Keion Henderson - I'm Not Going Out Like That

I don’t know what you heard, but I ain’t going out like that. That 's what I want to talk about today. High five somebody on your way to your seat and tell them, «I ain’t going out like that! I ain’t going out like that! Hallelujah to the Lamb of God!» When I was in college, I used to work in a steel mill called Auburn Foundry. It was a steel mill where we had to blast metal to polish it for use. My paycheck was $400 every two weeks, and in those days, that was pretty decent money for someone my age. I thought I was doing great. I had a 1996 Pontiac Grand Prix-how many of you remember that? Yeah, a little young thundercat wouldn 't know anything; they’ve never even heard of a Pontiac. The Pontiac Grand Prix was white and had gray interior. Back then, if you had cloth seats, it didn’t matter; now, you’ve got to have leather. Back then, it didn’t matter, and I had cloth seats. We shared an apartment, and four of us got together to rent this apartment — my brothers D’Angelo, Woodall, Jim Cesnik, Brad N, and myself. We all chipped in our money just to keep the apartment. In fact, Brad and Jim shared a room because we didn’t have enough money to get anything big enough for everyone. Remember, Brad had a 1991 Buick Regal; it had 196,000 miles on it when he got it. Y’all said, «Damn!» We were trying to rob Peter to pay Paul, and here’s the crazy part- all three of them were on full-ride basketball scholarships. My first semester in college, I was on a partial scholarship; I had to earn the rest because I didn’t come in as a full-ride athlete. I was recruited late and didn’t get an opportunity to enter the recruiting process because I was weighing my options and trying to figure out where I wanted to go. As a minister of the Gospel, everybody was suggesting that I go to a Christian school and play basketball, but the way my life was set up then, I had no desire to go to school and church. I was trying to go to school to get away from home. Trust me, every man in here knows that when you stay in your mother’s house, at a certain age, you want to make sure that she can depend on you and that you don’t have to depend on her. At 17 years old, I vowed to make sure my mother didn’t have to work. I promised her I would do all of these things with my life so that she could have an easier burden. I fought until I got that full -ride scholarship. In the end, we were afraid to lose our cars, afraid to lose our apartment, and we didn’t know how we were going to pay for our books or tuition. I had a Pell Grant, but it didn’t cover everything. With all of this going on, I was the guy who made sure the books were in pristine condition so I could sell them back. Come on, talk to me! I did everything I could to ensure that I wasn’t a burden on her. I worried sometimes and wanted to call her to tell her we needed groceries. Back then, when you made collect calls, it was added to your bill. One day, we had a $500 phone bill. I’m telling you, we didn’t know how we were going to pay it. My roommate D’Angelo and I said, «This is what we’re going to do: we’re going to jump him because he ran up our bill, and we didn’t want our credit messed up.» So we planned to jump him, but we realized we were two freshmen weighing 145 pounds while he was a senior weighing 245 pounds. We came to our senses and said, «The Lord will make a way.» Now, we didn’t do anything; we talked about it, but we didn’t go through with it. Looking back, we could have probably gotten the job done, but that’s neither here nor there. Thinking about all of that, we were afraid we were going to lose it all. I was afraid to call my mother and let her know we were struggling. You know what? We worried about it, and none of it ever happened. We never lost the apartment, we never lost our cars, and we all got full-ride basketball scholarships. We graduated with degrees. With all the things we worried about, none of them ever happened. If you’re a reader, I want you to read a book called *The Worry Cure * by Dr. Robert Leahy. He discovered in his book that most of us worry, and 85% of the things that …