Good morning! I’m cozying up with my hot mug of tea as I type this. The weather here has gotten very, very brisk. In fact, I’d go as far as to it’s cold. They (I’m assuming “they” are the abominable snow monsters) are predicting snow next week. As long as it comes on Tuesday and leaves Halloween alone. I don’t fancy the idea of snow on my birthday.

This morning, as I was in my kitchen putting the kettle onto boil and putting an apple muffin on a plate (okay…fine…it’s a cupcake…it has cream cheese frosting), I jokingly justified my breakfast to myself by calling it a “breakfast of champions.” It’s not Wheaties, but then again, isn’t anything a champion eats a “breakfast of champions”? Now, before you jump to conclusions and assume I’m a very conceited champion, hear me out. We are all champions. We are all children of God, and doesn’t that make us champions? Even though we may fall and stumble along this path of life, we get up, dust ourselves off, and keep on keepin’ on. No matter how hard life feels (and trust me, I know it can seem insurmountable and even tragic at times), the biggest champion of all is on our side. “If God is for us, who can be against us? …we are more than conquerors through him who loved us (Romans 8). That is one of my favorite chapters. It also reminds me of this quote my mom always had up on her wall (which she got from her father):

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who never know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

So go be a conquerer today. And have your own breakfast of champions.