(No) Regrets

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore, Dream, Discover." –Mark Twain.  One of my colleagues has this as her e-mail signature quote.

"You not a leader cuz they follow you on Twitter
And you not a man based upon your age and your gender
If you die tonight you'll probably die a boy chasing toys 
Objectifying these women thinkin' they gon' bring you joy
Don't you want more than last night's bragging rights?" -- "No Regrets" by Lecrae

What does it mean to regret?  Well, I can regret not doing something, which is what the Mark Twain quote talks about, or I can regret having done something, which the Lecrae quote refers to.  I may wish I had done something, or I may wish I had not done something.  In my life, I have examples of both.  I wish that I had not made the mistake that I made at the end of 2008.  I wonder what life would be like now if I hadn't.  Even though I have moved on, and grown, I can't help thinking "what if?" from time to time.  Those thoughts hit me about once a month now, which is a lot better than it was 5 years ago when I dwelt on it daily.  It's hard to confess, but I want to put it out there, that once a month or so I regret not taking advantage of opportunities I had in college to physically pursue female friends of mine.  I know that's hard to hear, and it's hard for me to say, but there is a point to saying it.  Again, it's much more infrequent.

I began this blog with the intent to use it to glorify God.  I glorify Him through what I learn in His Word.  I also glorify Him through what He has done in my life.  I want to illustrate just how much He changed my heart, and renews it daily.  My greatest spiritual battles have always been on the field of desire.  It has taken years for me to align my desires with the desires God has for me.  I learned the hard way that He is right, I am wrong, and how to deal with it.  God took my shameful, evil, lustful desires, and He gave me a desire for Him, His Word, and my wife.

For so long I truly believed I would be single forever.  Sure, I hoped I'd find a wife, but I really didn't live a lifestyle that showed others that I believed it.  I continued acting upon my desires as long as they didn't cross over into physical territory that I would regret telling my wife about one day.  Even then, I slipped up more times than I should have.  One in particular.  I do regret having done as much as I did.  There was forgiveness and grace, but it cost me a dear friendship.  I won't go into detail, obviously, but Bethany knows about my history.  That incident happened in 2006.  The next incident I will mention happened in 2010, just four years later.  This incident shows how God changed my heart, and He gets the glory.  In 2010, around my birthday, a dear female friend of mine threw herself at me.  By the grace of God, and the thought of my future wife, I was able to say no even though it was extremely hard.  I didn't even know who Bethany New was at that time, but God had laid my wife on my heart in 2009 as part of my growth.  That carried me through that situation and a few more situations with that same girl.

By the grace of God, I can look into Bethany's eyes with very few regrets.  I can be thankful that God spared me from the worst.  I have experienced pure forgiveness and grace from God and Bethany, and that gives me great courage to continue serving both of them.  I am thankful that the regrets I mentioned before come more and more infrequently, and I pray they cease to bother me altogether.  Now, when sinful desires arise, they drive me closer to God for protection.  They will also drive me closer to my gorgeous wife.  Twelve days left before the wedding.  I am stoked beyond words or belief!  I do not deserve a woman like Bethany.  I deserve to be left to my own sordid desires that would ultimately lead me eternally away from God.  I am so thankful that He loves me enough to spare me, cleanse me, and strengthen my hands to keep fighting.  I give Him all honor and glory for the man I am today.  I hope the growth continues, and I can't wait to see the man I will become.

*Sorry for the highlighting.  I don't know how to get rid of it.*

For the Kingdom,
Stuart L. Kingsley

Autobiography Assignment

                My Freshmen were given an autobiography assignment.  So far they have presented good work.  I decided to throw my hat in the ring as well.  Here is my autobiography:

