I am sure that everyone who reads this will be familiar with the term "Scholarship Camp" so I will not bother defining it.
My first year at camp I was 13 years old and going into my 8th grade year. My friend Michael and I were completely obsessed with ultimate frisbee and wanted to play badly. I know we were not the best out there at the time, but give us a break. We were 13 and 14 and we were playing with college freshmen. NO one would throw us the frisbee so we basically played defense the entire time. The people I looked up to were Ned AKA Superman, and Nathan. I wanted to be just like them. Ned was amazing and no one could touch him. Nathan Didlake actually let us play though. He would throw us the frisbee every chance he got. That made a big impression on me because he didn't have to do any such thing. I decided on the second to last day of camp that I was going to be like both of them when I was a senior in high school.
I am looking back at the moment and I have only done half of this. I have been picked first for ultimate frisbee in every game I have played since Junior year. No one I have met can defend me and no one can catch like me, or so I am told. I am every bit as good, if not better, than "Superman" ever was. This is only half of what I told myself I was going to be. I had said that I was going to be like Nathan and give the kids younger than me a chance. I am only remembering all this as I read it. Everett Timmons, on of our Summit leaders, gave the seniors a book called "Next Generation Leader" It is REALLLY good. But in the book, Andy Stanley says that a good leader is marked by the legacy he leaves behind and the people he helped to train to replace him. Well, I haven't been too good about that. I have been so busy for the last 5 years trying to get myself to the position that I am now in that I have completely blown off bringing anyone up with me. If Nathan had been like me, I would have become discouraged and, in all likely hood, would not have fallen in love with Ultimate and would not have the goal of scoring two hundred goals in my senior year alone. Nathan left a legacy AND had people he was helping to become like him. Ned, a year younger than Nathan, got up and joked one night about being the treasurer for the Nathan Didlake fan club because of what Nathan had told him one night in cabin devotionals. Basically, Nathan did everything right.
I have only talked to Nathan ONE time since then, and the other day I accidentally found my way onto his blog and I read it and he is having a tough time with some things. I don't know him hardly at all so all that I know is that he is not content with where he is at. That is all I know and I am not here to talk about him, I am talking about me. Nathan deleted his facebook and his blog two days ago for this reason. Because he wanted to be alone. So I basically have no way to talk to him or find out how he is doing. But I am praying for him just the same.
On his blog, Nathan always signed it off by saying "for the fame of His Name". This is extremely true and what I want to live by for the rest of my life, especially during Summit when it will be so easy for me to take credit for everything we do. That is the end of yet another very long post.
For the fame of His Name...
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Marcello,
Dude. You're right. Life has been very difficult for me lately. Extremely difficult. Today, not three hours ago, I was on the verge of tears, when God used "Google Notifications" to bring your writings to me. Now, I think I'm still on the verge of crying, but for joy. I'm moved with intense gratification, for God used you to help me see through the fog of some of the struggles I've been facing.
Please, contact me at f2white@gmail.com, and I'll email you the blog at which I'm now writing. I've chosen to stop writing publicly: it brought too much drama into my life. But you're welcome to watch as I write (most descriptively) about the things Christ is doing in my person.
Man, a long time ago, a man named John Rechnitzer did the same for me of what you described I did for you. I cannot tell you how much it meant when John came alongside me and made a small-feeling JVer under his wing so that I might find love and acceptance. I vowed, as soon as I realized how much of an impact he had had on me, to love as many others as I could before the grace so that every body who didn't feel as much as part felt more like the party than anybody else.
Your writings are a testimony to John and Christ's work in him to me.
Don't stop, my friend. Don't stop. I'm very proud you still play ultimate. I still do, too. Perhaps, we can throw, if God so allows us break bread together again. But you've got the talent. Now, use every ounce of it to teach the others how to play and how to love and how to live and how to be the image bearer of the living Christ who looked at kids like us who felt less substantial than dirt and made us into image bearers of his Father.
So shine, my man. So shine. And thank you for praying for me. I'm just as confused as you are about the direction of this roller coaster, but now that the forty days are over, I still wouldn't trade any of this for bread.
love,
nathan
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