It’s #FiveMinuteFriday and a holiday weekend. Wishing you all a blessed time spent with family and friends. Today’s word prompt is CHEER!

I can still remember…even though it has been over 40 years (yikes!). Our little country school was still a K-12 but was soon to be redistricted and we would all go our separate ways like so many other smaller schools around the county. We had pride, Skibo pride, to be sure. If you don’t know what a Skibo is you can read my short post about Sammy the Skibo here.

I was never athletic, always wanted to be but it seems I was born with two left feet. I could never even master a forward roll so I sure couldn’t be one of those cute cheerleaders jumping up and down, never winded, doing cartwheels and splits like they came out of the womb trained to do so. I was a klutz with a capital K.

Luckily for all of us other girls, we had the most amazing gym teacher ever. Always wanting to include and encourage, she decided we needed a Pom Pom Squad. This wasn’t just a cheering section in the bleachers during the basketball game, this was the real deal: We would get matching outfits and real pom poms! Say what?!

Our mothers and the home economic class went to work making our red corduroy jumpers with shorts. Did I say we were the cutest Pom Pom Squad ever? When the pom poms came in, if memory serves me correctly, we excitedly gathered around all of the big boxes and began to grab our set and shake them into perfection. Never had red and white coordinated so well together as they did in that set of tissue paper on a stick. For once, junior high rocked.

But if we thought all of that was great, we were about to be blown away at our first game when the Real Cheerleaders sat down on the bleachers so the Pom Pom Squad could do their routine.

We were terrible, of that I am certain but the crowd went wild. (Our parents were there!) And all of a sudden a little blonde-haired pre-teen felt like she could someday be standing in front of the masses at an Indiana University basketball game, leading them in cheers for another great red and white.

Mrs. Yeagley thought we could do anything and she made us feel as if we were somebody. She taught us to hold our head up high, even if the forward roll wasn’t our cup of tea. It was okay, we were all different and that was the way God had made us. Yet we all had something to contribute, we all had something to CHEER about in our own, sometime clumsy, way. And she gave us that outlet to shine, even if only for a moment.

Who can you cheer on today? Who can you come along beside and whisper in their ear that they are worthwhile in the Kingdom? That they matter not only to you but to the God who created them and put them here on this earth?

“So encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11 NLT

To cheer is to love, to encourage, to help along in whatever way is needed at the time. A soft-spoken word, a loving touch, a prayer prayed, a card sent, a hug given. You might not hear the crowd roaring back from the bleachers but your loving Father will be cheering you on just the same.

sharing with dance with jesus, grace and truth, faith filled friday