges came from two quarters: one expected and one that was not. The one we expected might be forthcoming was from one of the other three high schools located within St. Johns County. The other one that had some people making some noise (though it never grew to a formal challenge of my eligibility) came from Jacksonville Trinity Christian Academy, the school we had just left. That was hurtful—we had wanted to stay.

  We helped my dad’s sister complete the work on the apartment, and then Mom and I moved there to live in order to make me eligible to play. By then all my siblings were off at college or married, and Dad was traveling a good deal, so this worked out well for Mom and me to live in St. Johns County. On the weekends we headed back to Jacksonville to visit with Dad, but during the week we did all our homeschooling in the apartment in St. Johns County.

  Convenient as it was, it was still quite a change and transition for us. I missed life on the farm and regularly being around our dog, Otis. Dad was traveling both to the Philippines and within the States a great deal, so while we missed him, that wouldn’t have changed even if we were home. Plus, I was staying so busy each day—schoolwork, workout, practice, workout, schoolwork, bed—that it was probably tougher on Mom than on me. Once I started taking recruiting trips, however, even many of those weekend trips home ended.

  In this transition, I could see
both my parents playing different yet vital roles for me, roles that have always been crucial to my success—whether in school or on the field. My father is fiercely loyal and helped us to pursue our passions. My mom, meanwhile, is more nurturing, and a peacemaker. She always told us to never let the sun go down on our anger, but rather that we should address our issues before bed, if not earlier.

  And then there was the team itself. I started at quarterback my sophomore year, and I was surprised by how much strength training and overall improvement we needed to make as a team. That first year, we played in six homecoming games—every one of our away games was for some other school’s homecoming. One of the games was for ours, but we were everyone else’s homecoming opponent—not ordinarily a sign of respect for a school’s football prowess. It didn’t seem to bother my teammates as much as I thought it should have. After all, they had only won two games the year before, and they seemed a little too willing to accept this as normal.

  We quickly improved, however, at least on offense. We had one of the best offenses in the state, but we had an undersized defense. We lost a number of high-scoring games, scoring 45 points in a loss to St. Augustine, and losing in triple overtime to Palatka, the number one team in the state. That Palatka game, a much bigger and faster opponent, and that year as a whole, were both important from the standpoint of building confidence. We realized we could play with anyone.

  They had no idea what they were in store for—after all, I was the nutty kid who would watch football whenever I could. I certainly didn’t intend to be a part of a team where being every other school’s homecoming opponent was accepted.

  I worked as hard as I ever did and did my best, through my words and my example, to challenge my teammates to reach for something much more for themselves and the team. I even pushed one of my receivers when he mocked my use of the word lackadaisical (directed at the receivers, I might add) as “a pretty big word for a homeschooler.” I didn’t mind jokes about going to school in my pajamas, but I didn’t want anyone to say I was soft. I probably shouldn’t have pushed him, but I could see a change that day in how he viewed me. He wanted to pigeonhole me as this soft homebody. He realized soon enough that I wasn’t. Before long, though, we were all on the same page.

  Chapter Seven

  Philippines, Football, Faith, and Otis

  Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

  —PROVERBS 3:5–6

  When you’re younger, every birthday feels like a milestone, and the summer of my fifteenth was no different. For many reasons, I was excited to turn fifteen, but perhaps the most important was that turning fifteen meant I was old enough to go on my first Mission Trip to the Philippines the following summer. For years, my dad had been leading a mission trip to the Philippines in July, and finally I’d be able to go too.

  That’s how we were raised, with a joy in getting to tell people about Jesus. For as long as I can remember, this was instilled in me: to have fun, love Jesus and others, and tell them about Him.

  Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

  MATTHEW 28:19–20

  It was a real and integral verse within the life of our family. Even more than that, it was a way of life for our family.

  Though I’d grown up with Dad’s frequent trips back to the Philippines and with hearing news about Uncle Dick’s orphanage, I hadn’t been back to the Philippines myself since we’d moved to Florida when I was three. But when I was fifteen, I was old enough to go to the Philippines, and so I took my first trip back to help spread God’s Word.

