Hope, from Friend to Friend
February for coaches' wives is a hard time of year. Our budgets are depleted from holiday spending, coaches are looking for greener pastures -or- gasping from getting fired. Some households are fighting the flu, while loading the car to follow basketball games twice a week. At least the recent signing date signaled the end of recruiting. This is the time of year we need some hope and a friend who understands.

Hope Radebaugh is a coach's wife of 19 years and currently in her busiest season. Balancing her husband Barclay's team at Charleston Southern University (Charleston, South Carolina) and her son's basketball team, she is also mother to two active daughters. Hope recently authored Gym Rats, a Devotional for the Coach's Wife in November 2007 out of need in her own life. 

" The temptation is to become lonely and discouraged, or bitter toward a profession that allows only half of a day off each week during the season. My main goal in writing this book is that the wives who read it would find encouragement in the fact that they are not alone," said Hope. "It's my hope that they would find strength in knowing that God can meet all their needs."

If you are like me, you  look for affirmation and inspiration to be the best wife you ca be. Reading this, you will feel understood and encouraged, friend to friend, by Hope's 65 days of devotionals - just right to carry us through a season. Hope chose the title of Gym Rats because of all the players she has seen through the years that push themselves and persevere by hanging around the gym. She knows we can only be God's gym rats when we "hang around" His presence in His word and in prayer.