Former football player and television personality Terry Crews recently explained how he sources his strength from Jesus Christ. Crews stated that God presented him with a “superpower” where he could find strength in being vulnerable.
The America’s Got Talent host recounted his early views on God. “The pastor didn’t preach about God’s love and grace. Instead, he preyed on his congregants’ shame about their weaknesses and their fear of hellfire. What I learned was that you didn’t ever cross God. His wrath and judgment came quickly. I wanted to hide from God. He was even scarier than my earthly father,” crews said.
Crews also endured a very tough childhood with a dysfunctional family. “One of my earliest memories was of seeing my father, drunk, knock my mother to the floor. This happened regularly. Even so, I was considered lucky by neighborhood standards because my father was around and didn’t beat us kids,” he said.
However, he noted that these experiences molded him into becoming a tougher and stronger individual. “Getting tough meant getting bigger. I loved art. I would sit at the kitchen table and draw superheroes with bulging muscles. I dreamed of becoming strong and powerful like that,” he said. “Somehow, I knew my father would go too far one day, and I would need to be strong enough to take him out. No boy should have to grow up thinking like that, but at the time, I didn’t know any different. It was my reality.”
Crews recalled how this shaped his perspective moving into his NFL career. “I spent seven years as a journeyman player in the NFL, a lonely existence that reinforced I could never show fear or weakness. Vulnerability and pro football don’t exactly mix. My career dictated where our family lived,” he said. “I thought as husband and father I should dictate what we did. The one thing Rebecca insisted on was raising our kids in the church. In every city, she’d find a church for our family to go to. And I’d go. For her and the kids,” he added.
Despite the challenging circumstances Crews has faced throughout his life, he has maintained that he always strives to become a better family man. “For most of my life, something like that would have been an unbearable humiliation. Now I work every day to become a better husband and father,” Crews said.
Moreover, he has determined that he must model his life after Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself to save humanity. “I have discovered strength in vulnerability, for who was stronger and yet more vulnerable than Jesus, who loved the poor and weak and defied the Pharisees. Who sacrificed his earthly life so we could live with him in heaven. What requires more vulnerability than to forgive and be forgiven? Well, I’m working on that.” He continued, “I remember that love conquers fear—always—and that to be a man means accepting myself, weaknesses and all. That’s my true superpower.”
Featured image credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Terry_Crews_(35299461464).jpg