            My name is Stuart Kingsley.  I was born on August 23, 1985, to Warren and Jean Kingsley.  I was born in Riverdale, Georgia, but I grew up in Jonesboro, Georgia.  Of course, I do not remember much from the first few years of my life, but I know that my mother stayed at home to raise me.  I would learn as I got older that my father was a lawyer in Atlanta.  My mother raised me on the Word of God, and my father raised me on military history and mythology.  Thanks to my mother, I learned how to read at an early age.  She taught me the alphabet with cards that had Bible verses, so I learned a letter and a verse all at once.  I had a wooden puzzle of the United States, so I learned U.S. Geography.  The states were different colors in that puzzle, and to this day I think of each state as that color.  The ironic thing is that I’m colorblind!  Most importantly, my parents raised me in the Christian faith.  I believed that Jesus Christ was Lord and Savior when I was four years old.  I was in the bath tub, and my mother led me in the prayer.  After I had made the decision, I went downstairs to tell my father and his friend that I had trusted Christ.  They were very happy.  My father is very smart and very well-read.  I can always trust my father to be honest with me, and give me good advice.  Thanks to my parents, I had a solid foundation that was laid for the rest of my life.  On this foundation, God would build the man I am today.  He would also destroy and remove anything I tried to build for myself on that foundation.  I am the man I am today because of my faith, my family, my education, and my relationships.

            Two of the most important bricks on the foundation have been my siblings.  I have one sister, Valerie (25), and one brother, Garrett (21).  Valerie was born when I was 3.  I remember my parents calling me into the room to tell me I was going to have a sister.  I was very excited, even for my limited three-year-old understanding.  They allowed me to name her by giving me a choice from two names.  My mother proposed Lydia, and my father proposed Valerie.  I chose Valerie because of a famous song that my father always sang.  From an early age, my sister and I fought each other a lot, but we also loved each other.  When I was 7, and my sister was 4, our brother Garrett was born.  My sister and I stopped fighting each other, and turned to fighting our baby brother.  However, we quickly learned that we didn’t want the kid to grow up resenting us, so we switched to loving him.  The three of us became really close.  I only have one sister and one brother, and I love them dearly.  I could write a whole other blog post about the “SVG” experience.  Valerie is currently living in Germany with her husband, and her son.  Garrett is currently a Junior at Georgia Southern University.  I miss my siblings, and I really enjoy whatever time I get to spend with them.

            When I was about four years old, I started preschool at Reynolds Nature Preserve.  It was called Reynolds Recess.  It was taught by a woman I now call “mom” because I grew up being friends with her son.  I remember having fun there.  Right down the road from RNP was the church I grew up in, Community Bible Church.  When I was growing up, until about 1993, CBC was in Morrow, Georgia.  In 1993, the church branched off into Stockbridge, GA, and we started going to the Stockbridge branch.  Now, CBC is based at the Stockbridge location.  The Morrow location was sold to Rock Springs Baptist Church many years ago.  In about 1990/1991 Community Bible Church housed Clayton Christian School.  I started at CCS in Kindergarten, and attended through 8^th grade.  Again, I could write a whole separate blog post about the CCS/CCA experience.  Maybe I will one day.  What I will say about CCS/CCA is that it gave me a solid educational foundation that would propel me into Honors status in high school. 

In 2000 I started as a Freshman at Jonesboro High School.  Initially, I was very scared of the thought of public high school.  My perception of public school was shaped by television.  Shows like Doug and Saved By The Bell taught me that the kind of boy I was would lead to vast amounts of humiliation.  I just knew I would be hazed, made fun of, etc.  I had been bullied at CCA for being fat and un-athletic (at a Christian school), so I couldn’t imagine the horrors that awaited me in a Clayton County public school.  I had four of the best years of my life at Jonesboro High School.  In 7^th Grade, my mentor, Coach Gillette, asked me to be his Basketball manager.  It allowed me to participate from a servant’s role.  That decision led me to sign on as the Football and Baseball manager at Jonesboro High School.  As a Freshman manager, I served the two sports teams well, and the Senior athletes took me under their wing.  I enjoyed notoriety and popularity unlike anything I was able to experience at CCA.  My solid academic foundation supported me into a straight-A (minus a C in Honors Chemistry my Sophomore year), AP, Honors status upon my graduation in 2004.  I was also selected to attend the prestigious Governor’s Honors Program in the Summer of 2003 with 600 other elite Georgia high school students.  I had fantastic teachers and coaches.  I had some not so good teachers and coaches.  I was well-liked and respected by my peers.  Overall, I really appreciated my time at Jonesboro High School.  My final grades were enough to get me into the University of Georgia.

