One of the problems is that when you wait for years to have kids, trying to accumulate enough wealth so that you can raise children “comfortably” or whatever, your marriage becomes frail and brittle. You haven’t allowed yourselves to be tested. You haven’t met any resistance. The union atrophies. You get bored. Then one serious challenge comes along and you fall apart. You weren’t ready for it.
My wife and I have been together 15 years, started out broke. Six kids and a decade and a half later, we’ve been tried and tested a million times. We’ve been through the fire together. Problems come along and we deal with them. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Now we have the confidence of people who’ve been through the wringer. We have a sense of shared experience and shared achievement. We built this life together. We both belong here.
That’s the great benefit of getting married and starting a family young. Get in on the ground floor with each other. Start at the bottom hand in hand.
After the win over Iowa State, a video circulated of Tennessee participating in the Lord’s Prayer.
How has Rick Barnes’ beliefs rubbed off on the team?
“I know specifically that one of the reasons I came to Tennessee was because of Rick Barnes and his faith” -Nate Ament
I’m on record saying i feel partly responsible for the fall of Tennessee football. I was a captain on the 08 team that got Fulmer fired. Since we’ve watched bad football and bad coaching for 10+ years. 2024 Tim banks lead a NATIONALLY top 10 def. A staff I’m proud to say i was apart of. 2022 Heup took this program to 11 wins. 1st time since 2001. A playoff appearance in 2024. 1st ever. All while on probation cause of past coaches. To hear people saying that’s not good enough is INSANE! Comparing Josh to a coach that just got fired. INSANE 🤦🏾♂️ Remember where we came from. We can be grateful for what we have while wanting championships. VFL 🧡🍊
Good morning.
The reason you feel Charlie’s death so deeply is because grief doesn’t measure itself by proximity. It measures itself by meaning. You didn’t have to know him personally to feel the sting of his absence, because when a voice like his goes silent, something in the atmosphere shifts.
The reason it feels heavier than so many other tragedies is because your spirit recognizes that this is not just about a man, it is about a battle. Scripture says eternity is written on our hearts, and when someone who carried truth with boldness is suddenly gone, eternity aches within us. It’s like our souls know instinctively that the darkness celebrated, and that strikes us at the core.
The reason you can’t shake it is because psychologically, we don’t only attach ourselves to people…we attach ourselves to symbols. Charlie became a symbol of conviction in a time of compromise, courage in a time of fear. And when a symbol is struck down, it rattles something primal and eternal inside us.
That’s why even those who never met him feel it. There is a strange thread pulling at us, and it is not imagined. It is real. We are bound together by shared purpose, by shared longing for truth, by the Spirit of God Himself weaving us into a fabric that cannot be torn apart. This loss pulled at that fabric, and every one of us felt the tug.
So if you’ve wondered why this hits so hard, it’s because your soul knows. This is bigger than news. This is bigger than politics. This is about eternity, about truth, and about the weight of a man whose life carried both.
Love y’all.