Four years ago I stumbled across a group of guys running around a park carrying an American flag on the end of a shovel and my life has not been the same since. I wouldn’t say that I was a ‘sad clown’ before this. I was an angry clown. I had an unjustified, simmering frustration always just under the surface. I tried for years on my own to figure out what was going on inside my head without much luck. Almost immediately once I started working out with F3 my body and my attitude started to get into better shape.
About a month ago I was reminded again of the power of F3 in my life. Following my last leg of the BRR, I woke up with a strange shadow in my vision. I knew right away that I had a detached retina. Six needles in the eye later and I am on the mend. The support I have received from F3 throughout this process has blown me away. More guys than I have space to mention here (and their M’s) have stepped up to help my family and me out with meals, rides, encouraging texts, and, most importantly, prayers. I can’t even begin to thank you guys enough. Knowing that I have a band of brothers that have my back through life’s challenges gives me a feeling of freedom that I cannot describe.
These are just two of the thousands of examples out there demonstrating the power that the first and second F’s can have in our lives. But if I were to let the story end there it would be a failure. The mission of F3 is to plant, grow and serve small workout groups for men for the invigoration of male community leadership. Fitness and fellowship aren’t the purposes of F3. They are just the tools that give us the strength to live out the 3rd F, our Faith. If we aren’t using those tools to be better servant leaders in our community then we are missing the point of F3.
We all get inspired by movies like Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan where men sacrifice their lives in pursuit of a purpose greater than themselves. Most of us don’t realize it, but we have that same opportunity every single day. It may not be in a literal or as dramatic a way, but it is, I believe, an equally noble way. We all have the opportunity to lay down our lives by placing our wants and needs secondary to those of our wives, our children, our friends, and our community. Someone wiser than me said “Dying for something is easy because it is associated with glory. Living for something is the truly hard thing.”
So my challenge to all the PAX reading this (myself included) is to take the gifts of fitness and fellowship that we have been given and put them to use in your homes, your offices, your churches, and your community. Make a deliberate decision every morning when you wake up to Live Third.
SYITG,
Jeremy “Crawfish” Walz