Can you imagine the first Cleveland County YMCA? No treadmills or swimming pools but a love seat, a lazy boy and a telephone.
One of the things that I love most about our annual meetings is that it allows us to reflect. It has a way of celebrating the present and resurrecting our 17 year history. It has a way of releasing our creativity and our imagination.
Let me ask you, How many of you would say that you have a pretty big imagination?
As a kid, I was like that. God wired me up as a dreamer. But because of that, I used my imagination a lot. I spent hours upon hours in the driveway by myself, dribbling and shooting a basketball and dreaming of playing for the Tar Heels. It would be me running the 4 corners and dishing at the last second to Walter Davis or Mike O’Koren. I would even do the play by play, trying my best to sound like Woody Durham…The ball comes to Corder, 10 seconds on the clock. The Tar Heels spread the court. Heels down by one. Corder drives around Towe he scoops over Thompson and he scores……….Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!
I actually did that last week in the Dover gym.
I hope I never grow out of the ability to dream. I never want to lose the capacity to hope and to wonder and to imagine.
Imagine how I felt 17 years ago as I drove from High Point to Shelby, leaving behind my new bride to sell a house. Leaving behind one of the nicest YMCA’s you will ever walk in. Leaving behind a job that basically paid me to play basketball and racquetball with adults and kids. Leaving behind family and friends and this comfort for …..for a love seat, a lazy boy and a telephone. Imagine that.
Imagine standing in front of 15 4 and 5 year olds, in the old fellowship hall of Aldersgate Church with a portable basketball goal and some t shirts.
Imagine summer camp at the old Dover School on Hwy 226 with just 15 kids and a beat up van.
Imagine trying to convince a group of aerobic instructors that we can teach aerobics at an empty store at the mall.
Imagine standing in the street for hours in uptown Shelby at Spring Fest or Freedom Fest and trying to tell people about the Y. And the Y is not just aerobics at the mall or indoor soccer at a school. Imagine that.
Can you imagine what it must have been like to be a founding donor to the Y back then. “Hey we want you to give us a $1000 so we can hire this kid to come help us start a YMCA that we are not sure what it will look like but we know we want one because Gastonia has one and we are better than Gastonia. Sure I will give you $2000 since you say it that way.”
Imagine being 9 years old and some crazy man says, one day you will be on the Y board of directors. I promise you.
Can you imagine about 30 people spending a rainy Sunday afternoon at the Vauxhall, and all we did was dream and……imagine.
Imagine 4 or 5 staff people sharing one office and dreaming about changing kids lives.
Imagine sitting on an airplane with the President of the Hospital and sketching out the Dover YMCA.
Imagine teenagers from our high schools debating legislation with hundreds of other kids from across our state.
Imagine a mom calling you and thanking you because her son talked her into going to church. All because of an after school counselor at the Y.
Imagine a teenage boy crying in your office as you suspend him from the Y, he had no where else to go. He hated where he lived.
Imagine that same teenager writing a letter to you from college and describing how the gym saved his life.
Imagine a lady telling you how she has lost 100 pounds and can now walk in to the Y with out the aid of a wheel chair and can change her clothes and get in the pool without the handicap lift. All because staff spoke to her and cared about her.
Imagine 700 people in a YMCA, holding hands at 7am in the morning praying for the unity of our community.
Imagine sitting with people in Shelby and telling them that you want to start a YMCA in Kings Mountain and they say “You want to do what?”
And imagine sitting with people in Kings Mountain and saying, I can help you get a YMCA and they say, “Where were you born?”
Imagine a father who’s wife has recently left him, and all he wants to do is bring his daughters swimming. All he wants to do his take their minds off the trauma in their lives for a few minutes and he needs the Y pool.
Imagine sitting in a room of 200 African Americans and you are giving out thousands of dollars in scholarships. And you are watching some of the most amazing kids in the world see their dreams of college get closer and closer.
Imagine opening up a letter with a $400,000 check in it. And it was sent regular mail with a 32 cent stamp.
Imagine sitting in a donors office and having him say, “How would you like to own a golf course?”
Imagine a little down syndrome girl going down the water slide into a pool.
Imagine a father and a daughter walking out of the Y arm in arm.
Imagine a cycling instructor giving out water bottles to first time class members.
Imagine Y staff and members going to a member’s house to clean.
Imagine a line of people standing outside the Y tomorrow morning at 4:45am.
Imagine someone waking up from his cancer surgery and saying he missed his friends at the Y.
Imagine a half dozen brilliant people sitting around table looking at numbers on a page.
Imagine girls from the Girls Club hitting golf balls on a driving range.
Imagine telling your friends around the country, “Well my Y owns a golf course”
Imagine climbing to the top of the climbing wall and seeing the joy and anxiety of your parents down below.
Imagine losing your job but being able to keep your Y membership.
Imagine a YMCA that is all about partnerships.
Imagine a YMCA that has a membership that actually reflects the community in which we live.
Imagine having a YMCA that wants kids in their building.
Imagine a YMCA that believes that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only son. And whoever believes in him, should not perish but have everlasting life.
Well, you don’t have to imagine, because it happened. And it continues to happen every day.
As long as we continue to dream. As long as we continue to imagine the possibilities. As long as we ask God to be present in all that we do. It can happen.
To be honest we never planned for a golf course, we never planned to operate the Girls Club…….but when the opportunity presented itself we could imagine it!
What is next? What can you imagine? How can you help us reach those dreams?
2010 will be about creating the next strategic plan that will help guide us over the next 5 years. I am so thankful that you will join us in that planning and vision casting.
Imagine 20 years from now, you are telling some group of young Y people at a meeting that….”You remember when you dreamed of that!”
Let me ask you, what a better time than right now, in this very moment to start dreaming. Maybe your life could start to change.
Imagine that!