In 2004, I began my Freshman year at the University of Georgia.  I had been a Basketball manager in middle school, a Football/Baseball manager in high school, and as a life-long Georgia Football fan I sought to be a Football manager at UGA.  By the grace of God, I was able to start as a volunteer equipment manager for the 2004 season.  Being a UGA Football student equipment manager defined me for the next 5 years.  I don’t remember much about my academics.  I graduated with a 2.9 GPA, which sucked compared to my 4.0+ from high school, but I didn’t care.  I was able to remain on the football team.  I spent my first season only working practices.  I helped the Defensive Line manager since he had the most gear to set up before practices.  In doing so, I got to know Coach Garner and the Defensive Linemen.  I worked on a staff of twelve student managers and two full-time managers.  In 2005 I was with the team when they won the SEC Championship.  I loved being an equipment manager because I got all the perks of being on an SEC Football team without having to be hit by SEC Football players every day.  Again, I could write a whole other blog post about my time at the University of Georgia.  My Football position ended after the 2009 Capital One Bowl.  I earned my Bachelors Degree in Sport Management also in 2009.  I stayed in Athens to work with the UGA Ticket Office until I earned my Masters Degree in Sport Management in 2012.

Enough about academics, let’s move on to relationships.  Throughout my childhood I had many crushes.  In high school I was never popular enough to be a desirable date, so I continued to harbor crushes.  I was constantly put in the “friend zone”.  I have always been an observer, so I gained wisdom through the experiences of others.  I was always able to give good advice, whether or not it was actually heeded.  One of my nicknames in high school was “Judge” because I was able to mediate well.  I said I was well-known, well-respected, and well-liked, but I was never “popular”.  I was constantly a big brother figure to the girls I had crushes on.  I have been overweight most of my life, and people, especially females, haven’t been able to see past that.  I don’t blame them.  Guys are visual beings, and even though girls swear they aren’t, I am not much to look at.  In college, I was able to spend more personal time with girls since we were on our own.  A few girls actually started liking me in return, but they never had the same level of feelings that I had for them.  In a weird turn of events, I began having girls fall for me, yet I wasn’t interested in them.  I didn’t know how to handle that.  I felt like a jerk.  In 2008, I fell in love with a girl I met in a summer class.  I pursued confidently, and she responded in kind.  We grew together for 5 months, but she didn’t want to put a label on our relationship.  We never became official or exclusive even though I didn’t want to pursue anyone but her.  In December 2008, she broke up with me.  I made a mistake, and even though it was minor and forgivable she decided to cut me off.  That Christmas Break broke me.  I managed to enjoy the Capital One Bowl trip to Orlando, but on the inside I was dying.  When I returned to UGA in January, I no longer had Football every day.  I no longer had classes every day.  Instead, I reported for an unpaid internship in the Ticket Office every day through my May graduation.  I was very empty.  The girl came back from Christmas break and reached out to me.  She forgave me, and said all the things I had hoped she would say.  I thought we would be okay.  Then, randomly, she decided to stop talking to me.  To this day, I do not know her thought process about me.  For the next three years I would live without closure.  To this day, I still don’t have closure from her, but life has made me stronger.  That one event, that destruction of what I had tried to build on God’s foundation, was the beginning of the man I am today.  In 2009, Stuart Kingsley was truly born again.

I started going back to church in 2009.  All through my undergraduate career I didn’t set foot inside of a church building.  It wasn’t that I had lost my faith.  I still carried my beliefs and convictions.  I just wanted to see what the world had to offer.  By the grace of God, I came through it relatively unscathed.  During the 2006 season I really ran into the world’s arms, but that ended after we beat Auburn and I almost ended up in a one-night stand.  I realized that I was empty, so I turned back to God.  I grew some in 2007, but my belief that I was entitled to a girlfriend in 2008 due to having enough “holy points” was one of the reasons the destruction of that idol hurt so much.  Also in 2009, I was invited to a Young Men’s group at Watkinsville First Baptist Church.  That group was called Fight Club.  For three years that group taught me all about biblical masculinity.  I’ve written about it in previous blog posts, so you can see it there, but this group changed my life.  I ended up attending WFBC regularly in 2010, and I miss it to this day.  I got to the point at the beginning of 2009 where I felt God say, “Okay, now that I have your attention, do you really believe in Me?”  When I answered, “Yes”, He said, “Okay, let’s do this!”  I haven’t been the same since.  My spiritual life has grown exponentially.  I learned who I was in Christ, and I learned how to be a man.  I learned how to love a woman.  Eventually, I started looking for that woman.

