A New Lease

A new lease on life…a new lease on life…sometimes that’s the only thing we can ask for when hard times come and nothing ever seems to go our way. Not the job, or marriage/relationship, not our finances or the things we need to rid ourselves of most. Like the “dirty” little habits that keep popping up in our lives. It doesn’t matter what they are…that drink, that drug…that addiction to love. Whatever it is, we’ve got to remember that when we fall “it’s never too late to get off the ground and do the things we want to do in life.” This simple truth comes, from a person, who knows this more than most.

When I read an article, about a 43 year old man playing football for Clark Atlanta University as a tight end, I laughed and thought to myself, what would an old, has been, need to prove at his age? He’s certainly no Michael Jordan, George Foreman or any other well known athlete. But a man, with heart and desire to show that he wasn’t giving up on life. Jeff Chaskin was finally learning to turn it around after having struggled from alcohol and drug addiction for more than 25 years. Not only was he doing it for himself but his family, the wife and 8 children that he loved so much. And he wasn’t going to let the fact that he had been arrested just 1 year prior for cocaine possession stop him from doing just that. In his glory days he was a successful businessman with a thriving lawn care business but nothing could shield him from the influences of “the fast life.” One might say that Chaskin was suffering from more than a deep addiction, he was suffering from a case of more money, more problems. But as fate would have it, 8 months of prison, reading the bible and 500 hundred push ups later he was on his way to reclaiming everything that was stolen from him. Like the promising football career he lost when he was in college several years ago and the marriage that failed from his rampant drug use. Yet, even with the braces on his arthritic knees that are drained every 3 weeks and the fact that he’s the only white male player at a historically black college, simply wearing #43 on his back makes up for all of it. To see the smiles or hear the praises from his team mates and family is probably recognition enough even if it is only for a season. But what matters most is the example of the “dew season” in the life of man who could have given up but chose to run another way.