• Built on Love
• Love and Justice
• When Seeds Turn Poisonous
• A Seed I Planted
• Addiction Is a Disease
• One More Chance
• The Question I Still Ask
• Redemption

Have you ever grown a plant from a seed before? Have you ever gone through the process of preparing the soil, picking out seeds, planting them in trays to germinate, helping them get established into sprouts, and then planted them into the soil that you had prepared?

If you have never done it, it’s an incredibly rewarding process. It’s a process you realize you have no control over. Sure, you can provide inputs and be as careful and thoughtful as you want, but sometimes the seed is a dud. Or the soil in that one location has too many negative inputs. There are a lot of things that go into the eventual fruit it yields. And some of those inputs can cause the very thing you wanted for nourishment to become something that could be harmful to your health over time.

Like seeds for plants, Love is a seed that when planted can produce odd fruit—fruit that doesn’t look like love at all. As a matter of fact, sometimes the fruit is poisonous. And can actually spoil many of the other fruits of love at harvest.

§Built on Love

My whole life has been built on Love.

First, I have a loving Father in Heaven that created man and placed him in a garden of Goodness. Only for that man to fall and be in need of a Savior. Then that same Father sent down his Only begotten Son, out of Love, to die for man’s fall. So that man could be reconciled back to Him, the Father, through the Son’s resurrection. That’s LOVE.

Then God sent me—an 8-pound premature baby—down through space and time into the womb of a loving mother and into the arms of THE MOST LOVING MAN I’ve ever known.

People talk about privilege as if it is some bad word. I look at it like it just is. And in terms of parents and family and the love I’ve received, I know that I am overwhelmingly privileged. I’ve been blessed with incredible family all around—not just immediate family, but extended. My in-laws have always embraced me with love. My church family, pastored by THE MOST LOVING MAN I’ve ever known, is of course the most loving church I’ve ever known. As the under shepherd is, so are the sheep.

My wife of 26 years and my children are the epitome of Love. When it comes to love, I feel like I have a doctorate. Let’s just say I am the fruit from a tree of Love. So when matured, the seeds that are within me were ready to be sowed.

§Love and Justice

I try to sow seeds of Love wherever I go. It just comes naturally.

My dad used to warn me as a child that life wasn’t fair, due to my obsession with wanting everyone to be treated the same—myself included. But as an adult, my father, after seeing that I still have that obsession, said, “Son, you are really about justice.”

To that I would say yes. To me, Love and Justice are on the same side.

To stay principled, I have a chart in my head. On one side is Love (as the header): Patience, Justice, Kindness, Gratitude, Work Ethic, Honesty, Freedom, Giving. And on the other side are their antonyms, their direct opposites. It may sound weird, but that’s really how my mind thinks. This chart is my gauge. I try to keep my thoughts and actions on one side of the ledger.

Sometimes I tell my kids to listen to me say these words on Love’s side, then I say “X,” and ask what side does “X” fall on? That’s how I taught them to try to make decisions.

Do I make mistakes? YES, all the time. Many times due to something on the Fear side, like selfishness. Notice I didn’t say hate—fear is the header opposed to Love. Perfect Love casteth out fear. Therefore fear is the monster that shouldn’t be fed.

As for me, I humbly say that I try my hardest to stay on Love’s side.

§When Seeds Turn Poisonous

I sow seeds of Love. In the past I have allowed my expectations to get the best of me. Unlike with the plants, which I gave grace, I expected the seed of Love to yield fruit of Love—not for me to consume, but to spread to others.

When those seeds turned into poisonous fruit, it hurt. It felt like I had spread seeds wrongly. Like somewhere in the process, I had done something that caused these fruits to go bad. Being someone who is self-reflecting, I went internal trying to figure out what I had done. It had to be a misstep somewhere. What did I miss to deserve being fed poisonous fruit?

When I was 22, I became the manager of a couple of Cold Stone Creamery stores. I had finished my degree and had interviews for bank management programs with some of the largest banks in the country. I graduated with honors in finance, so why would I work at an ice cream shop?

Well, I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I knew that having this experience could shape the rest of my adult life. So I stayed in a management role after being just a $6.50/hr employee. Shortly thereafter, I was not only running two stores but they made me district manager—I was running 4 stores and consulting with another. Five stores at a young age was a challenge for me. I embraced it.