My time in Athens ended at the end of 2011.  I moved to Arkansas to pursue an internship with the Great American Conference at the beginning of 2012.  That period of isolation was one of the worst times of my life.  I worked with good people, and I had fun experiences, but I was so lonely.  I had been on eHarmony for a year or so, but moving away from Georgia hurt those connections.  I earned my Masters Degree at the end of 2012, but the lack of job opportunities in college athletics led me back to my parents’ house in Jonesboro, Georgia.  So, not only was I a grown man, I lived with my parents.  I took a job as a paraprofessional at a local public high school.  Paraprofessionals make a pittance, so I had no money to live off of.  I made no money, and I lived with my parents.  I felt that my ability to find my wife was non-existent.  I had lost all hope.  I met a girl through eHarmony at the start of the 2012-13 school year, and we ended up falling in love.  We dated into the 2013-14 school year, and I prayed and prepared to marry her.  I learned a lot about what it takes to be a marriageable guy.  I had Fight Club training, and now I had a woman to use that training on.  Still, I was limited by my living situation and paraprofessional salary.  The girl could not take it anymore, and we broke up in November 2013.  One week away from our one year anniversary.  It’s poetic and ironic.  I was not broken or angry about this break up.  In fact, I was relieved!  I felt free.  That’s a good sign that it was not the right relationship for me.  Still, I wondered how a guy like me could find another girl who met my standards.  I outlined my standards in another blog post, so you can go read about those thoughts later.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far.  The girl and I broke up on a Tuesday night, and that Thursday night I was out to dinner with the woman I’m going to marry in 2 weeks.  God had a plan all along.

Let me tell you about my bride to be.  (I hope Bethany doesn’t mind!)  I consider this the culmination of many years of prayer, tears, arguing with God, praising God, etc.  I met Bethany New in a Sunday School class that I taught at Community Bible Church in 2013.  Ironically, I was dating that other girl at the time.  Bethany and I became friends on Facebook, and we started chatting during Marvel: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  We got to know each other through Facebook and text messages, so after my breakup she was the woman I was speaking to the most.  We met for dinner, spent a few hours talking, and we just grew from there.  It took about a month for me to ask her to be my exclusive girlfriend.  I know that is a very short amount of time, considering I had just broken off a year-long relationship, but like I said before, I was ready.  I did not need time to mourn or heal from a lost relationship like I had back in 2009.  I knew who I was as a man, I knew my limitations, and my ex decided she wanted more.  That’s fine.  Bethany wanted me.  So, on December 23 I asked Bethany to be my girlfriend.  On April 10, 2014, I asked her to be my wife.  And in 2 weeks, on October 4, we will be married.  I mentioned an earlier blog post about the standards I had for my wife.  My ex met those standards, but it wasn’t a good fit.  Bethany meets those standards, and we are a perfect fit.  It’s crazy how quickly our relationship has progressed, but it’s also very evident that this was the way God intended things to go.  I do not take this relationship lightly at all.  Marriage is a life-long commitment, but Bethany is the one I want to come home to at night.  I look forward to living out my Fight Club training through this marriage.  My goal is to reach the end of my life and present Bethany to God more holy than when He first brought us together.  I cannot do that on my own.  I am a failed and flawed man.  I have the Holy Spirit, and a relationship with Jesus Christ though.  He is all I need.  I won’t be perfect, but He is perfect, and I’m so excited for this new adventure of marriage.  Also, God has finally paid off my patience, and allowed me to be hired as a full English teacher at Hampton High School starting September 24.  So, I will no longer be poor and living with my parents.  I will be stable and living with my wife.  My whole life is a testament to God’s faithfulness and provision.  I could write many more pages about this, but I will end this assignment here.

For the Kingdom,

Stuart L. Kingsley