Skip to main content

Shaken by Tim Tebow

December 8, 2016

He had trouble finding a home in the NFL, but that doesn't mean his life's not worthwhile.

I’ve never been a big Tim Tebow fan. Raise your hand if you’re shocked by that. Uh…let’s see…that would be… exactly zero of you. 
Ok good. So you know me. 
So you also know that just because I’m not someone’s biggest fan, doesn’t mean that I won’t read their book. (And that was a triple negative…did you catch that? Ugh. Math is hard.) Especially when I feel like there might be something poignant and applicable to my life.
We are pretty solidly ensconced in the holiday season, and for a lot of people this time of year can be very emotionally difficult. Especially in light of the fact that the greeting card companies and ad executives try to get you to believe that everyone has the perfect holiday family celebration complete with Pillsbury crescent rolls. 
We don’t. We can’t. We’re human and bad things happen. Stores sometimes run out of those little blue tubes of dough. It’s doubly bad when this happens at the holidays. Tebow’s latest book, Shaken, offers help on how to make lemonade when all life gives you is lemons.  Tebow’s life hasn’t been all unicorns and roses, but he still offers us a message of hope.
I don’t know what I was expecting to get from this one. I think I figured it would just be a handful of platitudes and a lot of football stories. But it wasn’t. Tim tells very meaningful stories about his time as a missionary in the Philippines, as well as sharing several stories of the children he has helped through his foundation. Ok yes, he does tell football stories, but there’s good balance between that and real life.
If you had asked me if I would recommend this book before I read it, I would have just laughed and shaken my head. It was simply going to be one I read for myself and pondered at my leisure. But now that I’ve read it, I can’t not share it. (Again with the double negative. Man, what isn’t not up with me?) Shaken was very moving and if you are up to your eyeballs in lemons, I highly recommend you read it. Fair warning, you might want to have a Kleenex or two handy. I’m just saying.
Let me leave you with favorite quote that Tim shared at the beginning of one of his chapters:
If you are always trying to be normal,
You will never know how amazing you can be.
- Maya Angelou
Happy Being Amazing…
:) Amanda

Panda cub avatar

Amanda

Amanda is a classically-trained pianist who loves to read. Like any good librarian, she also has two cats named after Italian cities. Amanda spends her free time sitting in Nashville traffic, baking, and running the Interlibrary Loan office at the Nashville Public Library.