  This was not the first time I’d done mission work, however. Just as I was entering high school, I’d gone on a mission trip to South Florida. A small church down there had invited, and made the arrangements for, some of us from Jacksonville to come. They were looking to reach the surrounding neighborhoods in the area where the church was located. Kevin Albers and I, along with our friend, college student Joey Hamrick, all roomed together with an elderly couple from the host church that was kind enough to open their home to us for the week.

  Every morning, after we ate the biscuits and gravy the couple made for us, we’d head out for the day. As Kevin, Joey, and I went door to door in trailer parks and other neighborhoods, we watched God use our inadequate but sincere intrusion into the area as almost thirty people committed their lives to the Lord. It was awesome yet humbling to see God work in that way—through our simply taking part in this church’s outreach into its community.

  The church simply turned us loose in our small groups. These days they wouldn’t do it that way; instead, they would probably send adults along with us. We needed to be back at the church each day at a certain time, but we missed it every time, so caught up in the passion of our visits in the neighborhoods and trying to speak to as many people as we could. Much like my approach to working out—if something’s important and a little is good, a lot is better, so why stop at a little?

  In the process of doing that each day, I had a chance to give an impromptu talk to a randomly gathered group of people for the first time. We were walking past an arcade, filled with kids playing all sorts of games, when Joey, who had been trained by my dad on a trip to the Philippines, told us to gather all the kids together. So we asked—actually I believe it might have been more appropriately characterized as shouted—the kids if we could have their attention for a moment. We waited while they all finished up whatever games they were playing or whatever else they were doing. I guess they were curious, and we must have looked harmless, because nobody really resisted, and moments later they all formed a group.

  That’s when Joey turned things over to me. Looking back, since he was the one with the training, I’m not sure why I was the one speaking, but I remember being pretty intimidated, seeing those kids looking at me as I stood there totally mute for what felt like a very long moment. Then I began to speak, first sharing something from my heart. It must have gone okay and it must have been sufficient for God to use, because I spoke for a few minutes about the good news of the gospel of Christ, and we ended up praying with seven or eight kids to accept Christ right then and there.

  That experience was amazing, a crucial step helping prepare me for the difficult task of talking about God with people I meet—something I would do a lot later in life.

  For this reason, I knew that going to the Philippines would be a challenge, but what I did not expect was that it would change my life. My dad’s Filipino and American staff works hard for months to put together a solid schedule for the Americans on the summer trip. America and the Philippines have had a long friendship; in fact there is a Fil-Am day every year, celebrating the relationship. Because of our friendship, Americans are very welcome in the communities and schools, and received with a great welcome.

  With the permission of regional and district superintendents, and principals of schools, we tie into the moral and spiritual values program already in place in the schools. It is a non-sectarian program emphasizing the love of God and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and drug abstinence.

  When possible we have an assembly with the whole student body, such as at their morning flag ceremony. At an assembly we have a short 10 to 12 minute message of the love of God in Christ. If we are unable to have an assembly, we share the same message classroom by classroom, which is much more speaking but more intimate. We almost always have a minute to shake hands and high-five students, which is a special time. (Perhaps this is where my tradition of high-fiving Florida fans after each game began.)

  My dad gets us up early each school day, around 4:30 a.m., to get ready and fix breakfast; and then we get on the road often covering a good distance to get to the first school. We usually have two or three Americans on a t
eam with two Filipino staff. The staff drives, does most of the talking to the principals and then translates the message to make sure everyone understands all parts of the message. We work hard all day until school is out. It is fun but exhausting. In a typical day a team will speak in six to ten schools, depending on distance and other factors. Sometimes less and sometimes a few more. When I am speaking I usually open with comments about being born in the Philippines. That creates a great connection with students.

  Then I talk about the gospel. The word “gospel” means “good news.” So I’ll ask, “Do you like good news? The good news is that God loves you! He loves you so much that He sent His son Jesus to die for you. He made you special and wants to have a personal relationship with you and give you eternal life. But our biggest problem is that we have sinned. Because God is a Holy God, He can never have fellowship with sin. Sin makes a wall between us and God. Because Jesus had no sin He could die for our sins on the cross. Because Jesus died on the cross for your sins and rose from the dead, He has the power to forgive your sins, make you His child, and give you a home in heaven. That is the best news you could ever hear. You can’t earn the free gift of eternal life, you can’t pay for the free gift of eternal life, you can only receive it as a free gift, by putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone.”