It gave me a certain amount of autonomy. It allowed me to give anyone that needed a little extra money a job. It allowed me to put friends and family into positions of management. It allowed me to give folks a chance that the world normally would not give chances to. It allowed me to plant seeds of Love in a very tangible way.

I tried to give jobs to most of my immediate family members and friends. If you need money, holla at Marh.

§A Seed I Planted

Well, one of those seeds I planted was with a person that was a friend for a very long time—over half my life. I was only 22, so anything over 11 years was over half my life. I tried to be a good friend to this person. I tried to be there for him through whatever he was going through. From hooping on Saturdays to late night car therapy sessions on a Thursday. Just tried being a good friend.

And this time was just an extension of that—he had just had a slight run-in with the law and needed a job. So I gave him one.

I let him handle one of the stores. He’s brilliant and very charismatic, so I knew he was going to do well. Plus I thought, “This will be dope—I’ll have one of my oldest homies running a store and won’t have to think about it because he will hold it down.”

Things were going well, until one day the safe came up short. At first I didn’t want to think it was him. Not my homie. Not the dude that I’ve been with through so much. But eventually he told me it was him. He was humbled, and explained why he had done it. I felt for him. I understood, even though I didn’t understand fully.

§Addiction Is a Disease

A mentor of mine—a hall of fame, award-winning multimillionaire entrepreneur—once told me there was one thing that he could forgive on the job, and that is a good worker that had a drug issue. He understood that addiction is a disease.

Well, this situation happened and I felt like that was the issue. Basically, this poisonous fruit of theft I had been given was not that I planted bad seeds, but that the soil had just become a little tainted with drugs. Which turned the fruit into theft.

I forgave it and reprimanded him. He promised not to do it again. I believed in him.

Then the theft happened again.

And this time I tried to show him grace, but I couldn’t let him stay. I had to fire him. I felt so sad. I knew that it wasn’t him—it was his addiction. It made me sad because I always thought of him as a highly capable and smart friend. The man could do anything. He was a great communicator and had the utmost potential.

I just knew if I gave him a chance, the Love I sowed would have yielded amazing fruit. But here we were, just a week after the first incident, running into the next. I was hurt. Not because he had stolen my money, but because drugs had covered his light. He didn’t seem to be in control anymore, and there was nothing I knew to do for him.

Except forgive him.

§One More Chance

A couple of years go by, and now I own the stores. I have an operation going on down at Rupp Arena. I sell ice cream out of carts, and it’s a purely cash business. And it paid out in cash right when we were done.

I never worried about the money coming up short at Rupp because I had an amazing inventory system. My mom used to run things for me most nights, and she was thorough. So I never had to worry about a cash issue, because the system would catch anyone that tried to defy it. So I didn’t mind letting my friend come make some money down there with me.

This time I was working the event because my ma dukes couldn’t make it. Here I was giving my homie another chance to make some quick money. And by the end of the event, here I was dealing with another theft attempt.

But as I said, my inventory system was flawless. So when the money came up short, there were excuses—but everyone that had worked down there before knew the deal. He did it again.

This time was the end. At this point I was just enabling his behavior. I could still be a friend, but not around the money. I forgave him, and our communication with one another became increasingly sparse. I still loved him, but I had my own family and business that I was responsible for.

§The Question I Still Ask

Still to this day, I can never understand why he never just asked me for the money. It was almost like he was ashamed, yet not ashamed enough to steal from me. There was a disconnect in his mind. That’s how I know that addiction is a disease. It changes the brain structure in the person that carries it.

§Redemption

But that’s not how the story ends.

Years later, I get a text. It’s from my friend. He was going through extensive rehab and was hitting me up to say he was sorry from the bottom of his heart. We met, and he took responsibility for his actions and apologized.

I told him, “I know this is part of what you have to do, but I have already forgiven you. I was sad, but we never blamed you. We knew you were struggling and just felt we needed to show you love.”

We had an incredible hug and went on our way.

I love my friend and am so happy that he is clean today.

Some fruit from the seeds you plant may come back poisonous. But don’t stop sowing them, because if you keep planting seeds, you’ll recognize the very fruit that you planted.