Speaking in a recent podcast interview with Sports Spectrum, NASCAR driver Howie Disavino III spoke about how a tragic family loss led to his faith in God. Specifically, he said he grew up in a Christian household but, when he left to live on his own, he found himself drifting away from his faith and didn’t find his way back to it until his mother’s cancer diagnosis and death.
That story came when the Sports Spectrum podcast host, Jason Romano, asked him about his faith: “Tell me about the importance of God in your life and your faith,” he asked. Disavino, responding, said that his family was full of faith, but that he moved out on his own and struggled to get back into the Christian faith, struggling to find it on his own.
He said, “While I was moving out, that’s one thing that you can struggle with when you move out is just trying to get back into it.” Continuing, he explained how now he has made it past that and thinks about God and God’s role in his life frequently, saying, “I always tell everyone that God’s always on my side, and that we’re always going to make great things happen.”
He added that he reads the Bible every night so that it touches his heart, saying, “Every night, I go through the Bible [and] find specific Bible verses that I can relate to in my own life, whether I’m having a bad day or if I just really want a powerful Bible verse to touch my heart.”
Turning to Disavino’s racing career, Romano asked, “Did you know that racing was always going to be the direction God was going to pull you towards?” Romano asked. Disavino, responding, said, “No, growing up, I really wanted to be a full-time rancher.” He added that it was when he visited a NASCAR race as a young boy that he realized that that’s what he wanted to do instead of ranching.
Turning back to his faith, Disavino explained how it was with his mother’s cancer diagnosis and death from cancer that he strayed from God but then eventually found his way back to it. First, he explained how she was diagnosed when he was a young teenager, saying, “She got diagnosed when I was 14 years old, and it was bad because we found out on her birthday. She was told that she has three months to live…the reason why she is one of my heroes is because she always kept fighting.”
She lived five years after her diagnosis, not three months, but still she eventually died, and that is why he drifted from his faith when he moved out. He said, “There was a big big period in my life when I was 21 years old where I was extremely angry… I kind of fell out of it with God.”
But though he had drifted from his faith, he came back to it and realized that those trials he faced in life made him stronger. He said, “I finally just got up and said, ‘Alright, let’s go to church.’ And that sermon touched my heart.”